After a difficult start in life, Sturgeon Lake's Mike Scott is focussed on a doctorate, getting married and working full-time. Oh, and he does motivational speaking too. (Submitted/Mike Scott)

By Susan McNeil

Overcoming obstacles

Success in degrees: Sturgeon Lake man has lofty goals

Mar 7, 2024 | 11:00 AM

Mike Scott is a busy man with a sense of hustle that comes from needing a purpose in life.

As a young man with a traumatic experience growing up, Scott struggled with addictions and finding a good path in life but now has his sights set on getting a bachelor’s degree, followed by a master’s and then a doctorate. And that’s when he’s not doing some motivational speaking or commercial roofing full-time.

“Initially I just became sober and I was looking for outlets to stay on that path, and I started volunteering my time going to community events or just participating in small meetings or groups where we would talk about certain things that were happening within our communities and one of them that stood out to me was violence against women or I think it was violence in women’s lives,” Scott told paNOW.

Now aged 35, Scott is engaged to be married to his fiancée, Cory, next summer, an event that will be dry and away to prove that there can be fun in life without substances.

He is about a month away from finishing his Bachelor of Indigenous Studies and has already applied to the master’s program to finish his PhD to become a professor.

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He is also a full-time commercial roofer and a father.

When he was young and drowning in addictions, Scott was drawn to community meetings because of a mundane reality; he was hungry and they served food.

“I was still kind of struggling back then, so free food for me was like, yay. So anyways, the more that I sat there and listened the more I started to share little bits and parts about things that happened, you know, within my own family, like things that happened to my mother as a child and the things that I witnessed happened to her when I was smaller,” he said.

Watching his mother suffer because of violence from others left a strong impression on him and the fact the meetings discussed that issue also pulled him there.

From there he was invited to go to a conference in Ottawa, taking his first plane ride in his early 20s to get there. When one facilitator didn’t show up, he said yes after being asked to take over and from there was invited to a different community to tell his story.

That’s where he found his voice.

“Words can be very meaningful and helpful if you use them in the right way. It was life-changing. I would say to finally, say you know all the things that happened to me as a kid and to finally just let go of that pain, but in a good way,” he remembered.

As a youth, the only time he could overcome his shyness was when he was drunk or high, but now after years of being sober, Scott has travelled to somewhere between 400 and 500 communities and told his story to thousands of people.

Telling that story has made a difference and on at least one occasion, a young man who had shown no emotion during one of his presentations to the point Scott thought he just didn’t care, came up to him on a return trip and related how the presentation had turned his own life around.

If there is a trick to keeping his story fresh and relatable over time, it’s because the audience knows it as their own story as well.

“The trials and tribulations and the pain and all the hardship and everything that I’ve lived through isn’t just my story, it’s all of our stories in so many different ways,” he said.

“It’s either you’re real or you’re not, you know, and the audience is gonna be able to determine whether your story is, you know, something that they can put together like as a part of their life if that makes sense,” Scott said.

“You know the message isn’t to hurt people with your words. It’s just to share your story and to hopefully inspire somebody to not go down the same path that you did because there’s a lot of us who don’t make it from that life.”

Given his busy schedule, Scott said he doesn’t get back to Sturgeon Lake all that much except, it seems, for funerals.

He started his post-secondary education in 2016 and every year for the first three years, a close family member died, including sisters and an uncle.

“It was hard to focus, and I don’t want to make excuses. I don’t want to just say, this is why my grades are low and stuff like that, but ultimately it did affect my schooling and I was removed for – I think about a year – and I didn’t receive funding. So I took those years off and then I just kind of put it on the back burner and I was like, I don’t even want to go to school anymore.”

But that was not how he wanted to run his life so he returned to the classroom. It was focusing on the goal that has kept him going.

“If you don’t have purpose, then you know what are you living for? That’s where a lot of people fall into depression, fall back into addiction. They fall into this negative attitude that nothing is going the right way, and because they have no destination, they have no purpose for waking up in the mornings,” he said.

It makes him sad to know he is missing the community atmosphere and belonging, but for him, having goals is the path to a good life. He would like to pass that advice to others who might be struggling.

“No matter what comes into your path, you know there’s gonna be days where you feel like giving up and quitting. Those are the days where you have to keep pushing forward,” he said.

“And that’s what I want to tell the people is that you know days are coming that are going to be beautiful. But there is also the balance of life for days that are just not going to be so great. So keep pushing forward. Never give up on yourself. Set goals that are achievable. Keep dreaming and aspiring to achieve greatness be kind, be humble. And be helpful.”

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com