After sixteen years of waiting tables and being a restaurant manager, Treasure Ford was ready for something new.

Encourage by her husband and loved ones, five and a half years ago, at 28, she fell in love with academics again.

“About three weeks into my first semester before I decided I was going to go all the way. I fell in love with it, I loved my teachers. I fell in love with learning again,” Ford said.

Two years later, she graduated from Tarrant County College Ford believed her only option was the University of Texas at Arlington [UTA] because of it’s proximity to her home.  

“I thought that UTA was going to be my only option because I live in Hurst and i just wanted to be in a good driving distance,” Ford said.

To her dismay, UTA was not exactly what she was looking for. 

“I went to UTA and it did not go well,” Ford said. “I met with an advisor and basically they just weren’t very friendly. I thought ‘oh, well I’m going to be a number in the machine, cranking out students.’”

She later encountered Texas Wesleyan University on a television commercial.

“I saw the ad on T.V. and I thought I just had never really heard of Wesleyan before,” Ford said.

She immediately contacted Jeff Green, a Wesleyan transfer counselor, and made arrangements to talk to about potentially attending Wesleyan.

“It was amazing because he met with me for an hour, me and my friend were both asking questions. He told us why he came to Wesleyan and why he loves it here and I was blown away,” Ford said.

If Wesleyan had not been so personable, Ford may have chosen UTA.

“I got lured in by the commercial and then they blew me away,” Ford said.

Being a non traditional student has allowed her to value her college education, her experience at Wesleyan, and the Bachelor’s degree in marketing she will be obtaining this year.

“It’s been so amazing, nothing I could have appreciated when I was 18. I wouldn’t have been president of Beta Gamma Sigma [international honor society serving business programs],” Ford said, “I wouldn’t have been on the dean’s list every semester.”

All of her academic success,would not have been possible without her two main supports, Bryan Ford, her husband, and Tabatha Martinez, her sister.

“I couldn’t have done it without them. There were plenty of times where I thought i was going to lose my mind, mostly during algebra, and then when I was taking 18 hours,” Ford said. “But, they were always there to ground me and to tell me that I was awesome, that they were proud of me, and they new I could do it.

Without their encouragement and support, she would never have initiated her academic journey or learned from her professors at Wesleyan that passion and devotion are essential for success.

This lesson has inspired her to search for a job nonprofits after graduation.

“I think that in nonprofit that’s [passion and devotion] especially important because you want people who, it’s not about making money, it’s about making people care,” Ford said. “If you care and your passionate then I mean, you just can’t really go wrong.”