May 5—MITCHELL — For some students, graduation means it’s time to leave for the next stop in their lives. That may mean a few week’s vacation after focusing so hard on classwork and study, or it could be heading back to their hometown to visit family and friends before jumping into the job market.
Mitchell Technical College student Nathan Slay doesn’t plan to do any of those things. He’s ready to jump aboard his new job at Muth Electric, where he has also been working in his spare time in between school obligations.
“It’s almost surreal, but it’s exciting because on one hand it feels like it was a slow-growing thing where I was learning all these things,” Slay said. “Now it feels like it was almost the blink of an eye that I’m here. I’m very excited about it.”
Slay didn’t necessarily expect to find himself in this situation. A native of California, he didn’t immediately see post-secondary education as part of his future. But a serendipitous referral to a technical college he had never heard of located in a state he had never visited changed his life, and now he was on the path to his new career.
When Slay was getting ready to graduate from high school, college didn’t seem like an option, nor did making a living in California. The state known for blue skies and ocean sunsets is also known for high taxes and an expensive cost of living.
Slay wasn’t sure what his next step was, but family living out-of-state contacted him with an idea.
“It almost feels like divine intervention the way it happened, but the way that I even found out about Mitchell Tech in South Dakota and all the opportunities here was from my grandparents in Texas,” Slay said, explaining his grandparents had seen an ad for Mitchell Technical College on television.
Slay isn’t sure exactly why the Mitchell Tech ad may have shown up on a Texas television station hundreds of miles away from both South Dakota and California. The family has no strong connection to the state, with the exception of some distant relatives having previously lived in Hot Springs for a time.
But something about the ad made his grandparents think that Mitchell Tech might be a good fit for their grandson and a scholarship program might make it affordable.
“They knew I was into electrical (subjects), and they knew that my dream had always been to go to college, but I always thought of it as kind of this privilege that was given to people in more fortunate situations. So I kind of wrote it off for the most part. Then I was given a rundown and said, well, why wouldn’t I take the opportunity? Why wouldn’t I give it a chance?” Slay said.
He began his journey at Mitchell Tech in 2024. He arrived in Mitchell with little more than a suitcase and a curiosity about his new school and a community that would serve as his home away from home.
It took some adjusting to his new environment. He had no car, so he had to walk everywhere. That meant an hour of walking to and from class everyday from the doorstep of the Airbnb he was living at, even in the harsh South Dakota winter.
But he embraced the situation, seeing it as part of the procedure he needed to complete to take full advantage of the chance he’d found at Mitchell Tech. He didn’t even really mind the winter wind and snow despite his growing up in California and other warm-weather climates. The wind was cold, but the air was crisp and clean, another upgrade from his previous stops.
“I loved it. I absolutely loved it. The harder the wind blew and the harsher the weather the more fired up I was to walk through it. I don’t really know what it is. Maybe just because it’s something I’m finally able to experience. You know, maybe it’s the changing seasons or it’s more something that is a part of my personality, where I see something that seems challenging and I feel more fired up to try and take it down,” Slay said.
His walks exposed him to the elements, as well as Midwest hospitality. Passers by would often stop to ask if he needed a lift, and despite not knowing whose vehicle he was getting into, it always ended in a friendly conversation. Slay eventually bought a bicycle.
“It’s quite a community out here. I went from being very isolated to having more people to talk to than I could reasonably fit into my schedule,” Slay said.
The interest in electrical studies blossomed on the Mitchell Tech campus.
He discovered a passion and aptitude for subjects he didn’t anticipate, such as Programmable Logic Controls (PLC), which he described as a game or a puzzle. He also found data cabling easy to pick up. The curriculum’s exposure to specialized fields shifted his career goals, prompting him to look into power divisions and PLC programming at Muth Electric.
The cost of the programs, an initial concern for Slay when he was looking into colleges, was helpfully offset by his receiving the Build Dakota Scholarship. The full-ride, merit-based program covers tuition, fees, and tools for qualifying programs, and allows recipients to commit to work in their field within South Dakota for three years post-graduation.
“It freed up everything for me. It gave me time to rest, gave me time to think, gave me time to really focus on school,” Slay said.
The full-ride tuition coverage means he can fully focus on his studies instead of putting in hours to cover rent. It also means he can save what he earns for future plans, such as a home.
“The idea of being able to buy a house was something that I thought would never come in my life,” Slay said. “The housing market — when I was coming out here just to see what it looked like — I could easily see myself affording a house out here, building a house out here, probably more so than in California.”
It’s all a long way from the mindset he had on the West Coast, where he had once thought education after high school was a pipe dream.
He’ll soon have the chance he was looking for by putting his studies into practice and setting his sights on the future. For now, he plans to cross the stage at the Corn Palace, receive his diploma and dive headlong into his future career.
His grandparents will be coming in from Texas, his dad will be arriving from Colorado and his mom and his sister will be here from Maine. He has a brother in Virginia who might be able the make the trip, but he suspects his brother in Spain might be held up.
“Kind of the whole reason I’m excited to share my story is so that someone else who hears it sees it as a sign to take a chance,” Slay said. “I really want people to not give up and just give it a shot.”
Mitchell Technical College graduation is scheduled for Friday, May 8 at the Corn Palace. The event will be held for different programs beginning at 11 a.m., 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.
