{"id":27807,"date":"2018-05-11T15:22:30","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T19:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom2\/2018\/05\/11\/local-man-gets-a-second-chance-at-college\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T16:21:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T20:21:12","slug":"local-man-gets-a-second-chance-at-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom\/2018\/05\/11\/local-man-gets-a-second-chance-at-college\/","title":{"rendered":"Local Man Gets a Second Chance at College"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/media-old\/2018\/05\/Chris-Montes.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-17799 size-medium\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/media-old\/2018\/05\/Chris-Montes-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a>Community Colleges are all about second chances, and Chris Montes of Haverhill, who will graduate with honors and an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.necc.mass.edu\/learn\/credit-programs\/business\/business-transfer\/\">Associate Degree in Business Transfer<\/a> from Northern Essex Community College on May 19, is well aware of that.<\/p>\n<p>Montes enrolled at Northern Essex after graduating from high school in 2010 but it didn\u2019t go well.<\/p>\n<p>His first semester grades were bad and his second semester was even worse.\u00a0 Eventually, he dropped out, choosing instead to work fulltime in the warehouse of a local company.<\/p>\n<p>Montes takes full responsibility for his failure and he admits that at 18 or 20 years old \u201cI wasn\u2019t my best self.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Still, he had challenges that most young men his age don\u2019t have.\u00a0 At the time, his mother, Katheleen Morales of Haverhill, had been diagnosed with lymphoma and was undergoing treatment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was so worried about her.\u00a0 It set me back,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>Full-time work and the recognition that he needed to take responsibility for supporting himself is what led him back to higher education two-and-a-half years ago, and a fascination with personal finance inspired him to change his major from computer science to business management.<\/p>\n<p>He started with a part-time course load, and, as his confidence built, he eventually took on a full course load his last semester, all while working fulltime at New Balance, helping to maintain the security cameras for new balance properties throughout the world.<\/p>\n<p>Since he started at Northern Essex for the second time, he has earned straight A\u2019s and praise from professors from all disciplines, including his Chemistry professor, Sarah Courchesne.\u00a0 \u201cChris embodies the very nature of scholarly pursuit: the desire to understand how things work across multiple disciplines, a keen analytical mind, and an incessant drive to ask \u201cwhy?\u201d The questions he raises go right to the very heart of the matter, and he is never satisfied with pat, superficial answers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the fall, Montes will transfer to the accounting program at UMass Lowell as a junior.\u00a0 Eventually, he wants to become a corporate accountant, while pursuing his passion\u2014helping low income individuals with their personal finances\u2014in his free time.<\/p>\n<p>His mother, now in remission, will be at commencement to cheer him on, along with his 17-year old brother, Justice Rodriguez, a student at Whittier Vocational Technical School, and his 20-year old sister Tianalys Tejeda.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Community Colleges are all about second chances, and Chris Montes of Haverhill, who will graduate with honors and an Associate Degree in Business Transfer from Northern Essex Community College on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":27809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.2 - 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