Alumni+Page

Alumni of SWHS--How did Every 15 Minutes or Broken Dreams affect you both in high school at the time or later in life?

"It has been 3 years since I graduated from high school, 4 years since I went through the Broken Dreams program and 5 years since I got my drivers’ license. Now you may be wondering what in the world I can tell you with so little time in the ‘real world,’ but after going through the Broken Dreams program I can tell you that I see things quite differently now.

As you probably know, high school is often a time of experimentation and feelings of invincibility; Broken Dreams questioned the experimentation in my life and put an end to my invincibility. No longer was it okay to have a few drinks and go home a couple of hours later. Broken Dreams taught me that if I drank it meant I was spending the night. It was no longer so difficult to tell a friend that they couldn’t drive home. I knew the possible outcome. Things had changed.

College is a time of freedom for many teenagers. Mom and Dad are no longer around to set a curfew or tell you which friends to stay away from. Yet I didn’t need this guidance—through Broken Dreams I had experienced the worst case scenario and did not want to go through it again.

As a resident assistant at college I hand out the local taxi cab numbers and suggest assigning designated drivers to encourage safe driving; I even had one girl come to me and say how much fun she had being the sober driver—she couldn’t believe how crazy drunk people acted. As a peer I offered to be a designated driver and took keys away from many of my friends—trust me, they got over their initial anger towards me.

Broken Dreams allowed me to experience the deadly consequences of drunk driving in a safe environment. It is the best experience I have ever had and I never want to do it again.

As my stories have shown, this program is not meant to end underage drinking—unfortunately that would be nearly impossible. It is meant to stop people from driving while under the influence. Now that’s where you all come in. Be a good role model for the younger generations. If you have a party with alcoholic beverages, take people’s keys at the door; if you go out to dinner and have a drink ask someone else to drive or wait an hour before leaving. Show these young drivers that you understand the consequences as well. And lastly, when you see a student carrying their keys on a lanyard like mine, thank them for spreading the word about drunk driving and making the roads a safer place, because it only takes one look at this lanyard and the whole program flashes back." )alumni of Broken Dreams, Spring 06 --speech given at Community showing of Broken Dreams,Spring 10