He spent five and a half years at Florida Atlantic University. And they weren’t what you would call easy.

During Thomas Ashby’s time at FAU, he lost two family members, lived in four different residences and had six different jobs. But in December 2006, Ashby graduated and left all of that behind.

Ashby, 24, has lived in Palm Beach County his entire life. His high school career was split between John I. Leonard High School in Lake Worth and William T. Dwyer High School in Palm Beach Gardens. In those four years, he learned more than just algebra, more than just world history, more than just the average student.

In high school, Ashby had to deal with the divorce of his parents, his mother in a losing battle with type II diabetes and his father moving to North Carolina – never to be seen again. By the time Ashby was a high school senior, he had become his mother’s primary caregiver – a role normally assumed by the parent. He became the man of the house – all while trying to pass biology and other exams.

But in August 2001, Ashby started a new chapter in his life. He was a freshman at FAU and was ready to leave the woes of his past behind and start anew. Ashby chose a major in secondary education – chemistry with aspirations of becoming a high school chemistry teacher.

By the end of his first semester, Ashby had already starting volunteering for his first organization, Today & Beyond Wellness. And by December 2002, Ashby was a paid employee of Today & Beyond, located on the second floor of the Breezeway, across from Student Health.

At Today & Beyond, Ashby learned many things, like physical, emotional, mental and sexual health and how to deal with Student Government.

Most importantly, though, he learned how to be a college student.

With the guidance of Rosemary Dunbar, wellness director, Ashby was on track to college success. Today & Beyond provided Ashby with a “safety net,” as Dunbar puts it.

“Tommy never really got the chance to grow up properly in high school,” says Dunbar. “Sometimes we had to get tough with him to help him grow and mature.”

It helped, as Ashby wound up working at Today & Beyond for over three years.

But tragedy struck during his sophomore year. On April 22, 2003, his mother Diane died. She had been battling diabetes and its complications for a long time. While certainly painful, the loss of his mother meant she was finally at peace, which was comforting to Ashby.

He had been the primary caregiver for his mother until she went into a nursing home when Ashby graduated from high school. Her illness was taking a toll on his schoolwork; she died two days before finals.

Between making sure she was receiving proper medical care, that her bills were being paid and having to deal with the overall emotional stress, he struggled as a full-time student. Even with all the chaos in his life, Ashby withdrew from only one course.

“With all the obstacles I had to overcome in every semester with her being sick and finally dying, I always tried to make my education come first, which is what she would have wanted for me,” he says.

Ashby never let his woes stop him from moving forward with his life, which included joining another club. At the end of spring semester 2004, Ashby joined Lambda United, the Gay/Straight Alliance. He was immediately named media director, putting him in charge of the club’s Web site, e-mail list and message board.

By then, Ashby was holding two jobs at Today & Beyond. He also worked as a peer educator, who gives classroom presentations about the various types of health, volunteering for events in the Breezeway and completing various office duties.

In addition, Ashby was the Wellness office’s liaison to Student Government and other student organizations. Essentially, he handled the budget for Today & Beyond – if Dunbar wanted to spend money, she would go to him to make sure it was available.

Things were starting to look promising again for Ashby, that is until the beginning of the Fall 2004 semester.

He and a couple of other Lambda United club members were coming back to FAU after shopping at Target to get supplies for the next evening’s Fall Social. While waiting in the left turn lane to turn into FAU, Ashby’s car was rear-ended, resulting in a four-car accident that totaled his seven-month-old car.

Fortunately, no one was injured except for a case of whiplash. But Ashby had to deal with his car insurer and find a way to get another car, while still trying to manage his studies and his two jobs.

If that wasn’t enough, Ashby also had to cope with his sick grandmother Agnes, who had recently been moved from an assisted living facility to a hospital in Boynton Beach. Ashby had been exercising power of attorney and had been the health care surrogate for his grandmother since late 2003.

With her son, Ashby’s father, somewhere in North Carolina, one of her daughters living in Tampa and the other daughter busy with her life, Ashby was the only one “available” to care for the 91-year-old woman.

On Jan. 31, 2005, his grandmother succumbed to old age. He found her after she had died in her sleep. It was the second family death with which Ashby had to deal in less than two years. This hit Ashby really hard, but it freed him to focus on other things in his life.

“The passing of his mother and grandmother was sad,” Dunbar notes. “But they also gave him permission to live.”

Shortly after his grandmother’s death, Ashby decided to change his major to just chemistry with a minor in business.

“I know a lot of professions have politics” Ashby says, “but I just didn’t like the direction politics in education was going.” Ashby had seen some close friends in the education system get badly mistreated. Ashby decided on the minor in business because he didn’t see himself working in a lab for the next 30 years.

The rest of Ashby’s college career included becoming a shift leader at Blockbuster Video, leaving Today & Beyond and working as an office assistant in the education building, becoming the president of Lambda United before club activity slowly came to an end and having to load up on courses to fulfill his degree requirements in chemistry and business. He had to pay his way through college by holding multiple jobs, two and three at a time, along with the help of student loans and grants.

On Dec. 8, 2006, Thomas Ashby graduated from FAU, with a B.A. in chemistry and a minor in business administration. After enduring more than five years of stress, frustration and tragedy, this chapter of Ashby’s life was finished.

After graduating, Ashby spent over two months being what’s referred to as ‘FAU’- Finished And Unemployed. He now works for an advertising firm in Fort Lauderdale as an advertising coordinator. It is an entry-level position, but Ashby is happy to be employed in the “real world.”

Dressed in what he calls his “monkey suit” – dark red button-down shirt, black dress pants, hair glued in a spiked position – the new advertising coordinator is ready to go to work to start the first day of the rest of his life.

“We always carry our past with us,” says Dunbar. “We are a product of our past and we choose whether that product is positive or negative.”