How One Student Juggles Work, College And A Pandemic

Joshua Knight commutes on the Orange Line to his job at the Charlestown YMCA. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

For a few days each week, Josh Knight goes to class on the subway. He has to: he’s on his way to work at the Charlestown YMCA. But he’s also a first-year student in the honors program at Framingham State University.

It means that even as he boards an Orange Line car bound for North Station, he might be tuned in, via Zoom, to a seminar discussion of education reform or moral reasoning, often trying to be heard in class over the rattle.

Knight works, he says, to time his comments to the “lulls,” like when the train stops moving. “I try to shoot my point in, then stop. But this thing is ridiculous,” he laughs.

As he cranes forward to listen, you can’t help but notice the class ring — with a glinting blue stone — on his right hand. He wears it every day.

“It took me to [age] 23 to graduate from high school,” Knight says. “But it’s one of my proudest accomplishments. Because I didn’t go through what everyone else went through to graduate high school.”

He was home-schooled, taking virtual classes at Lighthouse Christian Academy — so remote learning isn’t new to him. Neither is juggling a host of competing priorities and a lot of unpredictability.

But you might wonder: why this year? Why not postpone college and focus on work and home, like thousands of other students did in Massachusetts alone? Why battle the MBTA for his participation grade?

Read the rest of this story at WBUR’s website.