But that quest can be elusive, or at least a long time coming. Eventually, a breakthrough moment arrives, sometimes as the outcome of persistence and planning, but often, in my experience, more by luck than judgment.
One could argue that it is the application of varied, probing, youth work skills that in fact creates the luck.
Drew was a sullen hard case. He prided himself on his lack of communication skills and stubbornly concealed any emotions. He was one of those individuals who was always there but was only ever on the outside of anything we were doing. I noticed that on Thursday evenings he arrived a little later than his mates, sometimes carrying a small bag. But my efforts to strike up a friendly, inquiring conversation invariably attracted a monosyllabic response. Only through talking to the others did I discover that Drew went to college on Thursday evenings: he was doing an apprenticeship in electrical engineering.
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