College Years - The End of an Era

After my disasterous summer as an Intern for Georgia Pacific, I was convinced that a degree in Forestry just wasn't in the cards. Looking around, the Agronomy program was able to get me out with the least amount of additional classes. For those of you who never wandered into the agriculture side of your local A&M university, Agronomy is the science of Soil. Yes, Dirt.

My into to Agronomy course was a 7am, Monday, Wednesday and Tursday, with a lab somewhere in the week. It was run by a crusty old coot who had been the Dean of the school of Argiculture twenty years previous, and was too mean to quit teaching. All I remember about him is that he woke up every day at 4 am and he collected bicycles.

In one of the first lectures, he was explaining that soil density was measured in Kilograms per square yard. I could see that it was going to be a long year.

I don't remember too much else about that year, except that I helped out with a Merit Badge University hosted by our chapter of Alpha Phi Omega for the area Boy Scouts. I had been spending a lot of time in the computer labs in the basement of Parker Hall. If it wasn't for the fact that my only access to the Internet was through the campus network, I probably wouldn't have been in school then. During MBU, I overheard one of the adult leaders talking about starting an Internet Service Provider in Birmingham, and how he was looking for an admin to help out. This eventually led to my first gig in IT.

In the summer of 1995, I started working for Southern Network Services, who had by this time bought out the smaller business that I had been working for. I moved to Birmingham for the Summer and worked in an office, wore a tie and everything. I had a good time working, but eventually I realized that I wasn't making anything close to a fair wage (I was making about $7.50/hr), and that if I was going to continue in the field I needed to get a higher paying job. To me, this meant going back to school, so I took off back for Auburn and hung out at the parents house until winter quarter.

In 1996 I changed my major to Communications, and applied myself to school like I had never done before. The Engineering Secretary, who was apparently in charge of admissions to the program, was convinced that I wasn't smart enough, despite having been accepted to the program once before. She did let me take once CSE course and one EE course, both of which were open to non-engineering majors. I kicked ass in the CSE course (of course), but barely passed the Digital Logic course. This was the beginning of the end for my college career. At the end of that summer, I received a letter informing me that I had failed to maintain the grades necessary to remain enrolled, and that I was on suspension.

It was time to start over.