'I never thought I would make it': One FSU grad's journey from rock bottom to Ph.D.

Ten years ago, Pablo Correa walked every day from his Pensacola Street apartment through Florida State University’s woodsy campus to his job at Moe’s on Tennessee Street.

On Friday, the award-winning filmmaker and writer will take a shorter walk — this time, across the stage in FSU's Donald L. Tucker Civic Center to be hooded as a Ph.D. at the university's fall commencement ceremony.

The Fort Lauderdale native, who grew up in a troubled, drug-infested neighborhood and partied his way through community college, looks back at his journey, stunned.

"I never thought I would make it," Correa, 42, said. College wasn't a goal. He didn't even think he'd live past 30.

That year, 2008, Correa reached rock bottom.

It was a wake-up call, walking like a ghost through FSU's campus, home to his dad’s favorite football team. Correa moved to Tallahassee to be with friends, and so he could go to FSU to honor his dad, the immigrant construction worker who welded signs on I-95 at 70 years old.

But applying to FSU with a community college GPA of 1.96, Correa was rejected from both the film school, on which he had his heart set, and the communication program.

"I felt very defeated," a mellow-voiced, kind-eyed Correa remembered. "I was heartbroken."

Still, there was a reason for optimism. Unlike most of his friends, he wasn't in prison or dead by the time he was 30. The next year, after his dad suffered a stroke, Correa wanted to care for him but had nothing of his own.

That sense of helplessness became Correa's motivation. It was time for a change.

'Nobody's trying to get educated'

Throughout grade school, Correa and his brother looked forward to going to school just so they could eat. At times, his mother, a housekeeper and maintenance worker, would join the free breakfast line behind her two boys.

Correa’s father, a construction worker, was an undocumented immigrant from the Dominican Republic also named Pablo. The threat of their dad's deportation loomed large in the psyche of Correa and his siblings.

There was also danger on the streets. Teenagers who lived on crime-laden Sistrunk Boulevard often fended for themselves, Correa said, selling drugs to buy food to replenish empty pantries at home.

"We kind of had to be tough. Somehow, it was put in our heads that we were not going to succeed and that we were going to die. And we accepted that," he said. "Somehow, I told myself, 'I’m not going to live to be 30; I’m not going to live past 25.' That’s a lot of the sentiment in the inner city where we grew up at."

In the inner-city schools he attended, "nobody's trying to get educated," he said.

One day in high school, Correa watched the 1995 movie "Higher Learning," which depicted the life of incoming black freshmen at a university.

Until that movie, "I never even thought about going to school," he said.

Correa was intrigued by the intellectual conversations. He became curious — these rooms, what did they talk about in them? He yearned to be included.

When he graduated high school, he took classes at Broward and Tallahassee Community Colleges, failing several and making Cs and Ds in others.

Correa’s first language is Spanish, his major at FSU.

He took every communication class he could while working toward a bachelor's in Spanish language and literature, and he was finally accepted into FSU's Media and Communication master's program.

Since film school was off-limits, a communication master's was a way to garner skills to pursue what he later realized he truly wanted to do: make films and documentaries to shed light on little-known stories of black history, liberation and the struggle for civil rights.

Combing through history

For his master's creative thesis project in 2014, Correa created a documentary about Isadore Mizell, who built Broward County's first school for black children and pioneered efforts for a black hospital.

During the research, he met the black man who was Fort Lauderdale's first electrician, combed through archives and interviewed longtime South Florida residents.

The film, "The Isadore Mizell family legacy: A century of civic service," won third place out of 300 college entries in the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival.

After that, "I really started to consider this as a great career to pursue," Correa said.

Civil rights history fascinated him. He became absorbed by stories like the lynching of Rubin Stacy in his hometown of Ft. Lauderdale, and the 1923 Rosewood Florida massacre that left a black town destroyed.

Related:'Painful history': Remembering Leon County's lynching victims

He decided to hone his filmmaking skills and pursue his love of research and started a doctoral degree in Communication Theory.

Correa landed a McKnight doctoral dissertation fellowship and a James T. Wills Scholarship in Communication.

In November, he succeeded in the defense of his 300-page dissertation on the lynching of Claude Neal in Marianna, titled "Spectacle lynching and the NAACP's push for anti-lynch legislation: A reception study of the Claude Neal lynching."

While pursuing his doctorate, Correa did videography for the #AmLatino show on the  Roku network and filmed interviews with surviving members of the family of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black teenager lynched in Mississippi in 1955, for FSU's Emmett Till archives.

The Emmett Till Collection:FSU archives protect a shocking piece of history

He's also an assistant cameraman for a film titled "I Snuck Off the Slave Ship," set to premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

"There's nothing he won't do and he'll do it all night for three nights in a row to get it right," said Davis Houck, a professor at the School of Communication and Correa's mentor.

Correa worked on many team projects with Houck, including the Emmett Till Memory Project and the documentary Fannie Lou Hamer's America.

"He discovered on his own the power of telling the stories that had just not really survived or they survived in an archive somewhere," Houck said.

Through the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, Correa teaches grant-funded film workshops for marginalized youth in the Mississippi Delta, giving them skills to weave narratives through video editing and camera work.

It's a way of empowering teens to tell their stories and stories of their communities through the camera lens.

"I’m very interested in putting out young talent," said Correa.

The talent of young people who were like him, sitting in an inner-city school's classroom, seeing a bleak future. The youth who used to spend time with him when he was a teenager.

"Now they're in their 20s — so it's time to help them," he said.

Correa also wants to keep making music. Back in the day, Correa rapped in a hip-hop group with friends. They gave him the stage name, "Pab Loco Tear Drops."

Correa has signed a contract with Willamette College in Salem, Oregon, as an 18-month visiting professor. He starts in January.

"I just really appreciate having the opportunity to try," Correa said.

FSU and FAMU graduation schedule:

FSU's ceremonies are 7:30 p.m.Friday and at 9 a.m. Saturday at the Tucker Civic Center. About 2,600 students will graduate this fall, according to FSU.

FAMU also is holding two ceremonies — 6 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. Saturday — at the Lawson Center. Nearly 700 students are expected to graduate.

Reach Nada Hassanein at nhassanein@tallahassee.com or on Twitter @nhassanein_.