Unexpected Turn Leads to New Opportunities
A botched tonsillectomy unexpectedly changed Jordan Damon’s feelings about a college education.
The medical emergency caused him to miss three weeks of his junior year in high school and a deadline to apply for an internship at Johns Hopkins University.
Luckily for Jordan, though, his biology teacher at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute Jeffrey Reeser offered to help make the late connection. Soon, Jordan earned a place working with Dr. Michael Betenbaugh in his chemical and biomolecular engineering lab at Johns Hopkins University. The second chance, the exciting research collaboration, and the mentorship opportunity all motivated Jordan’s path forward, despite having no immediate family members with a college degree.
“That whole experience was just so eye opening,” said Jordan, now a B.A. in Psychology student at The University of Baltimore. “I really come from humble beginnings. I come from west Baltimore. Most of my neighborhood is boarded up now because of urban decay. My great-grandparents had to endure sharecropping. So, it's like I'm in this whole other realm of existence of the same Baltimore. Something like that, during my formative years of high school, really shaped how I viewed higher education.”
From a young age, Jordan felt and followed a pull toward learning. He tried the Sudoku puzzles his grandmother gave him. He won his fifth-grade spelling bee. And he read constantly.
He is a proud Poly graduate who fondly speaks of his fellow students and the ivy league schools they went to. Jordan chose a top college for chemistry, unaware his life would again unexpectedly shift.
“I had my first bipolar episode in my first semester,” he said. “I had a seizure from complications with that disorder, and then I was devastated that I had to leave for the sake of my health. I worked really hard all those years to get into that school, but I was like, I’m not going to give up.”
Rethinking His Future
Jordan was hospitalized in psychiatric impatient care after the episode. He had to reconsider his next steps.
“Through the few years before I enrolled in UBalt, I did not see a path forward because of the inability to feel like I can function in an academic setting again, especially being a Black man with a more severe psychiatric mental illness,” he said. “I didn't feel like there were a lot of places available for me to thrive and to enact those long-term goals that I cultivated in high school.”
Jordan first enrolled in classes again at Community College of Baltimore County where psychology quickly became one of his favorite classes. The subject mirrored newfound interests, including mental health advocacy and volunteer work with National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI) Metro Baltimore.
When he graduated from CCBC, he transferred to the University of Baltimore.
“I would say the attention to individualistic student inclusion is the UBalt culture,” Jordan said. “I feel like with this school, every student has a story, no student is a number. The University offers more than just your classroom education. For me, that has included being in the Ethics Bowl, working in the Writing Center, participating in international conferences because of the Writing Center, being an orientation leader, on the Student Events Board as an event manager, and numerous other activities. The University of Baltimore has afforded me these opportunities because of what they see in me.”
Making His Mark
At UBalt, he declared psychology as his major.
“I really want to get into the research aspect of it,” Jordan said. “So, it's kind of full circle. Mike [Betenbaugh] and Jeff [Reeser, from Poly] really pulled that out of me. They kind of saw that within me.”
Jordan is on pace to complete his undergraduate degree this fall.
He took his time navigating his way toward graduation, welcoming new opportunities even if it meant occasionally lightening his course load. His time as a tutor in UBalt’s Writing Center opened his eyes to new research opportunities and inspired his next steps.
“It’s not really because it's like a piece of paper, or even because I'll be the first one,” he said of earning his degree. “I just really, really want to teach.”
Jordan envisions himself with a Ph.D., conducting his own research and inviting future generations of students into his work like his mentor had done for him.
Figuring that out brought him to where his is now, on the brink of his graduation, with a clear destination ahead.
“I'm the type of person, I always want to leave something better than when I found it. I want a Ph.D. so I can give back to the world through education.”
Going First is an ongoing series highlighting the students, alumni, faculty and staff part of the UBalt community who were the first in their families to earn a bachelor's degree. Read more first-generation stories.