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Fulfilling a Long-Time Dream

“I’m part machine,” John Mullins likes to joke in reference to a mechanical heart valve that was implanted about seven years ago to correct a heart defect John had from birth. Ten years ago, the actual experience was far from a laughing matter: “I should have died,” he notes more somberly, looking back. But ultimately, the way John looks at it, getting sick was a blessing in disguise. “Everything bad that has happened to you has brought you to where you are,” John states philosophically.

After five years of recuperating and learning to take it easy on his heart, John was aching to get back into work and start his life again. However, his old jobs of working long hours and heavy labor at a salvage yard and petroleum company were out of the question. So for John, it was a prime opportunity to consider a college education. “It has always been a dream of mine to go to college,” he shares, “I just kept working, though. I enjoyed working so much – I put everything I had into it,” and he never slowed down long enough since graduating high school to consider going to college. Now that he had the time, he was looking forward to getting an education that would get him back in the workforce.

Since he’s lived all his life in the Bluefield/Princeton area, John had watched National’s Bluefield Campus grow and heard a lot of great things about it. His first visit to the school convinced him it would be the best place for him. “I liked it because the classes are small,” he shares and his admissions representative, Tonya Elmore, made him feel right at home. That warm welcome extended beyond his first entrance in the door and has followed him through two years at National pursuing a double major associate degree in business administration-accounting and computer applications technology. “It’d been 27 years since I’ve been in school, so I was concerned about how well I was going to do,” John confesses, “but I had a wonderful instructor for my first class. That’s what got me started… It helped me to go on.”

And he doesn’t plan to stop anytime soon. John is one of the first enrollees of the new bachelor’s program in business administration-management that starts this fall in the new campus facility in Princeton, West Virginia. Looking ahead to his future, John says hopefully, “Going through a bachelor’s program should help me get a better job with benefits, which I need because of my health.”

For now, he’s diverting all the energy he poured into his work into his studies. “I look forward to coming to class every day,” John says with a smile. “Mr. Riffe [Denver Riffe, Campus Director,] has some wonderful people working for him,” John shares. “That’s the way it is here – like family,” he says with a smile, “It’s been wonderful.”