James Shonin Kelly III’s Soka University of America Life So Far

Yeah, I literally have listS of many different topics I was going to discuss in my next blog, but a lot of things related to SUA have been coming up recently to the point that I’d like to speak about my experience at Soka.  Also, I’ve been doing a bit of sorting of pictures and other memory-related paraphernalia and I was thinking about how I’ve changed since high school.

High school – I was some who wanted many friends and didn’t want to be single.  More or less, I achieved that even though I fucked up near the end of my high school experience.

College – I’m still figuring out what kind of person I really am and I’m trying to decide on what kinds of people do I want in my life.  I wanted to come to this place and have it be like high school, except without the fucking up part.  But here’s another part of my life that I don’t like.

When I fuck up on something, apparently I fuck up hard.

Hard to the point that it’s almost impossible to recover from the mistake.

Whether it’s chess, making a decision, etc. if I fuck up, it’s over usually….

And that brings me to where I am right now.

But let me back it up a bit back to my Freshman year real quick tho.

Freshman Year @ Soka University of America 2008-2009…

“I GOTTA GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE BEFORE I FUCKIN LOSE MY GOD DAMN MIND ON SOME REAL SHIT!” was the mindset before going to college.  I was getting involved with gang things that could of fucked up my chances of going to college at all, life was shitty at home, and because of certain circumstances I was losing a lot of friends (or so I thought).  My only, almost literally, get-out-of-jail-free card was Soka University of America, in California.

My hopes were to meet more people like me and to make a lot more friends and to ultimately turn SUA into a place that I could call home.  That’s what I believed my only strength was; that I could go anywhere and be able to turn it into my home.  It took me years all the way until now to realize that ‘home’ for me will never be a place free of problems.

The beginning started off well, but apparently at my school it always goes that way until the semester really starts.  But at least for that month I felt as though I was in Heaven.  No more living home at hell, I was finally on my own to do what I wanted instead of being held back, I could speak as freely as I want, and around hella chill people that feel the same way as I do.  Shit, I couldn’t have been more wrong….

During the month of August, I was hella tight with two other homies of mine.  We met up on FB before chillin together at Soka and we chilled for a good two weeks into CORE.  Then, both for different reasons, they started not chillin with me, excluding me from chillin with other people, and eventually I stopped hanging out with them.  I figured out that one didn’t want to be around me anymore because I was single and too caught up in the beautiful (at the time) girls and talking about them (not in a negative way or rude way) made him uncomfortable because at the time he was happy with his girlfriend.  The other, I’m still confused till this day as to the specific reason why, but it’s all water under the bridge now (I hope).

So, after CORE was over all the other upperclassmen came back to school.  Me, tryna make friends whenever possible, hooked with chill ass people such as Granville, Sonal, Zane, Stan, Wandile, Yuko, and many others.  Because I was somewhat shunned from activities that I used to do with my homies, they filled in that spot and I got a chance to know a lot more people just from reachin out to da upperclassmen.  Because of this tho, I grew further and further away from my class.  But at the time I didn’t care about it as much as I do now.

So for September and October I just primarily hung out with many different people, most not from my class though.  I grew closer to my roommate, whom I consider my brother now, I got a chance to find my own homies whom I could chill out with most of the time, I threw an awesome party that a lot of people still remember till this day,  and I even have a chance to experience a lil romance on the side.  Life was starting to be the Heaven that once had when I first arrived at Soka.  But all things in my life, what comes up, must come down.

In November, if I’m not mistaken, was when it all came to an end.

I went to a party now remembered as “Puke Fest” by some.  Prior to that party, I partied almost every weekend which is part of the reason why I put on so much weight.  But I used to be that person that was at every party and was chill with a lot of people.  At PF, however, due to my lack of sobriety and my lack of understanding on how things worked at Soka, I made an ass of myself and really fucked over my reputation.  How badly did I fuck up at that party?  Badly enough to not be invited to any more parties for over a year and a half and badly enough to still have people talk negatively of me behind my back.  1 hour of one party fucked me over for maybe the rest of my 3 1/2 years here at Soka.  THAT’S when I really started seeing how things really worked here.

I apologized to everyone that I did negative things to at that party, but it didn’t help my reputation any.  From December until the end of the year, I almost never partied and the only people that I was still cool with was the clique that I had grown close to prior to that incident.  The Seniors that I had grown close for the most part didn’t shun me, but due to Capstone they had no time to chill out second semester.

And that’s how I ended my Freshman Year: Just about all of the people I was cool with gone in an instant.

Sophomore Year @ Soka University of America……

After going home (the weird thing about my family I’ve come to find out is that things get better the farther apart we are) for the summer, after watching everyone else in my class enjoying their conversations with the friends that they missed and seeing the pictures of their travels to their friends all over the world, and after realizing how I wasn’t included in any of it, I started the year off optimistically.  I hoped that last year was in the past and that I could turn over a new leaf, but apparently that wasn’t the case.

I found out that it’s really hard to change your reputation once it’s tarnished.  So once I got back to school, the same shit happened; shunned from many of my peer’s activities because of ‘Puke Fest’ and almost forced to hang out with my own clique.  Matter of fact, it got to the point to where the whole school knew my crew as “The Boys” and they started associating everything about me to what the “boys” did.  And because I’m the only one in my group who doesn’t have a problem actively seeking out fun activities with other people, I wasn’t even invited to anything through association.

When I realized that I was still being treated the same way, I spent all of first semester trying to figure out what was being said about me.  Everyone talks about everyone, especially if its something negative about that person, so there had to be SOMETHING out there still for me to be treated like this.  And indeed there was, but I won’t get into he said she said shit.  I was actually surprised that people even talked about me even occasionally since I didn’t party really since PF.  But lo and behold, the hostility was still there. This time, there were people that noticeably didn’t like me.  Oh, and the upperclassmen that I had grown so attached to?  All graduated.

I wanted to connect with my class, but everyone had moved on from the stage of getting to know each other to the “I know who I wanna hang out with and who I don’t” stage.  As a matter of fact, over half of my class got into relationships which further separated not only me, but other people that used to be in their cliques.   Seeing that also made me even more upset.

So, in a nutshell here’s how my Sophomore Year went: Some people started letting me hang out with them again, but after first semester they went on study abroad.  I was dealing with family shit that eventually took it’s toll on me as well.  I took harder classes while working over 20 hours a week.  I had very few friends with no hopes of getting into any sort of relationship.  I gained a shit ton of weight from not being able to work out and because of my work schedule.  I smoked every now and then and even got in trouble with the school for it. I eventually realized that things at Soka will never be like where I’m from and you either have to conform or do you and say fuck it to whoever doesn’t like it.

So that’s how my Sophomore Year ended at SUA:  In the same position as I was after PF happened, just more overweight, overworked, stressed, and more lonely.

Here’s one of the only strengths that I have that I’m very proud of:  No matter what I go through, I do my best to never lose hope and to always see the positive things in everything.

Even though I do have a fucked up reputation, single, not close to my class, and hella out of shape, I’m not stressin.

Wanna know why?

Because I don’t think anything that I go through at Soka can compare to where my life could be right now.

I could be walkin the streets of some ghetto-ass neighborhood in Florence, South Carolina not in school and going nowhere in my life like most of the people that I grew up with in my neighborhood.  I could be on bad terms with my family with several kids running around.  I could be DEAD right now.

But I’m ALIVE.  I’m sooo thankful to be able to travel the world and make different countries free like home to me.  I’m soo appreciative of my boss at work who always looks out for me in every way that I could ever ask for.   I’m so thankful for the Faculty and Staff at Soka who genuinely care about my well-being and about where I can go within my life.  I’m sooo thankful for the friends that I do have and for the ones that have gotten me to where I am now in life.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU EVERYONE!!!!

Now, were to go from here? Well, no one can really know (at least to my knowledge) the future, but as humans, at least we can plan.  I plan focus on myself.  I’ve said this before in a past blogs, but I plan to take care me in every way possible.  I plan on becoming healthy in all aspects of my life and even though I will enjoy every second of being single, I will undoubtedly work on the swagg so I don’t have to worry about being single.  I plan to turn Soka into the home that I originally envisioned with people that will get to know the real me instead of whatever image of me that’s out there right now.  I plan on making new friends like how I did when I first arrived and I plan on rekindling old relationships with people whom no longer hang out with me.  I will do everything on my part to achieve every goal that I have during my Junior year here at Soka because quite frankly, I’m tired of suffering.

So, here’s my official announcement for the rest of my life at this point in time:  Fuck you.  Who is you?  Anything that may TRY to get in my way of what I want to do.  I’mma do me and ain’t no one gon take me away from who I am.  Haters, thank you.  You’re the ones that point out all the negative things in my life to me that makes me appreciate what I actually do have.  So please, keep hating or…just be cool with me without the hate.  And if I actually don’t have any haters, then hopefully I’ll make none on the way to becoming who I want to be.  And if I do make haters, the please follow the instructions that I gave to the haters that I potentially have now. kthanks

I got work at 5 in the mornin, my last day of work till I go home by the way, so I’mma peace out for tonight.  So much said already, yet so much more to say.  I wonder if people think I talk too much….

Anyways P N B E (Peace N Be Easy) and I”ll holla at y’all later

James Shonin Kelly III