From Prisoner to Professional: How I Became the Man I Am Today
This blog post was originally published on The Huffington Post UK.
I recently did a podcast interview which was like no interview I had done before. We didn’t talk about the psychology of change, or how I became the first person in New Zealand to graduate with a doctorate right out of prison. We didn’t talk about my viewpoints on prison rehabilitation. Instead in the interview we talked about the dark side of how I found myself in prison, my past criminal behaviour and the demons that led me in that direction. It was stark. There’s shame and regret, and as hard as it was I knew this was an interview I had to do. The medium allowed for that level of raw, unedited conversation.
In 1995 I was arrested for murder. I was an eighteen-year-old high school dropout, a drug addict and had for a number of years been living a life of crime to fuel my addiction. In 1996 I was sentenced to life imprisonment with the minimum allowable non-parole of 10 years. I spent time in maximum security prison continuing my drug habits and spending time in solitary confinement for misbehaving. Being locked up in that community reinforced my negative worldview, and for me, that was my “coming of age”.
After a few years of repetition, I made a choice to try and get an education. With the support of an incredible network, I completed a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in prison, and entered into a PhD program in psychology while still in incarceration. Upon my release I worked in a firm specialising in industrial and organisational psychology, and in 2006 I graduated with a PhD in psychology.
I shared the interview with a close friend; a friend who I trust who has known me throughout the journey, before the addictions, during my sentencing and over the last 21 years where I have worked to rebuild my life. His immediate response after listening to the interview was – Why did I choose to revisit the past in such graphic detail? Why would I want remind people of the negativity of who I was when I have been so determined to move my life away from it?
We live in a time where it’s easy for people to create personas divorced from their true self. They become heroes in an artificial world. I never want to be that guy. My career has grown so far without my story being distorted, but as my work is becoming internationally regarded, for which I am grateful, I knew that I needed to ensure what I owned the narrative that is Paul Wood.