{"id":152,"date":"2014-12-10T20:05:38","date_gmt":"2014-12-11T02:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/rochester\/blog\/mr-happy-keeps-on-swimming\/"},"modified":"2022-04-01T19:58:28","modified_gmt":"2022-04-01T19:58:28","slug":"mr-happy-keeps-on-swimming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/rochester\/blog\/mr-happy-keeps-on-swimming\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Happy Keeps on Swimming"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Me\"<\/a>Lee Bjorklund and his wife, Leah, know what it means to \u201cjust keep swimming.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few years ago, Bjorklund and his wife lost their jobs. His mother-in-law was arrested for embezzlement. Their three-month-old son had to have open-heart surgery. All within a matter of months. It would have been easy for the couple to give up.<\/p>\n

Instead, the Bjorklunds opted to return to college for the sake of their three children.<\/p>\n

The father of three, a 9-year-old and 4-year-old twins, will graduate this fall with his bachelor\u2019s degree in computer science.<\/p>\n

Nicknamed \u201cMr. Happy,\u201d Bjorklund credits his \u201cbeautiful, loving wife\u201d and children with helping him retain his positive outlook. He thrives on his positive attitude and advises that others do the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Dori says in Finding Nemo, \u2018Just keep swimming,\u2019\u201d Bjorklund said. \u201cThrough the ups and downs, the good and the bad. Just keep swimming, never give up\u2026 nothing gets done when you\u2019re negative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, Bjorklund reflects on his days at WSU as being a very positive experience. He attended most of his classes at Winona State-Rochester but also took psychology classes on the Winona campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven going to the Winona campus and being old enough to be a parent to most students, I was still welcomed,\u201d Bjorklund said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t shunned or left out. I was even asked to be study buddies with some and invited to attend some campus activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bjorklund said Winona State taught him how to be himself, and he is proud to have this achievement for his children.<\/p>\n

\u201cBesides proving to myself that you can achieve what you set out to do,\u201d Bjorklund said, \u201cI am proud to have shown my children how important education is and the right way to do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lee Bjorklund and his wife, Leah, know what it means to \u201cjust keep swimming.\u201d A few years ago, Bjorklund and his wife lost their jobs. His mother-in-law was arrested for embezzlement. Their three-month-old son had to have open-heart surgery. All within a matter of months. It would have been easy for the couple to give […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,112,6,22,8,10],"tags":[72,32],"class_list":["post-152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-achievements","category-rochester","category-wsu-r-featured-stories","category-student-news","category-twitter","category-wsu-news","tag-computer-science","tag-rochester"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/rochester\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2019\/11\/Me.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/rochester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/rochester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/rochester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/rochester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/rochester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/rochester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/rochester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions\/154"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/rochester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/rochester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/rochester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/rochester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}