I thought school wasn’t for me. SSMT proved me wrong.
I was homeless for much of my school years and grew up in a house with active addiction. I was always smart, but I never had the room to try for good schools. I was too busy raising my sisters, and I burned out fast. I lasted about two weeks at Santa Fe College before COVID hit, and online school is a struggle for me. So I decided school just wasn’t my thing and started healing myself instead.
That led me to shadow work and energy work, and then into running my own business. Five years in, I wanted to professionalize what I do. Acupuncture school meant doing regular school first, which we’ve established isn’t me. My bank account also voted massage. (The universe had a plan, I just didn’t know it yet.)
So I took a second job on top of my business and worked 18 to 20 hour days for a full year. I practiced almost 200 hours of hands-on work outside of class and drove an hour and a half each way to Sarasota every day. It was the hardest thing I’ve done, and there were moments the old me would have ghosted the program and run. What kept me in was SSMT. The community, the alternative learning styles, and the way the school is set up made it easy to choose to stay.
In my family, working like a mule, 50+ hours a week for the rest of your life, is just what you do. I worked those hours from the age of 15. This program let me break that generational curse. I’m the first one in my family who doesn’t have to live that way. I now work 20 to 25 hands-on hours a week and make about the same. My sleep is still recovering, and my next project is learning to live as a human whose identity isn’t the same thing as her job.
If you’ve ever decided school isn’t for you, this is the place that might change your mind.
