By Linda Hildonen

As an SMCC alumna, I often think back to how my experiences at the school helped to shape my life. I reflect on the people I met, the things I learned, the skills I acquired. I look back on things I was able to cross off of my “bucket list” while I was there — from singing in front of others in the SMCC chorus, to standing on Congress Street in front of a sculpture I had made standing on Congress Street in front of an art-gallery window where a sculpture of mine was being displayed and shouting at strangers, “Hey! That’s my bust!”

Okay, maybe the bucket-list part was just about being in the gallery in the first place. But I really did shout at people. I may have been drinking.

I graduated from SMCC in May 2011. At the time, I was 27 years old, married and working in retail. I had graduated from high school nine years earlier with grades that can only be described as “mixed”: I remember the semester that I simultaneously a received a final grade of a 99 in my Poetry class (a distinctive A plus) and a 23 in Algebra (is there such a thing as an F minus?). My test scores, however, were high across the board: intelligence was never my problem. Nor was laziness, despite the frequency with which this term was used by my exasperated teachers. What I lacked were “soft skills” — the oft-overlooked abilities which act as mortar between bricks of human potential. In my case, undiagnosed ADHD had eroded my focus and organizational skills, and the uneducated reactions to it had laid waste to my confidence.

Years of working low-paying fast food and retail jobs after high school helped to build other “soft” skills: resourcefulness and resolve. By 2009, my view of myself had changed. I looked at my life, and thought about what I had accomplished. More importantly, I thought about what I had not accomplished, and I knew: I can do more. It was around that time that I became a full-time student at SMCC.

My time at SMCC did a lot of things. It helped me to try new things. It helped me to meet new people. It helped me to explore my interests and passions and zoom in on what really spoke to me, and be clear about what didn’t. As a Liberal Studies student with a concentration in art, I took classes that exposed me to art of all kinds, and I made a realization that would shape my career: I am not passionate about art for the sake of art. I am not passionate about art without boundaries. I am passionate about design, and about using art to communicate messages that are very specific, and purposeful.

SMCC helped me to develop very some very useful practical skills: how to use Photoshop, how to write a screenplay. But above all, SMCC opened me up to possibility. SMCC developed my optimism and belief in possibility, and opened me up the reality that things can be accomplished, and weaknesses can be overcome. Whether it was sculpting a bust or writing a movie or finally crossing a trip to Europe off my bucket list, SMCC laid out the steps to make each of those things achievable.

Six years after graduating, I am working in a marketing job I couldn’t have hoped to be qualified for without my degree and the training I received in pursuit of it. It is an often perfect marriage of my love of design and my passion for writing. Outside of my job, I recently worked on an independent film project, co-writing the screenplay to a full-length feature filmed right here in Maine, which debuted at a gala in December — so check “attend a gala held (partially) in my honor” and “have an excuse to wear a floor-length gown” off the bucket list.

While I took a longer route than some to make my way to college, it was the route I had to take, and I am grateful for it. It is never too late to learn, and one must be always learning to be their best.

Why, just today, as I started this article, I learned that the word I was looking for is “alumna,” not “alumnist.” So that’s what SMCC taught me today. Better late than never.