Transcript
What inspires you from WFSU Public Media? Here's this week's Voices That Inspire. I'm Timothy Onley, a junior at Florida State University majoring criminology. Main RMF High School was a community-ship partner school in Orlando, Florida. We're known as one of the worst schools in Orange County. We have a lot of behavior issues, a lot of fights, a lot of violence, and also in our communities. There's not a lot of people that we can look up to, a lot of dope dealers, homicides, violence acts, surrounded by our school. Once we get out of school, we're right into it, so it's not like a skate route. To me, Evans was my safe haven because that's somewhere I didn't have to worry about being shot at or being pursued to self-drugs and different things like that. There's four pillars of where you have your school, you have your school district, and you have a non-profit and you have a medical team. Everything that we needed was on campus. I actually appreciated the mental health service that our community school provided because I was brought up in the stigma system of what goes on in this household, stays on in this household, and what was going on in my personal household was driving me to the point of suicidal. So my motto is, stars cannot shine without darkness, and I had to internalize that and realize that my dark moments was important to me. It helped groom me into the man that I am today. Through that dark path, I would still be able to shine because I already found my light. I know my passion. I know what I was placed on this world to be. What's given me the most inspiration is telling my story. I overcame a lot of hard challenges, and through the help of others, I was able to overcome those challenges and still be successful and not let my situation determine my future. I'm Timothy Only, a junior at Florida State University majoring criminology. You're listening to voices that inspire.