When Temple resident Kino Hickey, 50, reflects on his educational journey, he is quick to admit that his first experience as a university student was filled with challenges that eventually led him to giving up on ever earning his undergraduate degree.
After four semesters of trying, he says, it was one obstacle after another, and, he admits, it was partly his own pride and headstrong nature that prevented him from continuing. He was struggling with lectures, but doing well in clinicals, and still, his 1.9 grade point average, he thought, was all the proof he needed that a degree was beyond his ability.
Back then, he says, he pushed the memory of it as far from his mind as possible. He had a job at the Olin E. Teague Veterans’ Medical Center in Temple, working in sterile processing. He lived a simple, honest, and happy life, a devoted husband to Michelle, 44, and father to their two children, Amir and Ashle’a.
Inexplicably, one day, friend, Ivan Kirk, gave him a videotape of motivational speaker, Eric Thomas. No pretext or explanation accompanied the gift. And Hickey watched it, he said, every day for a year. Every day. Not long after, and quite out of the blue, he received an email from his wife, sweetly suggesting that he think about going back to college for his degree.
A decade had passed since he had given up on that dream. And it is not like the memory of it – to him, a failure – was something he was eager to return to. His immediate reaction was a reflexive no. At first.
But so were the words of the motivational video that his friend had given him. He had listened to it by then hundreds of times. It reminded him that the secret to doing the impossible was being brave enough to want it more than he wanted to breathe.
For a decade, he had been harboring self-doubt. And the dream of a degree and a future it would bring him closer to had long since been laid to rest. But, as he would soon learn, that dream was not dead. It was simply laying silently dormant.
In 2014, Hickey began taking classes at Central Texas College. Composition. College Algebra. History. Social Sciences. Required courses to transfer to the A&M-Central Texas social work program. His GPA this time was a reflection of his effort – a near perfect 3.98 – double what it had been all those years ago.
By 2018, he was getting ready to graduate and receive bachelor’s degree in social work with a near-perfect GPA. Still working full-time, and before he had even put on his cap and gown and crossed the stage at commencement, he enrolled in the Diana G. Garland Graduate School of Social Work at Baylor where, in 2019, he would be recognized as their Outstanding Graduate Student with another near perfect 3.99 GPA, and a master’s degree in social work.
No longer a sterile processing tech, Hickey is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) and program coordinator. And just as defeat sows doubt, triumph reaps tenacity. Not finished quite yet, he says. He has new goals.
He has always had an athlete’s mindset. At 5’7, he played point guard in pickup games back when he was a soldier. He made up for inches with an indefatigable work ethic. The same refusal to be outworked on the court now refused to be outworked in the classroom.
Hickey is still not finished. He is a doctoral student at the University of Kentucky, his heart set on both the DSW. and someday, he says, practicing with professional athletes confronted with mental health and addiction.
But while his own willingness to reach for his first degree – despite past failure – is what brought him all of the successes he has known, he is hesitant to seize the credit for himself. Instead, he says, he owes his achievements to Central Texas College and A&M-Central Texas.
If not for that, he says, nothing else would have been possible. Not Baylor and his MSW. Not his career as a social worker. Not his pursuit of a doctorate. And not the promise of whatever comes next.
Warriors are made this way, he believes. Each of us has the capacity to achieve their dreams. Reach beyond self-imposed limits fed by doubt. Commit to it. Want it more than breath itself. Accept all the love and encouragement a heart and mind can hold. Rely on friends and family. Folded altogether, he knows, a magnificent future is forged.