I wasn’t a great student in high school. I was a C or D student, so in high school, I swore I would never go to college. I never took the ACT or SAT. I spent 15 years in retail and I wasn’t enjoying it, I was missing out on events on the weekends and holidays were always tiring, so I decided to go to my local community college. There, I found that I liked learning then and I was an honors student. I graduated as a member of the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society and through the Harvard Extension Schools Phi Theta Kappa scholarship, I was able to attend the first three classes for admission into Harvard Extension School.

Retail was just not for me. It doesn’t pay enough and the hours are all over the place. I wanted a nine to five Monday through Friday job where I could spend time with my family in the evenings and on the weekends. As I transitioned into community college, it was a pretty smooth transition for me. I only took one or two classes, at first, to get into the swing of things. Then, I got my degree in health information management. But I would say my primary interest is the medical aspect of this, like brain chemistry and neuroscience. Why do people act the way that they do? My favorite class so far has been an intro to psychopharmacology class that I took at the Harvard Extension School. It was just super interesting to see how drugs could affect the brain and how changes in the body could affect the absorption of medications throughout. I also took a “Health Effects of Cannabis” course that I found pretty interesting because Ohio just started a medical program and I wanted to know what the actual effects were as opposed to the rumors out there. Dr. Boomhower, the person who teaches that class and Intro to Psychopharmacology is a great teacher.

When I came back to school, I started seeing the point of what I was learning. IT really helped that I was able to take classes that I wanted to take on my schedule and not have others tell me what classes I needed to take initially during this transition period back. My family was happy I was going back to school; when my dad was working, he was on the maintenance staff at a hospital, and that’s actually how I got into medicine - I saw people working on medical records in the office, and so I became interested in doing the same. I didn’t go into the office, he was talking to people there and suggested that I might like it.

All through college, I was working in retail. Then, I had a hard time finding a job afterwards even because everyone wanted me to have two years of experience. I went to all different kinds of jobs, from temp jobs to being an enumerator asking people to fill out the census to working on the primaries for the Presidential election. In May of last year, I finally got the job at Signature Health to work as a medical records clerk, so I’ve been there for the past 6 months. Right now, I’m just taking one class, the Expos 25 class, that everyone must take to gain entry into Harvard Extension School. (There are three classes that someone has to pass with a B or higher to get into the extension school, an Expo-25 class and any other two classes in the catalog.)

From retail, I’ve really learned how to work with all different types of people. Sometimes, people are upset at the world, and unfortunately they just take it out on whoever is closest to them. I have learned how to work with people and get along with people as well, which is helpful on group projects, and I have also learned how to take constructive criticism. In balancing my work and schoolwork, I always make sure to keep track of my assignments and have notes written down on what is due when—something I struggled with in high school but am getting better at now.

When I was in Lakeland community college, I was VP of Fundraising for our college’s chapter of PTK and in the academic honors society, so it really helped to have people of all ages in the community college—from people in their 50s and 60s to students as young as 15 or 16—in that group. At the extension school, it’s nice because we have a Facebook group where we can talk to people. But, of course, in the pandemic, it’s been hard to do so because everything is online, and you feel so separated and by yourself all the time. I always make sure to reach out to people, and I always like studying more in the local community spaces like the local college campus. It just helps to be around others who are also studying to keep you focused.

What got me interested in medicine is that it’s always going to be needed. It’s not something that can be automated, and it’s always changing every month or two with new machines and new techniques. There’s just always room to learn and grow. I personally want to go more into data analytics, particularly in applying this to mental health and drug addiction to understand all these working parts of what treatments are working and how to better treat people. I’m also interested in a novel writing class as I have a few science fiction ideas floating around in my head!

Besides work, I enjoy volunteering at a hospice organization, and I also collect laser discs. And as a final word of advice to students, I would say that if you have any interest in doing something, just do it. Don’t put it off. Five years into retail, I wanted to go back to college; then it became 10 years, and then it became 15 years that went by and I finally went back. But then, I wondered why I hadn’t gone back 10 years ago. I’m glad now that Harvard Extension School exists as I’ve met so many nice people through it. When I graduated high school, I never thought that I would go to college, let alone take classes at a place like Harvard.

Greg Nicholson, RHIT

Harvard Extension School

(Information about the scholarship I won can be found at https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/ptkscholarship/home; I wouldn’t be taking classes at Harvard Extension without it.)

Interviewed and compiled by Felicia Ho

Greg Nicholson

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