When Matthew Kirkendall was young, his father made the mistake of leaving him alone in a room with a screwdriver within reach. “When he came back, the DVR was taken apart,” Kirkendall remembers.
That was the beginning. Soon, Kirkendall was taking apart anything he could get his hands on, trying to understand what was happening inside. At one point, his grandmother gave him a spare laptop. “I destroyed it. I downloaded a billion viruses while trying to find out how the internet worked.”
His curiosity only grew from there. But when he arrived at Onondaga Community College after graduating from Baldwinsville High School in 2023, he wasn't immediately sure where that curiosity would lead him, or whether college was even where he wanted to be. “It took me about a year of mishaps in terms of grades and attendance to fully figure out what I wanted to do. My first semester was crash and burn.”
Instead of giving up, Kirkendall began asking himself some important questions. “Why am I here? What do I want to do? Do I want to be here?” Eventually, he had his answer. “I decided I wanted to be here.”
He also began to recognize and appreciate what attracted him to computers in the first place. “I liked the mental challenges, I liked the problem-solving, I liked programming. I felt confident in my choice.”
Today, Kirkendall is pursuing a degree in Computer Science and plans to graduate from OCC in May 2027. Along the way, he has found plenty of opportunities to test his interests outside the classroom. Through work-study, he spent time at the OCC Help Desk, helping students with everyday issues. “It was interesting, but mostly things like helping people print or open documents. I really wanted to do the harder problems, like tearing apart a computer and figuring out why it wasn't working.”
That opportunity came this summer when Kirkendall landed an IT internship at Auburn Community Hospital. He found the internship by doing something simple: showing up and asking questions. At a career fair hosted by OCC's School of Health, Kirkendall walked around the entire event looking for opportunities in information technology (IT). “I bugged everyone and asked, ‘IT?’” His persistence paid off when Auburn Community Hospital told him they had an IT internship opportunity.
During the summer, Kirkendall worked with the hospital's IT Department, providing software and hardware technical support and taking on two major projects: installing wireless network access points and upgrading the hospital's Windows computers, including replacing computers that were too old to upgrade. He's continuing to work there every Friday during the fall semester. The experience did more than add to his résumé. It gave him a clearer picture of where his education could take him. “It’s really reignited my drive in my studying and coursework. It’s serving as a visualization of what I am working towards and has helped me realize what I want to work towards with my career path in the future.”
Kirkendall credits several people at OCC with helping him get to this point, including Student Success Navigator Rich Goodell, Career and Transfer Specialist Julie Ende, Professor Kennedy, and his classmates. Now, with his direction clearer and his confidence growing, Kirkendall is keeping his options open for what comes after OCC. He says he will decide next May whether to enter the workforce, work while continuing his education, or transfer directly to another college.
