there's a lot of us that like to choose our own destiny. i have been fortunate to choose my destiny in a lot of instances, but i would be a fool not to realize that sometimes my path has been more forced upon me than my preferred choice. i now live in wichita, kansas. i would flat out be lying if i said this is where i wanted to be. kansas was not even on my radar, let alone a place i would've chosen given no circumstances to bring me here. yet, here i am, and here i'll stay--at least for now. i keep telling myself, everything happens for a reason.
my boys like it here. they've acclimated well. i would like my two younger ones to be able to finish high school here. the teen years are so difficult, without the added difficulty of trying to make new friends--as i witnessed with my oldest. perhaps that's enough of a reason right there to be in kansas--in wichita, where i have all the amenities of a big city without much of the hassle of a big city and with a similar air to what i grew up with in that small farm town of my grandparents. i certainly accepted the opportunity here because of that anyway.
but, that wasn't the plan. i joke that i have a plan, a back-up plan, and a back-up to the back-up...i've been known to just fly by the seat of my pants at times too, but that's only when life has exhausted me of any other choice. i left south carolina christmas of 2005 after 8 years. it had certainly started poorly (a blog for a different time), but by the end i had accumulated some wonderful friends. i chose to follow through with the move to sc--for several wrong reasons in hindsight (you can't base choices on lies and not end up with the wrong decision in my opinion), but one right reason.
the right reason was professor roby--who was at the time the undergraduate coordinator for the mechanical engineering department at clemson university. the day i met professor roby i knew that clemson university was the right place for me. professor roby was a mustang--a true mustang--an enlisted sailor who was selected for an officer's program. he had attended the naval academy. he had 3 master's degrees. he had been a submariner officer. i was coming out of the p-3 community--as close as a female could get then to the submariner community in its opposition--sub-hunting. up to that point, i had my heart set on going to the university of florida. after meeting professor roby, there was no changing my mind. i would be a clemson tiger.
i remember struggling through school at times. clemson is still a very "traditional" university. the whole campus shuts down at 4 pm. there are no "night" classes in the non-traditional sense. almost the entire student body--more than 98% then--were 18 to 22. there were not any support groups for the older students--clemson just had very minimal set up for non-traditional students. even though it has a very rich military background, it didn't even have a va office like many larger universities do. my previous training and experience was electronics and electrical, with some hydraulic and pneumatic experience, but very much an electrician and electronics technician. i was good at it, and as some of the parts of mechanical engineering became hard, well, i'll admit i wanted to give up. i went to professor roby's office with a change of major form. i could breeze through electrical engineering--i knew it. i had breezed through my controls classes and electrical classes without cracking a book--ten years electrical experience made it easy. so i had realized only the senior electrical course work would be difficult and it wouldn't bury me in the possibility of failure. failure was not an option at this point. i'd cashed out my 401k, i had taken out student loans to cover what my gi bill didn't, and i knew i could be a great engineer. i also didn't want to work technicians' hours anymore--third shift might have been a lot of fun at times, but it was completely unfair to my boys. failure to achieve my bachelor's simply was not an option.
i knocked at professor roby's door. he looked up and i asked if i could have a moment. of course, he was one of those that no matter how much time a student took up, he was there for us. i handed him my change request.
"what's this?" he asked.
"a change of major request. i want to change to electrical engineering."
he looked at the sheet. then looked up at me. "why do you want to change majors?"
"i'm failing thermodynamics. i don't understand entropy and i won't get passed this class. i can make it through double e."
he looked back at the sheet for a second. "no," and he handed me back the sheet. then he turned to his computer. no longer looking at me, i'm not sure he could see my shock. what did he mean "no"?
"professor roby, i don't think you heard me. i'm failing thermo. i don't understand entropy. something from nothing? it's confusing the hell outta me and i'm failing. there's no way for me to pass it now. i just want to change majors to something i know i can pass."
he turned to me and said, "alex, i have other students--straight a students that don't get engineering like you do. some of them even fail to understand even though their grades don't reflect it. you'll take the class again next semester and pass." then he turned back to his computer. i sat there in his office, the change request in my hand, and just looking at him. it was at least 5 minutes of silence as he started typing away, but it felt like an eternity in that brief moment. finally he turned and looked at me and said, "anything else?"
"no, professor." i got up and took my change of major request with me as i left. i got an A in thermodynamics the next semester. turns out entropy isn't energy made, but energy lost to the universe--energy "made" to the universe. some stupid physicist decided at some point and time, probably in a drunken stupor, that if it was "made" to the universe, it sounded a sh*tload smarter than saying he couldn't figure out where the hell it went.
so professor roby chose for me. i certainly could've argued the point with him, but he was a father figure to me. no way in hell was i going to argue with him. i'm pretty sure he knew it, and i'm glad he did. my mechanical engineering degree was my goal, my dream and a culmination of what i had discovered in myself. he made sure i didn't throw away that dream--even if at that moment, i didn't know any better.
there have been other times, that someone picked for me and they were wrong. but we can't control when someone else chooses and whether they are right or wrong. sometimes it's all about the ebb and flow. so i left sc, thinking i'd have a better life for my boys in ohio. in hindsight, that might have been wrong--but i faced some demons that i needed to face when i went back. it was necessary for me. it also resulted in me having to choose to come to kansas. and my boys do have a good life here and so do i. someone once told me that it's not the path you choose, but where you're going. in opposition, another told me that it's not where you're going, but how you get there. i think it's both. the path makes you who you are--where you're going might not even be planned. but you're going to love it when you get there.
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