For recent Align graduate Kraig Johnson, past experiences forged resilience and a new path
Wed 04.21.21 / Kaitlyn Budion
For recent Align graduate Kraig Johnson, past experiences forged resilience and a new path
Wed 04.21.21 / Kaitlyn Budion
Wed 04.21.21 / Kaitlyn Budion
Wed 04.21.21 / Kaitlyn Budion
For recent Align graduate Kraig Johnson, past experiences forged resilience and a new path
Wed 04.21.21 / Kaitlyn Budion
For recent Align graduate Kraig Johnson, past experiences forged resilience and a new path
Wed 04.21.21 / Kaitlyn Budion
Wed 04.21.21 / Kaitlyn Budion
Wed 04.21.21 / Kaitlyn Budion
Kraig Johnson sat in his contracts class, and felt stuck. It was his first semester of law school, and it wasn’t what he had hoped for. Sure, he was doing fine in his classes, but Johnson was bored. He had an undergraduate degree in religion and philosophy, but didn’t know what to do with it to find a full-time job he enjoyed.
So he sat in class on his laptop, and searched ‘what to do with a religion and philosophy degree.’ As he scrolled through the results, he came across a website for Khoury College’s Align program — a master’s in computer science program designed for people without a background in the field.
It was a lightbulb moment. And sitting there, in his 100-person lecture, Johnson made a decision. This was what he had been looking for all along. He stood up, classmates staring, and marched out in the middle of class, down to the Registrar’s office, and withdrew from law school.
When Kraig Johnson got his degree from Align in the mail, he cried. It felt like a pivotal moment, a concrete accomplishment to show how he had changed his life. “I had something that I could look up at on the wall and say I did it,” he said. Photo provided by Kraig Johnson, MSCS ’20.He hadn’t gotten in to Align yet, he hadn’t even applied, but Johnson had made his decision and was determined to see it through.
That determination and faith in his abilities has served Johnson throughout his life, as he faced down personal and professional challenges. Not only was he admitted to the Align program in January 2019, he graduated in December 2020 and currently works as a full stack java developer at Mindex. Although he had always been interested in computers and science, struggles during his youth, including homelessness and the death of his mother, led to academic challenges.
Diving into computer science
The start of the Align program was a challenge for Johnson — and his peers — as he tackled a completely new subject matter. The program begins with “bridge” classes, which teach students the basics of computer science before they transition into the full master’s classes. The classes tackled complex subjects, and Johnson hadn’t taken a math class since he took AP statistics in high school.
“Those first few classes I was scared; I didn’t know what I was getting myself into,” Johnson said.
Outside of academics, Johnson was living in New Hampshire with his wife, making the three-hour trip by bus to Boston for classes. He had never regularly been in a large city like Boston before, so adapting to the city was a new obstacle on top of his commute.
Early on, Johnson connected with one of his professors, Laney Strange.
“She was the coolest person I think I’ve ever met in my life,” Johnson said. “She was so empowering and she had a passion for bringing in people that were somewhat like me, helping people who that had that door closed opened again.”
When Johnson’s midterm grades weren’t what he was hoping for, it was Strange who reassured him and said he could do it — he just had to keep pushing. Her belief made all the difference.
Once he progressed in the program, Johnson was determined to help other students as well. He became a TA, and loved the opportunity to be a teacher and a mentor.
“The best thing about it for me was that I got to pour back into the people that were in my same position, that thought that they weren’t going to make it or be able to handle it,” Johnson said. “Not only was it the idea of being a teacher but it was also being a mentor, and I really thrived in that way.”
Once he completed the bridge courses and started the master’s classes, Johnson said it was like the training wheels came off. He and his peers in the Align program were now in classes with students in the traditional, “direct entry” master’s program and had to keep up with the rigorous coursework.
“You don’t know what to expect, people are coming in with way more knowledge than you have,” Johnson said. “But I’ll tell you, it was actually harder in the bridge than it was in the master’s. And the reason for that, I was used to being the dumbest person in the room and knowing that I had to do 10-15 extra hours on something than everybody else did. Because of that awareness, I thrived in it.”
Johnson relied on his work ethic, and his faith that this was the right path for him. And it paid off. As he continued in his classes, he grew more confident with the material and his grades reflected that — always improving.
Childhood dreams, on hold
As he was thriving in the Khoury College graduate program, in hindsight it seemed clear that computer science was the perfect fit for Johnson — as a kid he was “obsessed” with computers and loved online games like World of Warcraft, and when he was in undergrad he built his own computer. For some reason, it had never seemed like a real option that was available to him.
“I loved playing online and learning how to do stuff,” Johnson said. “If you’d seen me around I was always a little computer nerd and wanted to do these things, but it was kind of a closed door for me because I didn’t know if I was going to pass the SAT let alone study it in college.”
He struggled in high school, mainly as a result of inconsistent attendance. He didn’t have a stable home and bounced around, staying with friends and family, staying at a homeless shelter, and even sleeping on people’s porches.
Sometimes he would stay with his mom, but she worked a lot and struggled to manage her schizophrenia. His father also struggled with depression and alcoholism, and even when he was doing well he worked often and was unable to be present as a parental figure for Johnson.
“Coming through that I didn’t have much to look up to,” Johnson said. “Growing up in that situation, the push was to continue to move forward.”
All of this meant that Johnson missed a lot of class, which impacted his grades, especially in math, where it was difficult to miss one day and stay caught up, let alone the weeks that Johnson was missing.
The road to resilience
During a crisis moment in adolescence, the parents of a best friend offered to adopt him, and Johnson and his dad — after a serious conversation — agreed. Shortly after, his mom was diagnosed with stage four leukemia and died.
The same year, Johnson recalls failing his trigonometry final in school with a 48, and he ended up failing the class. It’s the only class he’s ever failed. But the tragedy pushed Johnson to improve in school and focus on his future, to make a life that his mom had never seen and make her proud.
Since he had failed trigonometry, he still had to take another math class to graduate. Instead of taking the same class again, he pushed himself and took AP statistics — technically a harder class.
Not only did he pass the class, he passed the AP exam, got college credit for it — and graduated high school. In a strange way, he said, the experience prepared him for the Align program.
With a full tuition scholarship in hand from a local foundation, Johnson headed to Roberts Wesleyan College where he studied religion and philosophy. College gave Johnson the opportunity he had always craved — to be a normal teenager and student.
“I just wanted to be able to have what everybody else has, and when I got to college I had that,” Johnson said. “No matter how much bad stuff happened in my past and my childhood and the trauma — all the stuff I’ll be working through for years — aside from that I was a normal person that was on the same footing as everybody.”
In between classes and extracurriculars, he met the woman who would become his wife, Rebekah.
It was his freshman year of school, and she had a crush on one of Johnson’s friends, and she was cleaning up the common room in an effort to impress him. The friend didn’t take notice, but Johnson did. The two married in 2018, and while Johnson was in the Align program she studied for her MSW degree.
At last, thriving
Reflecting on his childhood and journey through high school and college, Johnson said one of his biggest challenges was realizing, in the moment, that he had people who wanted to support him and see him succeed. If he could advise people in a similar situation, he would remind them that they have people looking out for them.
To Johnson, all of the work he put into his studies and Align was about breaking the cycle of poverty for his family, and putting himself in a position to do better for his future children. And while the push for him was to make his mother proud, he knows that she was on his side all along.
“The funny thing is looking back on that as an adult now is that if I had asked her at any point she would have said yes,” Johnson said. “So I think that the biggest part of that is not only is my mom now proud of me, but I am too.”
In the present day, Johnson is a full stack engineer at Mindex. He does a lot in Python for testing and works on paycheck software. In his free time he still tinkers with computers, plays Dungeons & Dragons with his friends, and, in the pandemic, tries to spend more time outside. His wife completed her degree, too, and now works as a clinical social worker at Veterans Affairs, helping veterans find long-term housing.
When Johnson got his degree from Align in the mail, he cried. It felt like a pivotal moment, a concrete accomplishment to show how he had changed his life, giving him and his wife a solid foundation for their future.
“I had something that I could look up at on the wall and say I did it,” Johnson said. “It’s the one thing in my life that I am the most proud of. There’s all these things that people say ‘Wow you’ve really been through so much you’re so strong.’ Well sure, but surviving isn’t thriving — this is the big switch for me for that. This is where I said that I’ve done something for myself — that I have officially made it.”
Kraig Johnson sat in his contracts class, and felt stuck. It was his first semester of law school, and it wasn’t what he had hoped for. Sure, he was doing fine in his classes, but Johnson was bored. He had an undergraduate degree in religion and philosophy, but didn’t know what to do with it to find a full-time job he enjoyed.
So he sat in class on his laptop, and searched ‘what to do with a religion and philosophy degree.’ As he scrolled through the results, he came across a website for Khoury College’s Align program — a master’s in computer science program designed for people without a background in the field.
It was a lightbulb moment. And sitting there, in his 100-person lecture, Johnson made a decision. This was what he had been looking for all along. He stood up, classmates staring, and marched out in the middle of class, down to the Registrar’s office, and withdrew from law school.
When Kraig Johnson got his degree from Align in the mail, he cried. It felt like a pivotal moment, a concrete accomplishment to show how he had changed his life. “I had something that I could look up at on the wall and say I did it,” he said. Photo provided by Kraig Johnson, MSCS ’20.He hadn’t gotten in to Align yet, he hadn’t even applied, but Johnson had made his decision and was determined to see it through.
That determination and faith in his abilities has served Johnson throughout his life, as he faced down personal and professional challenges. Not only was he admitted to the Align program in January 2019, he graduated in December 2020 and currently works as a full stack java developer at Mindex. Although he had always been interested in computers and science, struggles during his youth, including homelessness and the death of his mother, led to academic challenges.
Diving into computer science
The start of the Align program was a challenge for Johnson — and his peers — as he tackled a completely new subject matter. The program begins with “bridge” classes, which teach students the basics of computer science before they transition into the full master’s classes. The classes tackled complex subjects, and Johnson hadn’t taken a math class since he took AP statistics in high school.
“Those first few classes I was scared; I didn’t know what I was getting myself into,” Johnson said.
Outside of academics, Johnson was living in New Hampshire with his wife, making the three-hour trip by bus to Boston for classes. He had never regularly been in a large city like Boston before, so adapting to the city was a new obstacle on top of his commute.
Early on, Johnson connected with one of his professors, Laney Strange.
“She was the coolest person I think I’ve ever met in my life,” Johnson said. “She was so empowering and she had a passion for bringing in people that were somewhat like me, helping people who that had that door closed opened again.”
When Johnson’s midterm grades weren’t what he was hoping for, it was Strange who reassured him and said he could do it — he just had to keep pushing. Her belief made all the difference.
Once he progressed in the program, Johnson was determined to help other students as well. He became a TA, and loved the opportunity to be a teacher and a mentor.
“The best thing about it for me was that I got to pour back into the people that were in my same position, that thought that they weren’t going to make it or be able to handle it,” Johnson said. “Not only was it the idea of being a teacher but it was also being a mentor, and I really thrived in that way.”
Once he completed the bridge courses and started the master’s classes, Johnson said it was like the training wheels came off. He and his peers in the Align program were now in classes with students in the traditional, “direct entry” master’s program and had to keep up with the rigorous coursework.
“You don’t know what to expect, people are coming in with way more knowledge than you have,” Johnson said. “But I’ll tell you, it was actually harder in the bridge than it was in the master’s. And the reason for that, I was used to being the dumbest person in the room and knowing that I had to do 10-15 extra hours on something than everybody else did. Because of that awareness, I thrived in it.”
Johnson relied on his work ethic, and his faith that this was the right path for him. And it paid off. As he continued in his classes, he grew more confident with the material and his grades reflected that — always improving.
Childhood dreams, on hold
As he was thriving in the Khoury College graduate program, in hindsight it seemed clear that computer science was the perfect fit for Johnson — as a kid he was “obsessed” with computers and loved online games like World of Warcraft, and when he was in undergrad he built his own computer. For some reason, it had never seemed like a real option that was available to him.
“I loved playing online and learning how to do stuff,” Johnson said. “If you’d seen me around I was always a little computer nerd and wanted to do these things, but it was kind of a closed door for me because I didn’t know if I was going to pass the SAT let alone study it in college.”
He struggled in high school, mainly as a result of inconsistent attendance. He didn’t have a stable home and bounced around, staying with friends and family, staying at a homeless shelter, and even sleeping on people’s porches.
Sometimes he would stay with his mom, but she worked a lot and struggled to manage her schizophrenia. His father also struggled with depression and alcoholism, and even when he was doing well he worked often and was unable to be present as a parental figure for Johnson.
“Coming through that I didn’t have much to look up to,” Johnson said. “Growing up in that situation, the push was to continue to move forward.”
All of this meant that Johnson missed a lot of class, which impacted his grades, especially in math, where it was difficult to miss one day and stay caught up, let alone the weeks that Johnson was missing.
The road to resilience
During a crisis moment in adolescence, the parents of a best friend offered to adopt him, and Johnson and his dad — after a serious conversation — agreed. Shortly after, his mom was diagnosed with stage four leukemia and died.
The same year, Johnson recalls failing his trigonometry final in school with a 48, and he ended up failing the class. It’s the only class he’s ever failed. But the tragedy pushed Johnson to improve in school and focus on his future, to make a life that his mom had never seen and make her proud.
Since he had failed trigonometry, he still had to take another math class to graduate. Instead of taking the same class again, he pushed himself and took AP statistics — technically a harder class.
Not only did he pass the class, he passed the AP exam, got college credit for it — and graduated high school. In a strange way, he said, the experience prepared him for the Align program.
With a full tuition scholarship in hand from a local foundation, Johnson headed to Roberts Wesleyan College where he studied religion and philosophy. College gave Johnson the opportunity he had always craved — to be a normal teenager and student.
“I just wanted to be able to have what everybody else has, and when I got to college I had that,” Johnson said. “No matter how much bad stuff happened in my past and my childhood and the trauma — all the stuff I’ll be working through for years — aside from that I was a normal person that was on the same footing as everybody.”
In between classes and extracurriculars, he met the woman who would become his wife, Rebekah.
It was his freshman year of school, and she had a crush on one of Johnson’s friends, and she was cleaning up the common room in an effort to impress him. The friend didn’t take notice, but Johnson did. The two married in 2018, and while Johnson was in the Align program she studied for her MSW degree.
At last, thriving
Reflecting on his childhood and journey through high school and college, Johnson said one of his biggest challenges was realizing, in the moment, that he had people who wanted to support him and see him succeed. If he could advise people in a similar situation, he would remind them that they have people looking out for them.
To Johnson, all of the work he put into his studies and Align was about breaking the cycle of poverty for his family, and putting himself in a position to do better for his future children. And while the push for him was to make his mother proud, he knows that she was on his side all along.
“The funny thing is looking back on that as an adult now is that if I had asked her at any point she would have said yes,” Johnson said. “So I think that the biggest part of that is not only is my mom now proud of me, but I am too.”
In the present day, Johnson is a full stack engineer at Mindex. He does a lot in Python for testing and works on paycheck software. In his free time he still tinkers with computers, plays Dungeons & Dragons with his friends, and, in the pandemic, tries to spend more time outside. His wife completed her degree, too, and now works as a clinical social worker at Veterans Affairs, helping veterans find long-term housing.
When Johnson got his degree from Align in the mail, he cried. It felt like a pivotal moment, a concrete accomplishment to show how he had changed his life, giving him and his wife a solid foundation for their future.
“I had something that I could look up at on the wall and say I did it,” Johnson said. “It’s the one thing in my life that I am the most proud of. There’s all these things that people say ‘Wow you’ve really been through so much you’re so strong.’ Well sure, but surviving isn’t thriving — this is the big switch for me for that. This is where I said that I’ve done something for myself — that I have officially made it.”
Kraig Johnson sat in his contracts class, and felt stuck. It was his first semester of law school, and it wasn’t what he had hoped for. Sure, he was doing fine in his classes, but Johnson was bored. He had an undergraduate degree in religion and philosophy, but didn’t know what to do with it to find a full-time job he enjoyed.
So he sat in class on his laptop, and searched ‘what to do with a religion and philosophy degree.’ As he scrolled through the results, he came across a website for Khoury College’s Align program — a master’s in computer science program designed for people without a background in the field.
It was a lightbulb moment. And sitting there, in his 100-person lecture, Johnson made a decision. This was what he had been looking for all along. He stood up, classmates staring, and marched out in the middle of class, down to the Registrar’s office, and withdrew from law school.
When Kraig Johnson got his degree from Align in the mail, he cried. It felt like a pivotal moment, a concrete accomplishment to show how he had changed his life. “I had something that I could look up at on the wall and say I did it,” he said. Photo provided by Kraig Johnson, MSCS ’20.He hadn’t gotten in to Align yet, he hadn’t even applied, but Johnson had made his decision and was determined to see it through.
That determination and faith in his abilities has served Johnson throughout his life, as he faced down personal and professional challenges. Not only was he admitted to the Align program in January 2019, he graduated in December 2020 and currently works as a full stack java developer at Mindex. Although he had always been interested in computers and science, struggles during his youth, including homelessness and the death of his mother, led to academic challenges.
Diving into computer science
The start of the Align program was a challenge for Johnson — and his peers — as he tackled a completely new subject matter. The program begins with “bridge” classes, which teach students the basics of computer science before they transition into the full master’s classes. The classes tackled complex subjects, and Johnson hadn’t taken a math class since he took AP statistics in high school.
“Those first few classes I was scared; I didn’t know what I was getting myself into,” Johnson said.
Outside of academics, Johnson was living in New Hampshire with his wife, making the three-hour trip by bus to Boston for classes. He had never regularly been in a large city like Boston before, so adapting to the city was a new obstacle on top of his commute.
Early on, Johnson connected with one of his professors, Laney Strange.
“She was the coolest person I think I’ve ever met in my life,” Johnson said. “She was so empowering and she had a passion for bringing in people that were somewhat like me, helping people who that had that door closed opened again.”
When Johnson’s midterm grades weren’t what he was hoping for, it was Strange who reassured him and said he could do it — he just had to keep pushing. Her belief made all the difference.
Once he progressed in the program, Johnson was determined to help other students as well. He became a TA, and loved the opportunity to be a teacher and a mentor.
“The best thing about it for me was that I got to pour back into the people that were in my same position, that thought that they weren’t going to make it or be able to handle it,” Johnson said. “Not only was it the idea of being a teacher but it was also being a mentor, and I really thrived in that way.”
Once he completed the bridge courses and started the master’s classes, Johnson said it was like the training wheels came off. He and his peers in the Align program were now in classes with students in the traditional, “direct entry” master’s program and had to keep up with the rigorous coursework.
“You don’t know what to expect, people are coming in with way more knowledge than you have,” Johnson said. “But I’ll tell you, it was actually harder in the bridge than it was in the master’s. And the reason for that, I was used to being the dumbest person in the room and knowing that I had to do 10-15 extra hours on something than everybody else did. Because of that awareness, I thrived in it.”
Johnson relied on his work ethic, and his faith that this was the right path for him. And it paid off. As he continued in his classes, he grew more confident with the material and his grades reflected that — always improving.
Childhood dreams, on hold
As he was thriving in the Khoury College graduate program, in hindsight it seemed clear that computer science was the perfect fit for Johnson — as a kid he was “obsessed” with computers and loved online games like World of Warcraft, and when he was in undergrad he built his own computer. For some reason, it had never seemed like a real option that was available to him.
“I loved playing online and learning how to do stuff,” Johnson said. “If you’d seen me around I was always a little computer nerd and wanted to do these things, but it was kind of a closed door for me because I didn’t know if I was going to pass the SAT let alone study it in college.”
He struggled in high school, mainly as a result of inconsistent attendance. He didn’t have a stable home and bounced around, staying with friends and family, staying at a homeless shelter, and even sleeping on people’s porches.
Sometimes he would stay with his mom, but she worked a lot and struggled to manage her schizophrenia. His father also struggled with depression and alcoholism, and even when he was doing well he worked often and was unable to be present as a parental figure for Johnson.
“Coming through that I didn’t have much to look up to,” Johnson said. “Growing up in that situation, the push was to continue to move forward.”
All of this meant that Johnson missed a lot of class, which impacted his grades, especially in math, where it was difficult to miss one day and stay caught up, let alone the weeks that Johnson was missing.
The road to resilience
During a crisis moment in adolescence, the parents of a best friend offered to adopt him, and Johnson and his dad — after a serious conversation — agreed. Shortly after, his mom was diagnosed with stage four leukemia and died.
The same year, Johnson recalls failing his trigonometry final in school with a 48, and he ended up failing the class. It’s the only class he’s ever failed. But the tragedy pushed Johnson to improve in school and focus on his future, to make a life that his mom had never seen and make her proud.
Since he had failed trigonometry, he still had to take another math class to graduate. Instead of taking the same class again, he pushed himself and took AP statistics — technically a harder class.
Not only did he pass the class, he passed the AP exam, got college credit for it — and graduated high school. In a strange way, he said, the experience prepared him for the Align program.
With a full tuition scholarship in hand from a local foundation, Johnson headed to Roberts Wesleyan College where he studied religion and philosophy. College gave Johnson the opportunity he had always craved — to be a normal teenager and student.
“I just wanted to be able to have what everybody else has, and when I got to college I had that,” Johnson said. “No matter how much bad stuff happened in my past and my childhood and the trauma — all the stuff I’ll be working through for years — aside from that I was a normal person that was on the same footing as everybody.”
In between classes and extracurriculars, he met the woman who would become his wife, Rebekah.
It was his freshman year of school, and she had a crush on one of Johnson’s friends, and she was cleaning up the common room in an effort to impress him. The friend didn’t take notice, but Johnson did. The two married in 2018, and while Johnson was in the Align program she studied for her MSW degree.
At last, thriving
Reflecting on his childhood and journey through high school and college, Johnson said one of his biggest challenges was realizing, in the moment, that he had people who wanted to support him and see him succeed. If he could advise people in a similar situation, he would remind them that they have people looking out for them.
To Johnson, all of the work he put into his studies and Align was about breaking the cycle of poverty for his family, and putting himself in a position to do better for his future children. And while the push for him was to make his mother proud, he knows that she was on his side all along.
“The funny thing is looking back on that as an adult now is that if I had asked her at any point she would have said yes,” Johnson said. “So I think that the biggest part of that is not only is my mom now proud of me, but I am too.”
In the present day, Johnson is a full stack engineer at Mindex. He does a lot in Python for testing and works on paycheck software. In his free time he still tinkers with computers, plays Dungeons & Dragons with his friends, and, in the pandemic, tries to spend more time outside. His wife completed her degree, too, and now works as a clinical social worker at Veterans Affairs, helping veterans find long-term housing.
When Johnson got his degree from Align in the mail, he cried. It felt like a pivotal moment, a concrete accomplishment to show how he had changed his life, giving him and his wife a solid foundation for their future.
“I had something that I could look up at on the wall and say I did it,” Johnson said. “It’s the one thing in my life that I am the most proud of. There’s all these things that people say ‘Wow you’ve really been through so much you’re so strong.’ Well sure, but surviving isn’t thriving — this is the big switch for me for that. This is where I said that I’ve done something for myself — that I have officially made it.”
Kraig Johnson sat in his contracts class, and felt stuck. It was his first semester of law school, and it wasn’t what he had hoped for. Sure, he was doing fine in his classes, but Johnson was bored. He had an undergraduate degree in religion and philosophy, but didn’t know what to do with it to find a full-time job he enjoyed.
So he sat in class on his laptop, and searched ‘what to do with a religion and philosophy degree.’ As he scrolled through the results, he came across a website for Khoury College’s Align program — a master’s in computer science program designed for people without a background in the field.
It was a lightbulb moment. And sitting there, in his 100-person lecture, Johnson made a decision. This was what he had been looking for all along. He stood up, classmates staring, and marched out in the middle of class, down to the Registrar’s office, and withdrew from law school.
When Kraig Johnson got his degree from Align in the mail, he cried. It felt like a pivotal moment, a concrete accomplishment to show how he had changed his life. “I had something that I could look up at on the wall and say I did it,” he said. Photo provided by Kraig Johnson, MSCS ’20.He hadn’t gotten in to Align yet, he hadn’t even applied, but Johnson had made his decision and was determined to see it through.
That determination and faith in his abilities has served Johnson throughout his life, as he faced down personal and professional challenges. Not only was he admitted to the Align program in January 2019, he graduated in December 2020 and currently works as a full stack java developer at Mindex. Although he had always been interested in computers and science, struggles during his youth, including homelessness and the death of his mother, led to academic challenges.
Diving into computer science
The start of the Align program was a challenge for Johnson — and his peers — as he tackled a completely new subject matter. The program begins with “bridge” classes, which teach students the basics of computer science before they transition into the full master’s classes. The classes tackled complex subjects, and Johnson hadn’t taken a math class since he took AP statistics in high school.
“Those first few classes I was scared; I didn’t know what I was getting myself into,” Johnson said.
Outside of academics, Johnson was living in New Hampshire with his wife, making the three-hour trip by bus to Boston for classes. He had never regularly been in a large city like Boston before, so adapting to the city was a new obstacle on top of his commute.
Early on, Johnson connected with one of his professors, Laney Strange.
“She was the coolest person I think I’ve ever met in my life,” Johnson said. “She was so empowering and she had a passion for bringing in people that were somewhat like me, helping people who that had that door closed opened again.”
When Johnson’s midterm grades weren’t what he was hoping for, it was Strange who reassured him and said he could do it — he just had to keep pushing. Her belief made all the difference.
Once he progressed in the program, Johnson was determined to help other students as well. He became a TA, and loved the opportunity to be a teacher and a mentor.
“The best thing about it for me was that I got to pour back into the people that were in my same position, that thought that they weren’t going to make it or be able to handle it,” Johnson said. “Not only was it the idea of being a teacher but it was also being a mentor, and I really thrived in that way.”
Once he completed the bridge courses and started the master’s classes, Johnson said it was like the training wheels came off. He and his peers in the Align program were now in classes with students in the traditional, “direct entry” master’s program and had to keep up with the rigorous coursework.
“You don’t know what to expect, people are coming in with way more knowledge than you have,” Johnson said. “But I’ll tell you, it was actually harder in the bridge than it was in the master’s. And the reason for that, I was used to being the dumbest person in the room and knowing that I had to do 10-15 extra hours on something than everybody else did. Because of that awareness, I thrived in it.”
Johnson relied on his work ethic, and his faith that this was the right path for him. And it paid off. As he continued in his classes, he grew more confident with the material and his grades reflected that — always improving.
Childhood dreams, on hold
As he was thriving in the Khoury College graduate program, in hindsight it seemed clear that computer science was the perfect fit for Johnson — as a kid he was “obsessed” with computers and loved online games like World of Warcraft, and when he was in undergrad he built his own computer. For some reason, it had never seemed like a real option that was available to him.
“I loved playing online and learning how to do stuff,” Johnson said. “If you’d seen me around I was always a little computer nerd and wanted to do these things, but it was kind of a closed door for me because I didn’t know if I was going to pass the SAT let alone study it in college.”
He struggled in high school, mainly as a result of inconsistent attendance. He didn’t have a stable home and bounced around, staying with friends and family, staying at a homeless shelter, and even sleeping on people’s porches.
Sometimes he would stay with his mom, but she worked a lot and struggled to manage her schizophrenia. His father also struggled with depression and alcoholism, and even when he was doing well he worked often and was unable to be present as a parental figure for Johnson.
“Coming through that I didn’t have much to look up to,” Johnson said. “Growing up in that situation, the push was to continue to move forward.”
All of this meant that Johnson missed a lot of class, which impacted his grades, especially in math, where it was difficult to miss one day and stay caught up, let alone the weeks that Johnson was missing.
The road to resilience
During a crisis moment in adolescence, the parents of a best friend offered to adopt him, and Johnson and his dad — after a serious conversation — agreed. Shortly after, his mom was diagnosed with stage four leukemia and died.
The same year, Johnson recalls failing his trigonometry final in school with a 48, and he ended up failing the class. It’s the only class he’s ever failed. But the tragedy pushed Johnson to improve in school and focus on his future, to make a life that his mom had never seen and make her proud.
Since he had failed trigonometry, he still had to take another math class to graduate. Instead of taking the same class again, he pushed himself and took AP statistics — technically a harder class.
Not only did he pass the class, he passed the AP exam, got college credit for it — and graduated high school. In a strange way, he said, the experience prepared him for the Align program.
With a full tuition scholarship in hand from a local foundation, Johnson headed to Roberts Wesleyan College where he studied religion and philosophy. College gave Johnson the opportunity he had always craved — to be a normal teenager and student.
“I just wanted to be able to have what everybody else has, and when I got to college I had that,” Johnson said. “No matter how much bad stuff happened in my past and my childhood and the trauma — all the stuff I’ll be working through for years — aside from that I was a normal person that was on the same footing as everybody.”
In between classes and extracurriculars, he met the woman who would become his wife, Rebekah.
It was his freshman year of school, and she had a crush on one of Johnson’s friends, and she was cleaning up the common room in an effort to impress him. The friend didn’t take notice, but Johnson did. The two married in 2018, and while Johnson was in the Align program she studied for her MSW degree.
At last, thriving
Reflecting on his childhood and journey through high school and college, Johnson said one of his biggest challenges was realizing, in the moment, that he had people who wanted to support him and see him succeed. If he could advise people in a similar situation, he would remind them that they have people looking out for them.
To Johnson, all of the work he put into his studies and Align was about breaking the cycle of poverty for his family, and putting himself in a position to do better for his future children. And while the push for him was to make his mother proud, he knows that she was on his side all along.
“The funny thing is looking back on that as an adult now is that if I had asked her at any point she would have said yes,” Johnson said. “So I think that the biggest part of that is not only is my mom now proud of me, but I am too.”
In the present day, Johnson is a full stack engineer at Mindex. He does a lot in Python for testing and works on paycheck software. In his free time he still tinkers with computers, plays Dungeons & Dragons with his friends, and, in the pandemic, tries to spend more time outside. His wife completed her degree, too, and now works as a clinical social worker at Veterans Affairs, helping veterans find long-term housing.
When Johnson got his degree from Align in the mail, he cried. It felt like a pivotal moment, a concrete accomplishment to show how he had changed his life, giving him and his wife a solid foundation for their future.
“I had something that I could look up at on the wall and say I did it,” Johnson said. “It’s the one thing in my life that I am the most proud of. There’s all these things that people say ‘Wow you’ve really been through so much you’re so strong.’ Well sure, but surviving isn’t thriving — this is the big switch for me for that. This is where I said that I’ve done something for myself — that I have officially made it.”
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