🌟 Part 2: Answering the Call – From Navy Blues to Engineering Breakthroughs 🌟
After those formative summers on the jobsite, I forged my own path by joining the Navy. It built discipline, teamwork, and resilience in ways I’ll always carry with me.
But in my late twenties, when it was time to choose a college degree, the siren song of construction pulled me back irresistibly. I decided on structural engineering—designing the bones that hold buildings safe and strong.
Truth? I’d been a terrible student in high school. Daydreaming through classes, barely scraping by. So what did I do? I picked one of the toughest engineering schools in the country: the Colorado School of Mines.
First semester? Brutal. I bombed the first two exams—horribly. Staring at those failing grades, it would’ve been easy to quit.
But the grit I’d learned from my dad and his crew—from those long, hot days swinging hammers and solving problems on the fly—kicked in. I dug in deeper: late-night study sessions, office hours, rewiring how I learned. I attacked the material like framing a house—one beam, one calculation at a time.
And I made it. Graduated with my civil engineering degree, narrowly missing honors.
That journey taught me that perseverance isn’t about being the smartest in the room—it’s about refusing to leave the room until the job is done.
Those lessons fuel everything I do today, especially when guiding HOA boards and managers through their toughest construction projects. Because complex challenges? They don’t get solved by talent alone. They get solved by grit.
Part 3 of my story coming soon—stay tuned!
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