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With his easy-going manner and charm, it's hard to see Darren Davison as a social outcast.
Granted, this industrial manufacturing engineer from Epson is wearing a neon green T-shirt under a red Hawaiian shirt…but it is Saturday, and he's opening the door of his own business venture, Merlin's Starship in southeast Portland. He sells the popular "Magic: The Gathering" sci-fi fantasy cards and other games.
Davison is among thousands of students who got
a jump-start from the Open Meadow Learning Center in Portland. He attended in 1984 after being expelled from Portland's Wilson High School.
"I was an anomaly and a screw off," he says. "I skipped school a lot. I wasn't nerdy enough, or popular enough
to fit anywhere. I had no peer group. It was horrible."
Davison also recalls a passionate dislike for math.
"Hey, who invited the alphabet to algebra?" jokes the screw-off who later got hooked on math at Oregon State University, having no problem with statistics or the ring and wave-field theory behind black holes in the
universe.
Davison remembers Carole Smith for challenging him. "She stuck with me by showing a new way of looking at math."
After being expelled, going to OMLC was a relief to Davison. "I knew what was expected, but I was also terrorized by the stereotype of alternative schools. It caused me to think — they're no different than I am. We were all there for the same reason."
Davison got back into the swing and returned to Wilson High. The happy ending should start here, but it doesn't.
In eight months, Davison started skipping again and dropped out completely. "It was another big vicious circle. So they suspended me— how's that punishment for someone who skips school?"
But this time, he had the skills and confidence to get his GED at a community college in time to catch up to his graduating class and enter OSU that fall. He's 21 credits shy of an engineering degree, but not for long. Epson is paying his tuition.
How would he change today's public high school? "If I were president, I'd get rid of it," he says. "Seriously, it's been said hundreds of times, but the kids you have to pay attention to aren't the ones in the straight lines. Some of us don't fit in. Some of us tend to wreck the neat, tidy schedules teachers want to keep. Teachers need to understand the reason they're here is to help kids, not to stand at the front of the room."
His advice to students: Get over the stigma of being different and don't worry about sticking out.
Today Davison looks forward to world travel, getting his engineering degree, and running his own Magic shop. He plays the game as a math problem, runs tournaments, and personally owns 2,000 cards, which he claims "borders on sickness."
He also collects Hawaiian shirts…anything to fit in.
—Shannon Priem
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This document's URL is: Home | Up & Coming | Programs & Projects: Northwest Education | People | Products & Publications | Topics © 2001 Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
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