BARRY NOREEN: He's learned the hard way: Ex-con earns 2 degrees

   The future's so bright, Alex Matheson can put his shady past behind him.

   On May 23, the twice-convicted felon paroled after spending a couple of years in prison will join about 700 others in a cap-and-gown procession at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. He'll leave with degrees in English and philosophy, as well as a second chance at life.

   Matheson, 26, was assigned to Colorado's Youthful Offender System but left, resulting in a felony escape conviction. After that, it didn't take long for him to get busted for second-degree burglary, a case that landed him in the Crowley County Correctional facility.

   It was bad, but not all bad.

   "Once I got sober in prison, I figured out I wasn't being the person I am," he recalled. "My drinking and using drugs was getting in the way of my thinking."

   Matheson started reading.

   "I was primarily reading Buddhist philosophy in prison," he said, explaining that through a library lending program he could get the books he needed. Now he leans toward French existentialists "from the 1940s up through today."

   When he became a full-time student in early 2005, he was newly released from six months in the Community Corrections program. He wore an ankle monitor, but he thinks few noticed.

   "I realized that without getting higher education I was stuck, making money with my body and not my mind," he said. So there he was, GPS ankle bracelet and all, starting out as a 23-year-old freshman who, shall we say, had been around the block.

   "My first day I thought, ‘Wow, this is like high school.' They were young and loud and disrespectful," he remembered. "I came from an environment where if you disrespect somebody, you might get stabbed - to an environment where people were throwing wads of paper at each other."

   The partying that is part of college was no temptation, he said, explaining that because he remains on parole, "I still pee in a cup every three weeks."

   Matheson knows better than to expect sympathy from most in society who think it's just fine if life is hard for ex-cons. Because he had help from family to start college and landed a job as a tile installer, he's been luckier than most, he said.

   So lucky that he got married in October. His wife has a job in Seattle, and he plans to join her as soon as Colorado's parole system processes the paperwork.

   Matheson hopes to earn a master's degree in sociology from the University of Washington. He'd like to help prisoners re-integrate into society, because how it works now is "a joke."

   Whatever happens, he said, "the future is looking good to me."

   Contact Noreen at 636-0363 or noreen@gazette.com. He appears every other Friday on KOAA's Comcast Channel 9 at 4 p.m.