Christopher Cilento is, in his own words, “not your typical eighteen to twenty-two year old student.” He is a non-traditional student, who first attended Houghton College in 1991. Yet financial difficulties allowed him to attend for only one year, and he found himself on the long road to his return to Houghton this semester.
Cilento described the years following his initial year at Houghton as a “downward trend.” He entered the military, seeking something “more practical” than his interest in art, and served for seventeen years. He was sent on three combat deployments to Afghanistan. Yet upon leaving the military, found himself unemployed for six months, falling into depression as he at last resigned himself to a job he hated.
A “one person intervention” brought Cilento out of this rut. “He gave me the swift kick in the rear I needed, “ Cilento said, by reminding him that there was no reason to stay where he was and that his year at Houghton had been his best. After consideration and prayer, he both applied and was accepted within a week. “It blew my mind,” Cilento said, and after that, “doors opened.”
“God has provided every time something came up,” Cilento explained. He began to prepare for the trip to Houghton without having enough gas money, but his needs were met just hours before he left. His concerns about bad weather were allayed when “the clouds parted” as he exited onto Route 19. He noted that he had left Sunday instead of Monday as he had originally intended. Monday brought three inches of snow. “I never would’ve gotten the truck up the hill,” Cilento said, shaking his head. He looks back at his trip to Houghton as “miracle after miracle.”
Having at last arrived at Houghton, Cilento is pursuing a major in applied design and visual communications. His “dream of dreams” is to work for National Geographic as a photojournalist, but Cilento would be happy working for an outdoor or travel magazine or teaching photography. Having taken a few online courses before going to Houghton, he is happy to be attending the college. “It was not what I wanted to do. I was doing what I thought I should do,” Cilento explained.
Being a non-traditional student, however, is not without its struggles. Cilento mentioned “getting back in the groove of studying and taking notes” as his greatest difficulty upon returning to college, as he essentially must “relearn” being a student.
Yet the environment, for him, is pleasantly familiar. “The whole atmosphere is pretty much the same,” he explained. “Very friendly, very open.” During his 1991 year at Houghton, he “felt accepted,” and that is “one of the things that hasn’t changed.” He added that, surprisingly, one of the things had not changed is that “they still have chalkboards here!” Cilento also discovered Professor Ted Murphy, who had taught him in 1991, was his professor once again, and was “the same as he was back then.”
Cilento laughingly noted a few changes in Houghton since 1991. “The trees are a lot bigger,” he said. “The style of clothing has changed dramatically.” The college experience itself is also a bit different, as Cilento is much more conscious of responsibility. “I used to live in the CC basement,” he said. “Now I go home and do homework.” He explained that his first year at Houghton, “if I didn’t like the class I’d stare out the window, doodle in a notebook.” Now, he is “more motivated to pay attention in class.”
Cilento recently submitted a cartoon to the Drawing Board, portraying himself as the “prodigal son.” “That’s what it felt like,” he said. He is certain he is in the right place. “I’m where I want to be and happier than I have been in a very, very long time. If someone asks if I am happy, I can say yes.”