He thinks. About the store manager job he might accept—or not. About the bachelor’s degree he’s halfway through. About the 1967 Impala in the driveway, half-built like a paused memory. About what it means to be 21 and at a crossroads.
And then, he gets up.
Every morning begins like this: stillness, reflection, and the quiet reckoning of responsibility. For Christopher Michael Adkins, a human resources management major at Texas A&M University–Central Texas, the choices aren’t small. They never have been. Since the age of 12, when his father died unexpectedly, Adkins has been trying to grow into a world that demanded he move faster than most.
“I had to become the man of my household at a very young age,” he says. “So, I had to be more mature than most of my peers for a long time now.”
He was helping his father paint the kitchen when it happened.
“He fell and hit his head on the granite counter… said he was okay and went to bed that night but never woke up.”
The next morning, it was Christopher who found him, unresponsive. He called 911. A week later, after being taken off a ventilator at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Temple, his father passed away. June 22, 2016.
“He was a great dad. The kind that was more of your best friend, coach, and teacher all in one,” Adkins says. “For all my siblings. But a man—I didn’t know him on that level... Now I know how many hardships he faced. He was an alcoholic, had multiple spinal surgeries. My parents were divorced a year before he passed. He may not have been the best husband, but he was a phenomenal father figure.”
In the years that followed, responsibility became a second skin. Adkins poured himself into sports—football from age 4 to 17, then powerlifting. A torn labrum in his junior year ended his football career prematurely, but by the time he was healed, he was back to competing in meets.
Despite stereotypes about athletes, Adkins graduated from Shoemaker High School at the top of his class.
“Fortunately, I am much smarter than I first appear,” he says. “Though I played sports and focused a lot on my physical prowess, I still graduated from my high school as the valedictorian.”
People often see his boots and build and assume he’s mean—but in reality, he’s approachable, soft-spoken, and driven more by empathy than ego.
Adkins followed three close friends to Texas State University in San Marcos.
“The same three friends I hung out with every day, played sports with, and practically became brothers with—all decided to go to San Marcos to pursue higher education. So, I went with them.”
In San Marcos, he also found love. He got engaged to his girlfriend. But the relationship unraveled.
“My fiancée broke things off claiming I was better off without them. And never spoke to me again,” he says. “It’s what made me move back home. I lost trust in relationships after that. It took over a year to even have the confidence to approach a potential partner.”
The return to Killeen was about heartbreak, yes. But also, about healing. And about opportunity.
“After that day, I realized how important it was to be hurt,” he says. “It makes you enjoy the good things all that much more.”
Back in Killeen, he re-enrolled at A&M–Central Texas, looking to complete his degree in human resource management.
“I want to be a training and development specialist,” he says. “There’s two reasons. First, I want to be a reason people are actually there to make a career and not just a job. Second, I care deeply about the industry I’m already in. So, of course, I want to help people who share that same interest be the best version of themselves.”
Adkins works as an assistant manager at Cavender’s Boot City. It’s a role that surprised even him.
“Even though I grew up with family that owns ranches, rides horses, and cowboys, I never had any interest in it,” he says. “From middle school up until my senior year of high school, I wore expensive sneakers and graphic T-shirts from Hot Topic.”
One day, he saw a hiring sign at Cavender’s. That was four years ago.
“I fell in love with the fashion, the lifestyle, the culture. And with my job, I’m able to spread that love to others and help them find things that suit them—not what they think it should be.”Now he’s facing another fork in the road.
“If my life had a chapter title now, it would be: ‘Next Stop,’” he says. “I’m at a point where there are many possible outcomes. Be it with my relationship, my career, or academics. I’m trying my best to keep the outcome I’d like to have. But I know it will all fall one way or another, and I must come to accept what happens.”
“There’s a 50% chance of me becoming a store manager,” he says. “I hesitate to take it. Be it for my schooling, so I can finish my degree without more stress, or because with my personal relationship, I know my partner needs me right now. But turning it down might hurt my career.”
Five years from now, Adkins hopes to be managing his second store, a bachelor’s degree on the wall—and maybe even a master’s. He hopes to have a home. A family. And finally, enough time to finish restoring the 1967 Impala, his father’s dream car, now sitting quietly in his driveway.
He wakes up at 5 a.m., every day. Stares at the ceiling. Sits in silence.
“I just think,” he says. “About how life is.”
Then he gets up. For work. For school. For the life he’s still trying to build.
“If the 10-year-old version of me met me today,” he says, “I don’t know if he’d be proud. I didn’t become an astrobiologist. But I’m doing something that makes me happy. That’s something.”
What does he hope people remember about him?
“I hope they remember my flaws,” he says. “What made me the way I am. So they can understand why—or what—I become later in life.”
He doesn’t pretend to have it all figured out. But each morning, he still gets up.
And he thinks.