I’m sure Yankton, SD, has a lot to offer, but as far as I’m concerned, a visit to the federal prison in town was all that I needed.
Visiting Noah was quite the experience; much more than I could have even imagined. For those of you who didn’t know, I entered college with the goal of reaching prison. Not quite under the same circumstances as Noah but as a prison psychologist.
Prison as a whole, and the people that live within them are fascinating to me. Visiting Noah was in some sense a dream come true.
From the moment we entered until the moment we left, I engaged with the entire experience. I couldn’t help but wonder what all the people within the prison walls did in order to get to where they were.
Morgan wanted us to write a reaction to the weekend visiting Noah, and I truly don’t know where to start.
We, as a company, have prided ourselves on honesty, and I honestly didn’t have any expectations going in and thought it was more so for Noah than myself. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. It was truly an honor to meet Noah and hear his story. He was an open book. Willing to answer any questions that I had for him. Initially, it was pretty dry, and PG; questions were limited to what do you eat, what do you wear, what time do you wake up, etc. But as we got more comfortable, the conversation quickly took a turn into what using was like and what the process of dealing drugs looked like. His story fascinated me. I couldn’t believe that I was looking someone straight in the face that had smoked meth, heroin, and would have considered himself a crack addict. To some this may be a turn off but for me it made me more engaged.
One would assume that Noah would be a vegetable or complete waste of life after using all these hardcore drugs, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, aside from his prison uniform, I had a hard time separating him from the rest of us with how well he was functioning and how normal his life seemed. Not to say his life seemed easy in prison, but I was so encouraged and happy that he was maintaining a somewhat normal lifestyle inside prison.
After a lot of studying in college about incarceration and the failure to adapt to normal life after prison, people like Noah are encouraging to me that the system is putting things in place for prisoners to succeed.
I’m very excited for Noah to join our team. He’s already brainstorming ideas and new implementations for us when he gets out.
If you can take one thing away from this post, take this: Noah is a prime example of taking a terrible situation and capitalizing on it for the better.
In an era where things are so easily accessible, and the will to work for things seems to be more and more absent, this was very refreshing to see. I know that I certainly will never forget the experience I had visiting him and makes me even more excited for him to get out and join the squad.
