Nick Mastroianna battled homelessness and drug addiction as a teen and now hopes to be an astronaut
He was homeless at 17, often spending his nights on the streets of Denver. He became an addict to hard drugs and alcohol at 19, and he fell back into those habits after attempting to quit each subsequent year that followed.
It wasn't until Nick Mastroianna was 24 that he was finally able to step away from drugs and overcome.
Now at 26, Mastroianna will graduate in May with an Associate of Science from Midland College. His goal is to someday be among the first astronauts to land on Mars.
Despite his setbacks, he was the first in his family to graduate from high school and study at a higher education institution -- all while also battling ADHD and dyslexia, Mastroianna said, as he repeatedly tapped his pen on a table at Brew St. Bakery.
Though he didn't begin college until he was 23, he had worked since he was 16.
"(After high school), all I did was work, and I was getting a feel for the real world," Mastroianna said. "And then I started to just slowly realize that it was all the same. It seemed each job would all turn into dead-end places that I wouldn't be happy at. Living with so many different families, in so many different places, I really got a chance to see what makes people happy. And what seemed to be the recurring themes were strong family connections and love and support from a lot of different people.
"I realized I didn't have any of those things," he said.
Mastroianna shared each struggle that contributed to this realization, as he was inching his way through adulthood. Getting kicked out of his house after his parents divorced left him feeling isolated and that he didn't belong. Growing up with learning disabilities caused him to always struggle in school. And because no one believed the seriousness of his disabilities, he did not receive the education tools he needed to succeed, he said.
To fill the emptiness, he resorted to alcohol and drug use – heroin and methamphetamine. Nearly every street drug available, he used in an effort to combat the emotions he was feeling.
When he was 19, he totaled his car and received a DUI. He realized then that he could die soon, because of his actions.
So, he chose to rekindle his relationship with his mom, whom he had never been close to. She and her new husband lived in Midland, Texas, and after visiting from Denver, Colorado, Mastroianna decided he wanted to live with them. He said he knew he needed to get away from his bad habits.
His decision was confirmed on Christmas Eve in 2012, after he was jumped by three men in an alleyway in downtown Denver.
During his first year in Midland, he worked three jobs. He wanted to ensure he didn't even have the time to fall back into his temptations.
But because he worked so much, he became exhausted and fell back into them anyway, because he, again, felt like he was approaching only "dead-end places."
When he was 21, he was arrested for a DWI and remained on probation for three years.
"I was stuck in this spot again, and I kept getting there," Mastroianna said. "Something wasn't right; something wasn't clicking. And I got that sinking feeling that a lot of other people get, which is just that there's something more out there, and something I'm meant to do, and I don't know what it is — and the struggle of our journey in life is figuring that out. And a lot of people don't ever achieve that."
The hopelessness he felt was ignited when he lived among homeless people. Because everyone else around him was on their own, he had no one to look to, and he feared he would never find out what he was supposed to do in life. So, he chose to get clean again, but he fell back into alcohol once more.
And for the first time since he was 16, he was doing absolutely nothing in life. He had no job. He wasn't attending school.
Instead, he watched Netflix as he binged alcohol.
But something inside him sparked when he watched the entire TED Talk series on Netflix. He said he learned so many new things from people across the world — of all genders, ages and cultures — and realized some were close to his age, and they might have had a tough past, too.
He immediately knew, then, he needed to go back to school so he could do something important like that someday.
"I didn't want to be a dummy forever, and I've always been kind of a dummy, and I didn't want that for myself. So, I immediately stopped drinking, and that is the moment I changed my life," Mastroianna said in a choked-up voice with tears in his eyes.
When he became a student at Midland College in fall 2016, he took only two classes for credit; the rest were developmental courses. Returning to school was truly one of the biggest struggles he had faced in life, he said, and the only reason he persisted was because of the TED Talks he watched. He said it helped him realize learning is a natural thing and anyone can learn what they are exposed to.
He also realized that his learning disability and job had been hindrances to him in the past — and the struggles he faced were not not necessarily because he was a "dummy." So, he quit his job, and he found a mentor who would help him.
"When I started going back, and I started to realize these things, and all these good things started happening, I was just in a good place, I think probably for the first time of my life," Mastroianna said. "I really felt like I could do anything, so I started saying yes to every opportunity I could imagine."
The first opportunity was the community college's engineering club advised by Brian Flowers, MC department chair in engineering and physics. Flowers said during the club's first semester, students gradually disappeared from the meetings, and by the fourth meeting, Mastroianna was the only one there.
"Nick kept showing up and kept wanting to work and wanting to learn," Flowers said. "Over the course of the first year, it was just Nick, myself and the physics professor, trying to create a sensor pod with no real expertise from anybody."
The sensor pods were designed to measure water quality for coral reefs, which Mastroianna thought was the "coolest" project. The feeling heightened when he later learned that it would be used for research in another country.
Mastroianna said he had never traveled out of the country, and he had never visited much of the United States, so the chance to travel with the club was the second-most important opportunity he had said yes to.
After getting a passport and completing each of the tasks required to be considered, he was chosen to go to Honduras the summer of 2017 and conduct research with this structure he had helped create.
"It completely changed my life," Mastroianna said with tears in his eyes. "Again, with all these other things that happened, it's one of those things that others are like, 'This kid who was a drug addict before and never got to travel anywhere, all a sudden is now doing scientific research in another country?' It's humbling to think 'Wow, I had so many things go right.'"
He said he returned from Honduras with a new outlook on life — one that encouraged him to always keep going and stay involved with engineering.
Flowers agreed with Mastroianna and said he saw the change in him. Though Flowers said their first trip to Honduras was not successful in terms of research – because the pods could not be taken out of customs – it was successful in terms of growth for Mastroianna, who received straight A's for the first time in his life during the semester that followed.
The second trip to Honduras, in 2018, was more successful in research, and again, was successful for Mastroianna, who later received third place in a University of Texas contest with his poster presentation of the pods, Flowers said.
"I think Nick began to understand what an education could do for him," Flowers said. "That first year he struggled a lot even with basic math and wasn't doing well in many of his classes – and wasn't taking them so seriously. But once he got to see how learning in class does impact the real world, I think it motivated him to really try to excel in his academics."
Even after his accomplishments, it wasn't until a few semesters after his trip to Honduras that Mastroianna could pinpoint the exact career he wanted.
He described himself as an adrenaline junkie, who has been snowboarding, skydiving and scuba-diving, but he wanted to do something not many people have done. He wanted to go to outer space.
"During the (rough) parts of my life, I got obsessed with space," Mastroianna said. "Even as a kid, I had an affinity for space but there was never one of those moments I knew I wanted to do that one day. I just started to see these patterns, and I always turned toward existential questions. (The drugs) exposed me to a new mind, and even though there was an unhealthy amount of things I was doing, I became very, very open to exploring and always wanted to find out more — and space was an option for that."
He said he plans to continue his education and major in aerospace engineering with high hopes to become a flight engineer and be in the first group of astronauts to step foot on Mars — or that he will help build a new moon base.
Since discovering this passion, he has met with four astronauts; one of them even signed a painting he illustrated of space.
He will take his third trip to Honduras in June, and he hopes the peers who join him can receive the same kind of enlightenment that he did during his time there.
After he graduates from Midland College, he hopes to attend California State University in Sacramento, University of Texas in Austin or the Colorado School of Mines.
"I have a special thanks to Midland College because they have done so much for me," Mastroianna said. "They were purely interested in me as a student and in helping me achieve higher things. I'm eternally grateful to them. They were just so selfless."