My name is Danny Holmes, but everyone calls me DJ. I grew up in a small town called McCormick, South Carolina. This town is so small that it only has two stop lights. I grew up with no brothers or sisters, just my parents and a few of my cousins that would stay close around me and my family. There would never be anything to do when I got older. Most people would say there was nothing to do in McCormick, but do drugs, get in trouble, or have kids. I was the type of kid that wanted to prove everyone wrong about that because I really loved my little town and I felt that there was more to it than just doing those things. With me getting accepted into Clemson University, I saw that as a way to get out and prove to everyone that looked me in my eyes and told me that I would be like the rest and never make it out. They would even say to me that I will be back in a year or two because I couldn’t make it in a place that’s that much bigger than McCormick. I came here with my head held high even though I would hear every day that Clemson was too hard. Even after hearing that I still knew that I would do great and the only people that would believe in me would be my family. After my first semester didn’t go the way that I had wanted it to go I ended up on academic probation. After I got the letter in the mail over the break saying what had happened I would start to question myself on if I really made the right decision to come to college or if I should of took the scholarship for football at a smaller institution. This portfolio would go on to help me answer these questions that I would ask myself at this time. I honestly needed answers to these because before I got here I had never failed a class, not even made a D, and I was at a low point in my life. I saw this as a way that I could get the answers to these questions and also help to build my confidence back to the way it was when I first stepped foot onto this campus. This is something that I felt that I could get more out of than just being an assignment that was due at the end of the year for a final grade. I would see people complaining about how long it would take and how they did not want to have any part of this assignment, but I thought that they would only feel this way because they didn’t link it to something that has a bigger meaning than just a letter grade that goes onto our transcript. When I first heard that we were even doing this assignment I got excited because I already knew exactly what this was gone help me with. This portfolio really helps me understand that this isn’t the end of things. It helped me figure out that I will prove those negative people wrong back at home.