McIntyre scholarship winner took nontraditional route to college

Alexander Hood will be the first to say he wasn’t a stellar student during his time at Anacortes High School.

Classes didn’t interest him, he said, and after graduating in 2003 he didn’t want to attend any more of them.

Things have changed since then.

On Friday, Hood graduated from Skagit Valley College with awards from the physics and math departments, the President’s Medal for maintaining a 3.9 GPA and the college’s Sydney S. McIntyre scholarship.

“I’ve had a good experience,” Hood said. “It’s really a fun place. I’m sad to go.”

The full-ride scholarship is for students with a GPA of 3.0 or higher who plan to transfer to an in-state, four-year university to study basic or applied sciences.

“It’s something I’m very, very happy I decided to do,” Hood said of his 2015 decision to go back to school. “I wanted to prove to everyone that I was able to accomplish something even though I didn’t do well in high school.”

Hood plans to attend Western Washington University in the fall, where he will study renewable energy source engineering.