Even though I graduated with honors in high school, I was ill-prepared for college. Due to financial constraints and logistical considerations, I opted to start in a Junior college first. Since my high school was not highly rated, as was the norm for most Florida schools, I had a lot of catching up to do. To catch up, I had to go to school year-round because my placement test scores were low in all the core subjects. I had to take non-credit earning remedial classes in English, Math, and Chemistry. I, however, was not alone in this boat. As it turned out, most of these classes were full of my high school classmates. It was like being in high school all over again. This doesn’t make for a powerful testament to the quality of my school or its teachers. You noticed I did not say teaching there, right? For most of them, it was nothing but a job, and they seemed to take little joy in passing on their knowledge. Enough with the school-bashing. This book was not meant to act as a source for school reform. Teachers back then were underpaid and overworked, as they still are today.

My two years at the junior college ended with little fanfare. I graduated with honors, leaving with a firm foundation in mathematics and the sciences, and was ready to complete my last two years at the state university. Not only was the distance to this school three times as far, but the tuition was three times as much as well. Class sizes increased from 20 to 30 students and then to as many as 400 students for my undergraduate genetics class. No longer did you get to talk to the instructor in person; you spoke to TAs or teaching assistants. They were graduate students studying under the professor. They also ran all the labs. One whole building was devoted to chemistry. This school truly dwarfed my junior college. The college campus covered several square miles. You had to arrive at school much earlier to allow time for walking the longer distances to your classes. I am extremely happy that I did not start my college career there first. I would have never survived, and I would most likely have quickly flunked out. This was partly because the school was not only vast and impersonal but also a party college, where the girls were outrageous. I would have never been able to concentrate. Being in Florida, where it is very hot, the girls seemed to wear anything at all to stay cool. How was a young man to stay focused with all these wonderful distractions?

The only negative consequence of splitting my years between two colleges was that the Medical School I applied to only considered my GPA from my last two years at the University. In most degree programs, the previous two years contain the most challenging classes. Pre-med was no different. While my grades in my first two years were very competitive, my grades for the last two years were not nearly so. When I went to see a counselor at the Medical School, I was asked if I knew anyone. I said “no”. He said I could always go to school in Grenada, so that ended my father’s dreams for me to be a medical doctor.

Although my hopes of becoming a medical doctor were dashed for the short term, I had not given up on the medical field. There was still an option for a dual-degree program, which was geared toward medical research as opposed to actual patient care. With the program, I would have a PhD and an MD behind me. I would also be able to do groundbreaking work in the field of neuroscience, just like my stepbrother. Unfortunately, despite achieving an average of over 3.50 for my four-year degree, my average for the last two years was only 3.2. A’s had been a lot harder to come by in all of the science classes that I had taken. This is where the snobbery factor came into play. Despite my counselors saying the Jr. College route was equivalent to attending a University for four years, they were misleading. The University did not care at all that I had graduated with honors; they only thought about their classes and their programs. Although I aced the placement exam, I was told that I didn’t meet the program’s requirements. I believe it fell back to the fact that I did not know anyone at the University.

So now I had two roadblocks thrown in my way. With limited resources and even more limited connections, my medical hopes for both my father and me were virtually over. However, as we all know, “It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.” If that weren’t the case, I would not be writing this story.

Now, with my career path considerably reduced, I was left with few options. With a degree in biology, teaching was the best and pretty much only option left to me. Not exactly what I was hoping for. I had, however, several choices for the subject matter I would teach. Since I had enough credit hours in chemistry, biology, and mathematics, I could teach school in any of those three subjects. I also had the option to teach in high school or junior high school. So, I gave it a shot. I easily aced all three classes, but I soon realized that I had no interest in teaching at this level. If I were going to teach, I wanted it to be at a university where the students wanted to learn. Well, at least most of them did. I also decided that I was frankly tired of the sciences, and being that history had always been my first love, I switched gears. Before I could enter the graduate program in history, I had to fulfill the undergraduate requirement, which was only four additional classes. I easily aced all four of these classes and proceeded into the master of Arts program in history. My area of specialty was the Industrial \Revolution and the Great Depression. I thought I knew what was ahead of me but little did I know how poor of a career path this would be as well.

After two years of part-time study, I was only halfway through my master’s degree. The part-time job I had taken to pay for my schooling was paying off. As it turned out, I was making as much money now as I would be making as a starting professor in a junior college with a master’s degree. So, I said, “Enough is enough.” After eight years of college and two worthless degrees, I decided to cut my losses. I wanted to live life, not study it. If you’ve read my first book, you know that I became involved in competing in Triathlons. I spent the next four years pursuing this interest. I also focused on my career at the grocery chain where I was currently working. Now that I was more serious about the job, my prospects began to improve somewhat. I finally broke into the rarefied field of lower management. This is how I met my future first wife, whom I will discuss in the following chapter…