It’s November 2017.
A young man is driving down an Oklahoma highway. A clear blue sky is hiding the sun as the rays peek through the clouds. They engulf his car. The day is bright and seemingly normal, but it may as well be dark and gray.
At least to the young man, this day was bleak, if not more cloudy. Flashes of traumatic imagery take over his mind’s eye instead of the beautiful trees on the open road. That’s when he spots the lake ahead.
I can’t swim, he thinks.
He pulls over anyway, and silently begins contemplating what to do next.
If I take these pills and just close my eyes in the water… it’ll be like floating away.
As a last statement to a life, he pulls out his cellphone to post a picture of the lake to social media.
He captions it: “How can something so beautiful, be so dangerous?”
He takes a deep breath and opens his driver side door. Leaving his phone in the car, with the dozens of worried and supportive messages that would buzz afterwards, he gets out.
With each step, he struggles taking in the massive body of water.
When he reaches the edge of the lake, he just stands there.
Perfectly still and silent, it’s a calming peace the way he accepted what was to come next.
He closes his eyes right before he hears an woman yelling towards him.
He’s taken out of his trance when that woman walks over to him asking him what he was he doing out there.
She tells him nobody ever comes out to this lake alone, and the young man knows that she’s knew what he had planned on doing.
Two hours later, and that same woman would still be talking to him.
A complete stranger, this woman convinced him not to commit suicide that day, and it became evident to Tayvion Payton, why he still needed to be here.
Tayvion is an integrated studies major with a focus on information technology. The senior set to graduate this December is far from the troubled young man that had UNT’s support just a year ago.
In fact, a lot happened to Payton in just in a year. He landed his first job at a security company being a threat analyst before graduation.
He became a member of Phi Beta Sigma, Fraternity Inc. and has started a successful online tech blog, TayOnTech, to help other young STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) professionals.
“I want to inform people about cyber security, and other forms of STEM. Everything’s built on technology now, and it’s a life skill I have a passion for,” said Payton.
For some, all of those words can be a mouthful, but the online blog, which Payton coded himself, he uses to easily explain for those who aren’t STEM professionals.
The blog kicked off this semester with support pouring in from out of state. His comment section for recent articles became riddled with thanks for breaking down the industry.
“Cyber security in particular for me is like putting the pieces of a puzzle together. It’s almost like investigating. You have to find the cause for someone being hacked or having their security breach.”
Payton didn’t always know STEM was going to be his calling. His journey to technology started from humble beginnings.
Growing up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Payton came from a single-parent household.
His mother worked two jobs to support him and he attended schools that he says the community stigmatized for minority children.
“People assume I was born rich when I really wasn’t,” said Payton.
He often struggled with depression growing up.
To get money, he started off as a sneaker-head buying and flipping shoes in high school.
He also had a knack for fixing phones whenever other kids cracked their screens.
“If it was electronic, I could fix it,” said Payton
His tech journey didn’t start at UNT either. Instead, he attended the private University of Mobile in Alabama.
The school is known for its business information technology program.
He then transferred to Tarrant County College for their Cyber Security Program.
He knew he wanted to pursue STEM, but still knew very little about it.
“I was taking a general class for operating systems when my professor at the time, straight up asked me, ‘What do you want to do with your career?'” said Payton.
His professor broke it down to him that he could go beyond what he expected out of himself. He was encouraged to tackle different fields from programming, networking and security.
“Coming out of high school from a poor area, they didn’t tell us about engineering. They just were happy if we went to college.”
Learning more and more about cyber security, Payton started understanding his purpose and where his true passions were.
Still, to get to this point he reflected a lot on his life.
“Let’s be real.. They don’t push STEM for lower income minorities. Not because I don’t think they don’t want to, but because of the funding.”
Payton understands that minority students don’t know what they don’t know and he was on a mission to change that.
African American’s have only represented 7.6 percent of all STEM bachelors just two years ago according to the U.S. Department of Education.
This is why Payton ended up transferring to UNT to finish out a bachelors degree.
He’s fought his depression, and even with the continued success, still fights to overcome dark days.
A year later, his original tweet has a new meaning, for he’s no longer anxiously looking at the water.
Instead, he’s looking out into the horizon where he sees that the sky is the limit.
He landed his first STEM internship at a company while at UNT. He joined the National Society of Black Engineers to help network among his peers.
When he joined Phi Beta Sigma, Fraternity Inc., he helped facilitate the Verizon Innovative Learning Day for students at Harold W. Lang Sr. Middle School in Dallas.
They helped teach technology by focusing on building circuits and encourage higher learning.
Payton recalls watching the interest of a 12-year old girl build a mini robot.
“She was like, ‘Wow!,’ Asking me what this was or how that happened or what would happen if she did such and such,” said Payton.
This sparked him to keep at it with his passions, and to also keep reaching out to minorities and help motivate them for STEM opportunities.
Payton created the Tay On Tech Diversity and Inclusion Scholarship geared for minority students in STEM from either his hometown or in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
Students have to be high school seniors or college freshman with a 2.75 GPA. They need to create a video or write an essay about their passions for a chance to win $500 with a laptop.
Two winners will be chosen and the deadline has been extended to March 31, 2019.
Payton hopes to one day create an after school robotics program, but in the mean time he’s working to host professional workshops and translate his blogs offline to real life.
“Being successful isn’t about how much you can achieve yourself. It’s about how many people more you can make successful.”