Matthew Lebel:  

in high school caught up with me here. (as if back at Doherty it was necessary to wear sweats to play ping pong!) This lady was like an older hippy type person. She would have us meditate for an hour (which was great because I caught up on sleep at that time) and one day my nightmare came true; she decided we were going to do some african dancing. She was hopping around and writhing like she was a dying snake. Psychology class was awesome. My professor made us keep dream journals (which I had already done for years) introduced us to the movie Falling Down. Still, I was out to rebel and prove this guy wrong too. He told us that all dreams mean something so I brought him a dream of mine that baffled him. He admitted to me in front of the class that he had no idea what my dream could possible mean. Algebra in college was easier than in high school. I was really, really bad at math. At Doherty I was staying after school 3 times a week for extra help and I just could not get it. Now, geometry I am good at, but algebra makes no sense. I almost failed Algebra in high school and here in college I am passing with flying colors. Go figure. Communication Theory was the beginning of Graphic Arts for me in college and is the class that confused me the most about my chosen field. It was boring and I never had any idea what the professor expected from me. We studied the history of communication, from the cave scrawlings of cavemen to the first newspaper being printed. I love history, but even this was too much for me. However, this was the class that I did not rebel in. I tried my hardest on every assignment and came very close to failing the class. This type of contradiction is what led me to believe I needed some time off from school. The harder I tried the worse I did, but when I didn't try at all I was getting 3.0 or higher. I am currently searching for a school that will allow me to take graphic design or web design courses online since I have a busy family life and the closest schools that have my courses are over an hour away. Workplace I have not had many jobs in my life. I tend to stay at my jobs a few years. I worked at Noah's Ark Pet Shops in Shrewsbury and Westborough from 1992 to 1997. That was a really fun job and honestly I would love to work there again. I quit in 1997 to move to Florida. When I first arrived in Florida I hit the pet shop circuit thinking maybe one of the shops would need an experienced assistant manager, but I was turned away. I applied at Walmart just so I could have some income while I found something else. I worked for walmart for 3 years. I started as a cashier in sporting goods and then a few months later in electronics. Not long after I had let management know that I wanted more responsibility and they gave it to me. I got my own office and basically managed the store inventory and equipment. I left Walmart in 2000 to get a job with Dell doing pc tech support. I learned a lot more about computers and software. Dell was a great company to work for. Unfortunately in 2002 they outsourced all of their tech support to India. But they transferred those of us that were left into the sales department. Selling computers and peripherals was great fun and I made enough money on commission that I was able to cut my hours back a little so that I could work on my own t-shirt business. Yes, the graphic arts knowledge from high school really came into play finally. I began silk screening tshirts in 2002 and ran a successful online business until 2004. In 2003 Dell sales was also outsourced to India and my company transferred me to the Charter Communications account where I did customer service and worked long hours in part due to mandatory overtime. My tshirt business fell by the wayside since I had no time to work on it. I now work doing internet tech support for Charter. It is a bad, bad, job. Basically, I get yelled at all day by old people that can't work their own computers. The best part of the job is that I take maybe 10 five minute long calls all day, so there is plenty of time for reading, surfing the web, or playing gameboy. I would really like to get a new job in a creative field such as Graphic Design.