Success Story: Ryan Fudge
![[photo: Ryan Fudge, standing outside, with long hair in a ponytail, wearing a flannel shirt]](images/ryan.jpg)
"I have a lot of friends I care for dearly, but I just can't connect with them. There are all those stereotypes about men sharing feelings," Ryan Fudge said. "It has been like a breath of fresh air to be able to talk openly about what is going on in our lives."
Fudge is one of the regular members of the men's forum that meets over lunch at Pierce College at Puyallup and also participates in the men's mentorship program with Bret Burkholder, an advisor at the college.
The group and program were mentioned in Burkholder's ED110 class in which Fudge was a student.
"I figured, 'Hey, what the heck? I might as well get to know some teachers,'" so he joined up.
"The group helped me get through some things I was dealing with at the time. I know the answers, but I need a little incentive push from others. I often don't get that from my friends," he said.
School has not been a safe place for Fudge over the years. He had a learning disability that led his sixth grade teacher to declare he would never make it through junior high. Fudge proved the teacher wrong, winning an academic award in junior high, but the experience stayed with him.
"It was at first like finding comfort with strangers," he said. "What is said in there stays in there, leaving us free to share and not worry about it getting out. That is a constant problem in high school.
"The mentoring has helped me to deal with things and make myself more stable."
Fudge has taken an interest in the counseling field and now is working toward
becoming a high school counselor so he can, in his words, "give back."
