Student Snapshot: Alycia Freeman

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

Alycia Freeman knew she was headed down the wrong path.

YouthQuest President Lynda Mann presents a
$500 scholarship to Alycia Freeman in June

Like so many of the at-risk teens we serve, Alycia was facing a combination problems at home and at school.

Her dad was doing drugs and her parents divorced when she was 13. She moved five times and skipped school often, spending most days caring for her ailing grandmother, who needed knee-replacement surgery.

“I then started to follow in my father’s footsteps,” Alycia recalled.

After a year of spiraling downward, she decided she had to change her life.

“I knew I had to be successful. I didn’t want to be a product of my environment,” she said.

Alycia enrolled in South Carolina Youth ChalleNGe Academy at the beginning of this year, determined to earn her GED. Instructors recognized her potential and selected her for the 3D ThinkLink training we provide at SCYCA.

Being in our 3D class helped her get re-engaged in education, Alycia wrote in a scholarship-winning essay about her experience. It also inspired her to study surgical technology at Savannah Technical College after completing the ChalleNGe program.

Alycia’s class visited 3D Systems headquarters in Rock Hill, South Carolina, during Vocational Orientation Day in April. She said it was eye-opening to discover how the 3D technology she learned about in class is used in the health care field.

“Being that I took care of my grandmother, I want to help others live a better life in every way possible,” Alycia explained. “3D printing encouraged me to become a surgical nurse. … I’m now motivated and determined to go to school and get into the medical field and actually complete it!”

Student Snapshot: Tyeshia Blackmond

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

“Back home, not too many people believed in me and I often heard what I could not or would not do, but this program has given me more power to prove them wrong,” Tyeshia Blackmond wrote in an essay about her 3D ThinkLink experience.

The youngest of nine children in her family, Tyeshia had quit going to school a couple of years ago and was “hanging out with the wrong crowd.” She enrolled in Washington DC’s Capital Guardian Youth ChalleNGe Academy last year in hopes of turning her life around.

Tyeshia said she’s grateful for the opportunity to participate in our 3D program at CGYCA.

“I am aware that everyone does not get a chance to be exposed to this type of technology,” she explained in her essay. “I know of people back home that do not have an idea of what 3D printing pertains to and can do.”

Being in 3D ThinkLink class brought out her creativity and built up her confidence.

“I would have never known I could be so passionate and it has been very empowering to develop such skills,” she said.

Tyeshia, who’s aiming for a career in social work or counseling, was chosen as one of two student speakers at CGYCA’s graduation ceremony in June, 2015. She went on to work as a summer intern at the DC Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. 

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