Micah Jones Recent Graduate M
icah “Mike” Jones-Merrell is a native of Louisiana. He was born in October of 2001 in Monroe, Louisiana but lived in Columbia, Louisiana until the age of five before returning to Monroe. Mike was a student at Neville High School where he was very active in different school organizations. He became a member of the ROTC in his sophomore year of school, and by his senior year he ran and was elected as a student council representative. Along with his different obligations at his school Mike was able to achieve excellent grades and he held a grade point average of a 3.0. Micah is a proud graduate of Neville High School Class of 2020. Upon graduation Mike decided he was going to enlist in the National Guard, and he left for basic training in June. After completing basic training Mike will be attending Southern University and A&M College where he will major in Political Science and minor in Mass Communications. After completing his undergrad Mike plans on furthering his education and attending Law school at Southern University Law Center. He plans on becoming a government relations lawyer. After working as a government relations lawyer Mike plans to start his political career by running for state representative. He then plans to run for Mayor of Baton Rouge. Mike’s dream goal is to become the Governor of Louisiana one day. He said once he finishes Law school, he plans to reside in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and immediately get into helping coordinate and planning community events. Mike wants to get to know his community and visit some of the schools in the area. This will help him decide the best events to coordinate to reach all groups of the community. He already knows what area of Baton Rouge he wants to live in when he becomes Governor. He wants to be the voice for the people es-
pecially people like himself who have a desire to get into politics but are unsure of where to start. Once he receives his degrees and the financial resources he needs, he plans to go back to his mom’s hometown of Columbia, Louisiana and build a center so he can teach high school students legal terms. He plans to have a more in-depth program for the seniors, because it will provide opportunities to get internships with law firms in Monroe, Columbia, and surrounding areas if they have a better understanding and background of Law. Growing up in the community of Caldwell Parish Mike knows better than anyone how the community is not progressing. He knows a lot of kids from the projects, because that is where he lived and grew up, and many of those kids are having trouble finding ways to make it out of that living environment. Mike says that if you see someone from your community doing great things or attempting to do great things that you should help them, so it can create a chain of successful people. Sometimes people can have a great and beneficial idea, but they need help and resources in order to take it from a dream to a reality. Mike wants people to know that they should never give up because there is always another option or route you can take to make your life better. Keep going and be patient because another option will appear. If you work hard, you can get anything that you want. Mike believes kids growing up in this environment see people around them trying to get things the easy way either by selling drugs or robbing someone, and in their mind, they believe getting it the legal way is too Continued on Page 21
Page 19
