Finding the Right Path

{Prompt: What were your least favorite school subjects?}

Have you ever gone for a walk in the woods, and taken the wrong path? You think you’ve taken the right turn, but about a half mile later, you realize the waypoints and the landmarks are off, and you’re headed the wrong way.

What do you do then?

Do you keep on heading up the path in a state of denial?

Do you cut through the woods looking for a shortcut to the final destination?

Do you head back to the place where you took your wrong turn and start again?

This is a story about going up the wrong path, recognizing the warning signs, and eventually finding the right path.

Setting Off

In 1982, I was completing my high school diploma at the NC School of Science and Mathematics.

I thought I was pretty smart.

I thought I could go to college just about anywhere.

I thought I should become an engineer.

I perceived engineering to be a career of problem solving and inventiveness. I thought that, one day I might find myself assigned to create a better widget; and through a process of design and revision, I would ultimately arrive at a masterful solution, designing the best widget known to mankind.

I thought the career of an engineer might be the career of a creator — creating ever more elegant inventions, reaping more and more satisfaction and happiness for both myself and mankind.

I was ready to accept the role of the ‘chosen one’.

I had pretty grandiose dreams when I was eighteen.

So I applied to attend Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee, in the School of Engineering. I got accepted by “Vandy” and headed west on Interstate 40.

About 12 hours and 540 miles later, I arrived at Kissam Hall, in a picturesque quad of six dormitory buildings on the northeast corner of campus, a campus shaded by venerable white oaks, sugar maples, and southern magnolias.

Every evening at 6 pm, the carillon in the tower of Kirkland Hall would play Try to Remember (a song from The Fantasticks).

It seemed as if the whole world would pause just a moment in nostalgia and reverence to listen to the chiming bells as they rang across the void at supper time. At least for a minute or two, my academic concerns would dissipate as I listened to the tune floating over the quad and into my window.

Kirkland Hall on Vanderbilt University campus

Life at Vanderbilt

I came to know the campus well, in a very short time because I joined the campus security force as a student with a work-study job. Most of the time, I was called upon to escort a student from one part of campus to another, dressed in a light blue police shirt and tie, in uniform, with a walkie talkie in hand. At other times, I was tasked with checking the external doors to Vanderbilt University Hospital, circumnavigating the sprawling complex of buildings to be sure that all the doors were closed tight and locked.

I also dabbled in some extracurricular activities. With a friend, we went to try out for the junior varsity soccer team. But we quickly withdrew when we saw that the level of talent was far beyond our abilities. The tryouts also seemed like a perverse opportunity to torture the walk-on candidates, orchestrated by the sadistic coaching assistants, who were in charge of the process.

In an effort to stay within my capabilities, I went for a few rides with the cycling club — learning to ride in an organized paceline for the very first time. The backroads of Tennessee were pleasant, and I still had a little bit of fitness from my bicycle ride across the state of North Carolina, six months before—from Murphy to Manteo.

But the cycling club cyclists were in very fine shape. I found myself yo-yoing off the back or, sometimes, getting dropped. Also, a typical ride took too much time away from my other commitments, so my days of riding through the countryside were numbered.

Ultimately, I joined a club for aspiring graphic designers, and, with a friend, we brainstormed different logos, rendering a prodigious number of designs. Unfortunately, our “genius” was mostly unrecognized by the other members of this “guild”. Or perhaps we were ahead of our time – doomed to be unappreciated during our short tenure.

That graphics club and the class that I took in technical drafting were my fondest memories of my academic experience at Vanderbilt University. I found that drawing and design were relatively easy for me. The logo designs for the club were a pleasant diversion, and the schematic drawings for the drafting class were pleasant assignments.

But not all was well in the university. Though the wooded commons, crisscrossed by pathways under the shade trees, had charm… and the school had a rich tradition of sports and club activities… there was a heavy presence of Greek Life on campus, and a not-so-subtle hierarchy of class that rubbed me the wrong way.

There were many freshmen on Kissam quad that took fraternity membership seriously, and were eager to “rush” for a spot in the house that they preferred. They seemed to perceive my disinterest in Greek life as an anomaly — even a character flaw. But be that as it may, I never applied to join a frat. I might have been young and foolish, but that was a decision that I never regretted.

Major Questions

However, I was starting to regret my chosen degree. It started with a course called Engineering Principles, an introduction to Engineering — a class taught by a team of engineering faculty, designed to introduce the fundamentals of the profession — providing a foundation for the courses to follow.

One of the assignments was to identify an engineering problem in need of a solution, and to draft a proposal.

I admit, I was not a tinkerer in childhood. I had not been deconstructing appliances or building robots. Even though I went to a school of Science and Math, I was not filled with engineering thoughts or aspirations.

But, still, I thought I had a pretty good proposal, suggesting some sort of a “silencer” for the shutter of an SLR camera. (At the time, widespread sales of silent digital cameras were still 20 years in the future.) Every camera I had ever used made an audible click-clack sound as the internal mirror flipped up and the mechanical shutter opened and closed. It happened when the button was depressed to take a picture.

Schematic diagram of an SLR camera

My instructor was very succinct when he rejected my proposal. He believed that technology already existed to dampen the sound of a camera shutter. No revision of the proposal or further investigation was necessary.

Even worse… shortly after the outright rejection of my proposal… the students in the class, including me, were given only minutes to recover and to decide on which (approved) project team to join for the remainder of the course. It was akin to choosing kickball teams on a school playground. I felt unprepared and unwilling to choose among the five or six acceptable project proposals.

Before I knew it, teams had formed for all of the projects but one. I was left to haplessly join a team of aspiring engineers in the one remaining project — a project to design a suitable electronic scanning system using the barcodes on library books.

I was deflated by my own project’s rejection, and humiliated by my inglorious draft into the least desirable alternative. My heart was not in the project, and I did very little to contribute to its completion. Fortunately, the head of the project was perfectly satisfied to do it himself. Ultimately, my grade in the class reflected my difficulty in adjusting to the class requirements. I got a C.

I don’t know why this class was so demoralizing for my ambitions. But it was.

Perhaps it was poorly taught — the instructors having little invested in the success or failure of the students. Or perhaps I was in over my head. Although I had always done well in math and technology, these engineering students were hyper-focused on the career of engineering.

Before I changed my major completely (which happened at NC State), I took a Physics for Engineers course that was insanely difficult. It required a superior grasp of calculus to solve the physics problems.

When I realized I was floundering, I dropped the course — just in the nick of time, only hours before the end of the drop/add period. I later took a Physics (for everyone) introductory course, where Calculus was not required, and I enjoyed every minute of it, even the section on “Optics.” From that point on, I knew I had made the right decision — to leave the major of Engineering behind.

Changing Course

My experience at Vanderbilt was a mixture of the good and the bad. I enjoyed the evening ringing of the bells. I enjoyed drawing technical and graphic designs. I even enjoyed my job in campus security.

But I did not enjoy the class distinctions of the rich and entitled. I did not enjoy my failures in the introductory engineering class. And I did not enjoy leaving my close friends from high school and moving a day’s drive away by car.

Ultimately, the decision to transfer back to Raleigh — to NC State University — was made perfectly clear. When I saw the balance of my tuition fees (for Vanderbilt), near the end of the first semester, I knew that we didn’t have the means to pay, even with scholarships. I made my plans to leave Vanderbilt for good — leaving after only one semester.

I had to tell one of my very good friends — one that had gone through the farce of soccer tryouts with me, and who had enthusiastically brainstormed logo designs with me — that I was heading back home. I felt a little bit smaller to be leaving him in that rat-infested “Harvard of the South” without a comrade, but I felt that I was leaving for the best of reasons—the preservation of my family.

The results of that decision were proof of its sensibility. When I came to NC State University, I changed my major to Zoology (Pre-Med), and I began taking courses in Chemistry and Biology — courses in which I excelled. I never felt like I was somehow less in quality or character than the students I met. My tuition was affordable, and it wasn’t long before my scholarships paid for all of the costs of my college education.

Best of all, as I transferred to NC State University, the basketball team was in the midst of a resurgence. The “Cardiac Pack” went on a stunning run from the end of the regular season to the finals of the NCAA Men’s Basketball National Championship.

And they won it all! I was there to enjoy the chaos and pandemonium of Hillsborough Street, and the basketball team’s welcome home reception on the brickyard in April of 1983.

Jim Valvano and Derrick Whittenburg after winning it all.

I went on to enjoy courses in Vertebrate and Invertebrate Zoology, Comparative Anatomy and Biochemistry, Genetics, with a lab full of fruit flies, and Ecology, with field trips to natural areas far and wide.

I went on a Study Abroad program, where I took virology at the dawn of the AIDS epidemic, immunology, and some difficult liberal arts electives that required research papers and oral testing. But I only had to pass these courses, so they did not affect my GPA. (I received a pass/fail grade since they were from an overseas university.)

I went on to Medical School (after a brief hiatus), taking ever more difficult courses (Pharmacology, Physiology, Pathology, et al.) with smarter and smarter classmates. And I took rotations in medical subspecialties.

But I felt that I was in a field that was leading me into a wide open frontier. There were many paths that I could follow, and there was much in the medical world yet to be discovered.

It was a field requiring both knowledge and art, learned in great part through apprenticeship — rotations in medical school and in residency.

And then I went on to a career in Family Medicine.

It was a path that undoubtedly started with my unceremonious failure in that first engineering class at Vanderbilt University.

Pathfinding Basics

As you can see, I took a wrong turn when I left the School of Science and Math.

I went to a school in another state that was beyond my fiscal ability to pay.

I majored in a field where I had a limited interest compared to the other students who were fully committed.

And I wandered far from home, finding myself in a dorm amongst pseudo-intellectuals, who were more interested in fraternity life than the acquisition of knowledge or skill.

I congratulate myself for making at least one good decision. I decided to head back to the starting point and begin again.

I headed back to my hometown and the Triangle, to a school that I could afford.

I changed my major to Zoology (NC State’s version of the Pre-Med degree), and I took on a curriculum that was more to my satisfaction.

I started by commuting from home, but I ultimately landed at Alexander Dorm, the housing option for international students. Most of them were happy to talk with and interact with a native North Carolinian. There was no pretentiousness.

Sometimes you find yourself on the wrong path. Perhaps you are too ambitious. Perhaps you find yourself running out of resources. Perhaps you are looking for adventure, but find that the trail is too dangerous. Maybe you are heading for the wrong destination. Maybe you are lost.

Sometimes you have to reconsider, recalibrate, and return to your starting point.

And try again.

Appendix -My favorite classes (and a few of my least favorite):

I love school immensely. I would happily be a school teacher, if it paid even half of its true worth. There are very few classes that I didn’t enjoy.

In elementary school I especially enjoyed doing multiplication and learning to write cursive. I generally did not enjoy Social Studies, which, to me, seemed to have relatively little practical importance.

In Junior High, I enjoyed Biology and Geometry and Algebra. I also enjoyed the vocational electives including Woodworking, and even Home Economics. I did not particularly like learning History; which is ironic considering my love of history, and historical fiction today.

In high school I enjoyed Botany, AP English, Typing, Western Civilization, Comparative Religions, and Astrophysics. I took, but did not really enjoy, Latin and Spanish, and I found the conjugations, the grammar, and the vocabulary of the foreign languages to be tedious and difficult to master.

Speaking a foreign language in front of a class of your peers was a hard pill to swallow. I never got to the third year, when spoken language was nourished and encouraged. I always felt like the languages were being taught backwards. They should be spoken first and foremost—only written, read, parsed, and conjugated after achieving some verbal fluency.

My opinions of my classes in college are described in gruesome detail in the story above. I think maybe, now that I’m retired, it’s time to go back and find a new path, one that has been unexplored. Time to blaze a new trail.