Riggen Hughes
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By gathering my courage, not giving up, and taking the path less traveled with blending courses, I found that through my interests, learning became invaluable.
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– Riggen Hughes
Making decisions and having choices should come with a set of directions that are not based on hopes, but morals and values from life experiences. Being able to learn the skills to be confident in myself grew from a home based & blended online school setting. I have learning and language processing disabilities for which my family paid out of pocket for therapy and online classes that were needed to overcome and be successful with school. My academic performance declined each year with the traditional school setting. The choices my parents made to allow me to have a non-traditional blended education has given me the self-confidence I needed for personal development and where I learned independence, individuality, and even overcoming learning and language processing disabilities. Having this type of education has afforded me the capacity to pursue all of my interests in a time frame not available to many my age.
Together my parents have kept me busy every weekend competing all across the state of Texas. I could not ask for a better lifestyle to be able to grow up within. I feel that the morals and values that I have obtained have been key to my success as a high school student as hard work and ethics were a foundation of everything that I have been involved in. My abilities to have a choice in my subjects and organize my time helped me grow in not only a social aspect but also have first-hand experience in college readiness.
I have become fluent in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, competed at National as well as World competitions in bull riding, and developed a successful business as a knife smith from the age of 13 all the while taking over the ranching duties of our farm while my father worked away from home. I have always had a strong interest in designing and building. My interest began when I was young while watching my dad designing and making anything that our ranch needed in our shop with various power tools and welders. From there, I started designing and building handmade knives and, along the way, met and apprenticed under Dan Harrison, a master knife smith and one of my biggest influences toward an engineering career. Dan Harrison taught me the ins and outs of machining and working with power tools and heat treating and tempering metal. Learning this trade became monumental in my direction towards my field of choice, engineering.
None of these learning experiences could have happened, to the extent that I was able to take them, had I stayed in a traditional classroom and never ventured into the real world. Being able to spend the time needed to master concepts and techniques is a gift. At one point in my life, I was losing the desire to learn because of invisible disabilities. By gathering my courage, not giving up, and taking the path less traveled with blending courses, I found that through my interests, learning became invaluable. With my learning, I became proud of my accomplishments, and with both of those, my goals became attainable. Through these experiences, I have been able to gain a skill set needed to be confident in myself while incorporating my lifelong love for learning.