Meet Map: Lauren, Alumni

Here is a transcript of our conversation with Lauren, a Map alumni.

Lauren: My name is Lauren and I graduated Map Academy in 2019. Since graduating, I had planned to go to college, which did not quite work out. I didn’t have another choice on how I was going to pay for college so that’s why I joined the army but since I’ve gotten a job as laborer, which I love.

October 1st, I’ll be deploying for a little bit over a year to Texas. It’ll be cool to live away because I won’t, I’ll be able to have my actual own personal belongings and all that so it won’t be that bad.

My MOS, which is the job that you have in the army, is operating construction equipment, which is not what I do for work, but it’s all closely related. I just happened to come by that job. I like jobs where a girl’s not supposed to be there. It’s cool to prove to men that think you shouldn’t be doing a job like that, that they’re really old school because there is still a lot of people out there like that. It’s cool to prove to them that you can do the job just as well as they can.

The long-term goal for when I come home is that I’m going to rent an apartment, get a cat and a dog, go back to the job I have now until my contract is over and then move out of state for a border patrol job. I just think–I really like that they give you a lot of skills outside of the core classes that you take. It gives you a lot of outside life skills that a traditional high school does not give you like stuff about cars that I learned here, taxes, how to fill out a FASFA. It gave me a lot better social skills, which I definitely lacked before.

Just come to school in the best mood you can every day because your mood is going to reflect off of the students. Basically just the same thing, just come open-minded every day and set a small goal to at least do one thing. Even if you don’t want to really do anything that day, you should at least try to do one thing so then you like have some sort of accomplishment.