The River That Refused to Dry Up

Some people move through life like a straight river — one direction, one purpose, one clean map. I was never that river.

I was the wandering kind, the kind that bends, splits, doubles back, and disappears underground before rising again somewhere unexpected. I kept searching for the right channel, the one that felt like home.

College was my long season of wandering waters. I changed majors the way a river changes course after a storm — CAD design, architecture, landscape design, political science, computer science, accounting, finance, psychology, sociology, geology, creative writing, literature, English. Each one looked like a promising tributary, but every time I waded in, the current was wrong. Too much reading. Too much math. Too much of the very things my dyslexic mind struggled to hold.

I wasn’t lazy. I wasn’t lost. I was preserving myself — trying to find a place where I could breathe.

So I kept exploring. I took every class that felt like water to me: GIS design, air photo interpretation, meteorology, oceanography, earth science, anthropology, population studies. I added marketing, advertising, management, business strategy — anything that felt like movement, like possibility, like a current I could ride.

But the truth was simple: I couldn’t stay afloat in most universities. I flunked out of nearly every school I touched before 1996.

My parents eventually stopped paying for my education. Not out of cruelty — but because they saw I was swimming in circles, exhausting myself. It was the right decision. Sometimes the people who love you have to step back and let you find your own shoreline.

So I worked. My favorite job of all time was at Sunnycrest Video in Urbana, Illinois — a little harbor where I felt safe, understood, and surrounded by people who made the days lighter. I even dreamed of opening my own video store. When I asked my dad for a loan, he said no — “The technology will be obsolete in ten years.” He was right. The tide was already shifting.

When the store closed, I drifted into a job at the University of Illinois Employees Credit Union. Ten thousand dollars a year felt like a fortune, until the bills came. I was always broke, always behind, always sinking faster than I could bail water out of the boat.

My parents saw the frustration rising in me like a storm tide. So one weekend, they made me an offer — the kind that changes the direction of a river.

They said they would pay for room and board if I could find a way to get accepted and pay my own tuition to Western Illinois University.

It was the best motivation they could have given me. A challenge. A current to swim toward.

At twenty‑five, I found the MAP Grant — a lifeline for older students attending state schools in Illinois. But to get it, I had to write an essay. For most people, that’s a task. For me, it was a marathon through mud.

It took thirty‑six straight hours. No sleep. Coke, Mountain Dew, maybe a Volt or two. And the same sentence rewritten over and over, word by word, like trying to carve a message into wet sand before the tide washed it away.

But I did it. I earned the MAP Grant. My first real victory — a wave I caught all on my own.

I quit my job too soon, got excited, had to crawl back and ask for it again. Embarrassing, yes. Humbling, absolutely. But who cares? I had crossed my first real threshold. I had proven I could swim.

At twenty‑five, I finally felt the current shift. I wasn’t drifting anymore. I was moving with purpose.

And that’s the thing about water — it teaches you that preservation isn’t about staying still. It’s about refusing to dry up, even when the sun is beating down. It’s about carving your own path, even if it takes years. It’s about trusting that every bend, every detour, every wrong turn is shaping the river you’re meant to become.

Keep reading. Follow me through the rest of these written waves. Peace.

- George A Russell IV -

4-12/2026 5:48pm