DACC’s Jokerst keeps his eyes on the prize

Alexan­der Jokerst

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

Alexan­der Jokerst’s senior year is going pretty well.

“There are a lot of changes I’ve made, and a lot still to come,” the Delaware Area Career Cen­ter senior said. He is tran­si­tion­ing from work­ing to attain his Eagle Scout award, which involved build­ing a chim­ney swift tower at a New Albany pre­serve, to work­ing as assis­tant Scout mas­ter. Once Alexan­der turned 18, he had to give up his senior patrol lead­er­ship position.

He is also a stu­dent ambas­sador for the career cen­ter, speak­ing at area high schools about the pro­grams offered by the DACC.

Alex is look­ing for­ward to achiev­ing A-plus cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for com­puter repairs.

“I have a good feel­ing that I will pass,” he said. “It def­i­nitely will be good to have. That’s what busi­nesses look for.”

Like all seniors, Alex looks for­ward to the future. Once he comes back from a sum­mer job work­ing in a photo lab at Philmont, the Boy Scout ranch in New Mex­ico, he plans to attend Colum­bus State Com­mu­nity Col­lege for two years study­ing com­puter sci­ence. Alex also hopes to minor in psy­chol­ogy and plans to enter the P3 Scholar pro­gram to tran­si­tion to Ohio State University.

Alex hopes to climb the cor­po­rate lad­der, begin­ning as a tech assis­tant and going on to become a chief infor­ma­tion offi­cer. He said he might also be a project manager.

“I’m good at ideas. I would be the start up guy, then move on,” he said.

Alex is con­sid­er­ing going to Brazil in his third year of col­lege to expe­ri­ence a dif­fer­ent culture.

“I like to travel a lot,” he said, adding that he researched and chose Brazil due to its friendly climate.

Alex said when he first began high school he wasn’t sure what wanted to do. While in his fresh­man year, he thought about the health field. After con­sid­er­ing his­tory and psy­chol­ogy (an area he might still pur­sue), it was an infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy course he took his sopho­more year that led him to look into the pro­gram at DACC.

“I liked the hands-on,” he said, adding he was glad he fol­lowed this path. “I have a lot of new friends. The field def­i­nitely clicked.

“And,” he smiled, “com­puter sci­ence pays.”

Along with the chal­lenges fac­ing other seniors, Alex has an addi­tional one — autism. He speaks openly about it.

Up until age 3, he did not talk at all. Work­ing with a ther­a­pist, he learned to speak and attended a spe­cial needs preschool. After that he was in the spe­cial edu­ca­tion pro­gram in a reg­u­lar school environment.

“I was really engaged in school, striv­ing for excel­lence,” he said. He was nom­i­nated and received an award for excel­lence in the sec­ond grade. “Other teach­ers wanted to nom­i­nate me for the award (in other years), but you can only win it once.”

He con­tin­ued to progress rapidly, and then, after the fifth grade, his autism began to dimin­ish. Alex said there are only three areas which it is still notice­able — eye con­tact, facial expres­sions and his voice.

“But those are all minor,” he said, adding that results last year in an eval­u­a­tion by a speech ther­a­pist were “incred­u­lous.” He scored 120 where an aver­age per­son would achieve a score of 90.

Alex said in those areas where the autism still is present it is 90 per­cent con­fi­dence based. He spoke of being bul­lied in mid­dle school in addi­tion to some teach­ers telling him he could not suc­ceed, two things that pre­vent­ing him from build­ing up his self– confidence.

“But in the past year my con­fi­dence has increased,” he said, indi­cat­ing that the career center’s stu­dent ambas­sador pro­gram has helped.

Alex said his par­ents have been sup­port­ive throughout.

“My mom is always on my side. She has sup­ported me 100 per­cent no mat­ter what,” he said.

This sup­port has helped with the course­work and activ­i­ties that Alex is involved in, includ­ing an advanced place­ment his­tory class.

“To this day, it is the hard­est test I ever took,” he said of the AP exam, admit­ting he did not pass. He added he was ill that day and was not allowed any spe­cial test con­sid­er­a­tions either.

Susan­nah Lee teaches Eng­lish at West­er­ville Cen­tral High School.

“Alex is one of the kind­est peo­ple I know. … That pos­i­tive and gen­er­ous approach to life is what defines him. His ded­i­ca­tion and ser­vice even led him to earn an eagle scout. He is coura­geous and prin­ci­pled, and I feel grate­ful to have him in class,” she said.

“Alex is a fan­tas­tic stu­dent and indi­vid­ual! He is always will­ing to help oth­ers no mat­ter what. Being selected Teen of the Week is a well-deserved honor,” Randy Moore, an IT Acad­emy instruc­tor at the DACC, said.

Alex ran track until an injury stopped him his sopho­more year, but other activ­i­ties keep him busy. He is a mem­ber of the National Honor Soci­ety at West­er­ville Cen­tral, a stu­dent ambas­sador and blog­ger for the career cen­ter, a mem­ber of the national tech­ni­cal honor soci­ety through DACC and a mem­ber of the Gay-Straight Alliance Organization.

He is also in the midst of com­pet­ing with Busi­ness Pro­fes­sion­als of Amer­ica where he has already passed dis­trict and regional lev­els and is com­pet­ing at the state level next week, a feat he is repeat­ing from last year.

He was a tech­ni­cal assis­tant at Farm­ers Insur­ance, which he left in Octo­ber, as he was work­ing two jobs. He still works about 20 to 25 hours a week at Meijer.

“I am pretty busy,” he admit­ted, adding that he likes to be active.

He is look­ing for­ward to the com­pe­ti­tion next week and is also in charge of orga­niz­ing an NHS book exchange at his home school.

“The goal is to pro­mote lit­er­a­ture and diver­sity,” he said. “It should be awesome.”

Alexan­der offers the fol­low­ing advice to others.

“Don’t choose the easy path, maybe not the hard­est one either. Choose your own path. Do what you want,” he said.

Alexan­der is the son of Kate and Steve Jok­erst of Westerville.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Mar 9 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.