Freshman Austen Pelkey is making up for lost time.
“Since I’m 26, I’m determined to earn my associate degree and go on to a senior college in a timely manner,” he says. So Pelkey is enrolled as a full-time student while holding down a job at a retail shop in Manhattan. Working full time, he says “is the only way I can survive in this city.”
Back in the groove
Pelkey knows something about survival. At 18, he was seriously injured in an automobile accident and missed his last year of high school. Following his recovery, he moved to Rhode Island, where he spent the next five years supporting himself with blue collar jobs and working toward his diploma. He also started thinking about college.
At the time, Pelkey was actually looking beyond undergraduate studies to law school. “CUNY’s emphasis on public service-and on helping those who can’t help themselves-was what really excited me,” he says.
While he was drawn to CUNY, his connection with BMCC happened by chance. Walking along Chambers Street on his way to meet a friend one afternoon, he glanced up and saw the BMCC campus. “That’s all it took,” he says. “I thought, wow – I’d love to go to school here. And here I am.”
Pelkey is majoring in liberal arts-a field he chose carefully. When a lawyer acquaintance told him that he’d earned his Bachelor’s degree in music, Pelkey’s eyes widened. “I thought, if this guy can go to law school after studying music for four years, why can’t I major in liberal arts?” His strongest interest is in sociology and political science.
New worlds
Pelkey’s job-where he reports each weekday immediately after his nine a.m. class-is at a scuba diving store. “I grew up not knowing how to swim and not particularly liking the water because it was cold,” he says. “But one day I jumped in wearing a wetsuit and thought, ‘This isn’t bad.’” He then purchased a mask, snorkel and fins, later graduating to scuba diving.
“As soon as I went underwater with an air tank on my back, a whole new world opened up for me,” he says.
The same could be said for that day in 2007, when he first laid eyes on BMCC.
