per aspera ad inferi

So, he enrolls in the local community college and takes a little bit of everything. Just to get his feet wet. He figured he’d end up majoring in auto tech or going the trade route — but it’s the social sciences that surprisingly grab him.

His "Intro to Sociology" class has a service learning portion that requires him to volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club. At first, he’s not happy (hadn’t he just gotten past babysitting when he left Hawkins High?), but he quickly warms up to the idea when he spends time with the kids. They’re from rough backgrounds, like him. Some are in foster care and some live with relatives or are surfing couches. But all of them flock to Eddie, because he’s cool, he’s fun, he’s goofy, and he doesn’t treat them like they’re broken.

And after talking with one of his professors about other classes that might allow him to keep working with kids, his professor suggests majoring in social work. He's skeptical. Him? A social worker? He never pictured himself as a 9-5, dockers and button ups kind of guy. But his professor tells him to just try it, that he'd be great at it, and how rewarding it is.

So, Eddie surprises himself by graduating on time with an undergraduate degree in social work. He's even more surprised when he's offered a graduate assistantship to finish his master's -- something he'll need to get any sort of good paying job in the field.

Before he knows it, he's a licensed social worker in the state of Indiana. He immediately finds a job working in the local school system with kids that come to school with unwashed clothes, empty bellies, and days of sleep clouding their eyes. They're kids that remind him a little too much of himself from years ago.

This time, he's the adult staring at the scrawny kid who'd been caught stealing money from a teacher's desk so that he could buy his first meal in two days. But instead of belittling the kid, or embarrassing him, or looking down at him with that mixed glare of pity and disgust that Eddie had been so privy to in his younger days, he's reaching into the cabinet next to them in his office to grab a grocery sack full of various snacks and non-perishables. He's handing it to the boy in front of him as he tells him about an equally scrawny kid who used to steal whatever he could stuff into his jacket from Melvald's, whose dad taught him to hotwire instead of how to catch a ball, whose future could have been drastically different had his uncle not pushed him to be the man he is today.

When the kid leaves a half hour later with a trace of an upturned smile and a sweetly awkward fist bump, Eddie remembers why he does this. As he starts the paperwork for food assistance and begins dialing the boy's number to check in the with the family, to offer to help in any way he can, he thinks of himself at 20 -- a three time senior and social pariah who sold drugs to Hawkin's finest to help keep the trailer warm -- and his eyes threaten mist.

Going to college and working in social work was by far the hardest thing he'd ever done, but he'd done it. And he'd work the rest of his career to be the person he'd needed as a kid. To make all of this generation's 'Eddie Munsons' realize they aren't defined by their situation.