2021 Success Stories: Jason Rhodes
The irony of Jason Rhodes’ educational journey at the Community College of Rhode Island is losing his vision ultimately helped him see his future much clearer.
A Class of 2021 graduate with an associate degree in Business, the 35-year-old Chepachet, RI, native is transferring to Bryant University in the fall to pursue a career in accounting, continuing a remarkable turnaround that began six years ago with an incident that changed his life forever.
After graduating high school in 2004, Rhodes briefly attended CCRI, but, as he recalled, “things happened.” He left college and entered the workforce, spending more than a decade as a Microsoft consultant until 2015 when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor “about the size of three golf balls” that resulted in five brain surgeries, more than 30 radiation treatments, and eye surgery, leaving him legally blind.
The first sign of trouble occurred while Rhodes was driving home from a charity golf tournament. He suddenly had trouble seeing and became disoriented. When he called his mother, a nurse, she immediately knew something wasn’t right.
“Call it a mother’s instinct,” she said. “He just wasn’t acting like himself.”
Once Rhodes underwent a CT scan of the brain, doctors at Rhode Island Hospital diagnosed the issue and immediately went to work to remove the tumor. Everything happened so quickly.
The first step after surgery, Rhodes said, was “figuring out how to adjust” to what felt like an entirely new way of living. He had only 33 percent vision in his left eye, and 50 percent in his right.
“It’s like looking through a small hole in a box,” he said.
He also lost his peripheral vision and suffered from intermittent double vision. His ophthalmologist told him driving was out of the question.
Over the next three years, Rhodes began to adjust to his new normal and learned how to live with his disability. He had always wanted to go back to school, so he re-enrolled at CCRI in the fall of 2018 and began taking general education courses in search of a new career path.
“With everything that happened to me, I realized there’s only so much time,” he said. “Having the opportunity and recognizing it is the first step, and that’s sometimes the hardest part. Then you just go after it.”
After taking a personal finance course, Rhodes discovered a new passion and segued into accounting. With help from CCRI’s Disability Services for Students department – particularly Coordinator Helen Ducharme from the Flanagan Campus, whom he credits with keeping him on track – Rhodes thrived in his new setting, graduating this past spring with a 4.0 GPA, a far cry from his academic performance in high school. Rhodes’ incredible journey continues next fall.
“Everything I needed, CCRI provided with no questions asked,” he said. “I had always wanted to come back to school, get a different degree, or change my career path. I found that CCRI was the perfect place to discover that. You find that mold you're trying to create and just grow from there.
“With all my life experiences, I just had a different mindset this time, a different mental fortitude. I would have never been able to get into Bryant without CCRI. I like to joke that since I've lost my peripheral vision, I have a lot of focus. It’s been quite a journey.”