He could've dodged the questions. He could've easily "no commented" every difficult question to death and focused on this season and football in general.

But Eyabi Okie didn't do that.

He accepted the difficult answers. He knows his path to Michigan is unusual and not without all the hardships he had along the way. He knows what happened in the past, even knowing he can't change them, made him who he is today.

Every mistake, and every decision is a lesson.

Okie walked away from his past with one major one in mind.

"Maturity," Okie told the media on Tuesday. "I'm going to be real. Me, personally, it was just a hard time adjusting not being able to play immediately. Certain things were said that didn't go immediately. You live and you learn. Everything happens for a reason. It happened and I grew from it. I'm here today."

This is why he arrived in Ann Arbor set on rewriting the middle and the end of his chapter on football.

He doesn't have to prove anything to anyone. He wants to prove to himself that he can rise above.

"Not something to prove to everyone else but something to prove to myself," Okie said. "Change my narrative. Oh, he doesn't go to class or how dedicated is he to football? Prove myself right. I am a scholar, I am a student-athlete, I love this game. This game has given me so much opportunities, taken me out of Baltimore, Maryland. Just give back to the game."

If Okie cares about anything the public has to say, he cares about what people think about him. Of course, his actions in the past will follow him with people making assumptions about his character.

Sometimes the spotlight shines a little too bright, too fast.

Okie had to grow up the hard way.

"I'm a very dedicated person," Okie said. "I was given everything very quickly. I started football very late in my career and became a five-star real late. A lot of the little maturity things that some of the people, some of the five-stars that were—they already knew how to take on. I didn't know how to do it. It was just me by myself and I've always been raising myself. Handling my own thing.

"I just want people to know that you live and you learn. I'm one of those people that, yeah, I burnt my hand on the stove but I learn from it. Every L wasn't an L. It was a lesson. I've learned from all my mistakes."

He continued.

"You can ask my teammates, you can ask every single teammate in every single organization I've been a part of about how I am as a. person. That's the biggest thing. How do people view me? How do my teammates view me? I'm that guy, in the middle of the night and anything is going on, you can call me. If you're having a bad day, you can call me. I'm just a real team-oriented type of guy and I've always been that kind of person.

"That's the one thing I'm real big on. My character. I really care about my character. The physical aspects, you're going to hear some different opinions but how the other man views you, I really care about that."