NLU Alumni Magazine
Student gets second chance through education By Mark Donahue
Like many adult learners at NLU, Alphonso Johnson experienced a moment of realization about the course of his life: he wanted to commit himself to living up to his full potential, as a worker, a student and a member of the community. There’s only one difference. He experienced this epiphany in jail. “My last time in prison I told myself you’ve got to grow up,” he said. “You can’t blame anybody. You can’t justify or rationalize your behavior. You just have to grow up. You have to take the same effort and energy you used to create this criminal person and redirect that energy and effort into building who you are.” A native of the old Cabrini-Green housing project on Chicago’s North Side, Alphonso was a self- described troubled teen, and like most teens, he said, he was searching for an identity. In a neighborhood where options were limited and criminals revered, he fell into gang activity and selling drugs, driven by a desire to fit in. Trouble followed. Alphonso was first arrested at age 14, tried as an adult and served time till he turned 21. He did two more stints in prison, of 17 and 30 months each. His criminal life had indeed become like another person — an alter ego, he said — and he’d cultivated it for more than 20 years. Alphonso came to see that he must stop or he would end up in jail for the rest of his life or even dead — and that meant “I can’t make up the time I’ve lost. I can only step up and take advantage of the time I have now to become a more responsible and positive, productive member of society.”
Photo by James Richards IV - National Louis University
Alphonso Johnson welcomes the opportunity to pursue a degree after his troubled beginnings. He hopes to one day start a community support program for at-risk youth so they don’t end up on the same negative path he was once on.
denying the false aspirations he’d grown up with.
“I realized that what I thought was normal because you see it so often every day, stepping outside of that, I found that it was actually abnormal,” he said. Driven by this new sense of purpose, Alphonso began to pursue two tracks to put his life in order: work and school. For the latter, he was inspired by his sister, April, an NLU MBA graduate, and also his wife, Nesha, who graduated in February with a degree in criminal justice from the University of Phoenix. Alphonso looked into what NLU could offer, initially enrolling in the Bachelor’s in Human Services program. Former felons have limited work options, so Alphonso turned to Helen Roy, Career Readiness Advisor at NLU, for advice. She helped tune up his resume and encouraged him to do volunteer work to gain
— Alphonso Johnson NLU student
8
Powered by FlippingBook