Student Snapshot: Adonis Gonzales

This is the first in an occasional series about outstanding young people who have completed our 3D ThinkLink class.

NASA had the Mercury 7 – the first class of American astronauts. YouthQuest has the Original 8 – our first 3D ThinkLink class.

One member of that groundbreaking group is Adonis Gonzales. We met him early in 2013 when he was a 17-year-old Cadet at Maryland’s Freestate ChallNGe Academy.   

He told us he always wanted to become a master electrician. But he had given up on high school, staying home “watching TV or sleeping” instead of going to class. Eventually, he said, the principal told Adonis he’d missed so many days that he couldn’t come back to school. After working a series of brief odd jobs, Adonis realized he needed more education in order to provide “a better future” for himself, his girlfriend and their baby daughter.

Adonis enrolled in Freestate, where instructors recognized his potential and selected him for our 3D ThinkLink pilot project.

“When I first went into the class, I saw the computers and printer and thought that it was going to be too hard,” he said in an interview with the Fairfax Connection. “But then the instructor said that if we could imagine something, then we could create it. The first thing I made was a heart with my daughter’s name on it.”

“Your mind can go farther than you think,” Adonis told us after his class took Vocational Orientation tours of a 3D Systems production facility and Prototype Productions, Inc., in Northern Virginia.

Adonis has been in an electrician apprenticeship program for more than two years and says he uses the problem solving skills he learned in our class to work through obstacles on the job.

“It helps me be creative with my mind and materials around me,” he said about his 3D ThinkLink experience.

Adonis also took our “failure is not final” message to heart. He didn’t pass his GED exam the first time he took it – or the second time. But he didn’t give up and he learned from his mistakes until, on the third try, Adonis earned his GED.

The Original 8 - Freestate ChalleNGe Academy, June 11, 2013