Skylar Peyton

As a senior in high school, graduating is the most exciting chapter throughout the entire year. However, sometimes people forget to mention that it’s not always peaches and cherry blossoms after you step off that stage. If you happen to know my story you can say “AMEN.” For some senior graduates, they have huge college plans and their whole life set out for themselves. For others, they know a job and hard work is coming next for them and they do not get to experience the college filled life. Or, you could fall into another category where you thought you had it all planned out, and well it turns out, God just had other plans for you.

Skylar finished high school with a scholarship to play soccer at South Mountain Community College when she graduated high school. She knew eventually she wanted to get into nursing school, but right away, she was going to focus on soccer. She then discovered that maybe playing college soccer wasn’t for her and she wanted to experience the college life at Colorado State University. Fast forward another couple years and things changed again. Even though maybe her location of colleges kept changing, she had one thing constant… Her love for coffee and her job at Starbucks. What many don’t know is Starbucks is more than just a super strong coffee shop. It’s a community for their employees. Starbucks likes to treat their employees really well! Which is why they provide a scholarship opportunity to the local state school. How cool is that? You can get both a decent working job that will keep you awake on the job and a “free” college degree while working there!

I remember the day Skylar came to me to tell me she wanted to go back to school online through Starbuck’s scholarship program to ASU Online. However, she wasn’t quite sure what to actually get her degree in. I told her how through all my hardship, I managed to finish my degree online as a Disciplinary Studies Major at Liberty University. You get to create your degree to suite your needs to exactly what you want it to be. And that’s exactly what Skylar did. Even though her college career was not the easy, get it done in 4 years kind of fashion, she still continued to work hard and pursue her dream of being a college graduate! Now, she is finally seeing all of her hard work paying off! She just got promoted to Operations Manager and second in charge at her current workplace and she is killing it! I could not be more proud of all of her hard earned work and for continuing to pursue her dreams and passions even when life threw crazy obstacles in her way. Skylar, it was such an honor to be able to show you how beautiful and truly amazing you are during your Senior Photo Session last week. I cannot tell you enough how proud I am of you and excited to see where God continues to take you in life!!