A number of times over the years, a child of a friend has had a challenging first year at college. I had a rough time in my first years of college, so the first time this happened I told them my story. Writing it brought back a lot of memories (and a few tears).

When I was growing up, I loved school. I loved to read, I loved math, I loved science… almost everything. I was always a favorite of the teachers, and I did very well. My whole school career, K-12, I never received anything lower than a B, and those were pretty rare. My junior year, there was a particular teacher that drove me (and a lot of other students) crazy, and I missed weeks of school that year from illness brought on by the dread of going to his class - but I still got an A-. I never had to work too hard at school, I enjoyed it, and I did well.

I wanted to design and build computers. Dad had bought us a Commodore 64 when I was 11, and from then on I was hooked. When I applied to colleges, I was going for Computer Engineering. I looked at George Washing U., Carnegie Mellon, RPI, Penn State, and a number of others. I got scholarship offers to all of those schools. I was a National Merit Scholar. I got somewhere around 1300 on my SATs. Everyone wanted me.

But I wanted to go to Rochester Institute of Technology. They had graduated 10 classes of Computer Engineering students, and their students always got co-ops with IBM, Digital, HP, and other big name technology companies. And my aunt and uncle lived in Rochester, so I was somewhat familiar with the town. So that’s where I went. I got a tiny little scholarship ($1000 a year), and tuition/room/board were quite high, but my dad knew I would excel and was very supportive of my choice and enthusiasm for RIT.

I got to the school a week early, bought all my books, and I had read all of the books for my computer courses before the first day of classes. My dorm was main-streamed with the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, meaning we had mixed hearing and deaf students. I had a three room suite (two bedrooms and a private bath) with two roommates. It was incredibly cool, and I was thrilled to be studying computers and living away from home.

RIT had a quarter-based system at the time. The normal school year was three trimesters, with summer off. With co-ops and other programs, many students took classes in the summer, which was a full quarter, so many full classes were offered.

The first quarter sailed by. I loved it, and did well. I didn’t connect with many students in my major, because I was in a dorm without many CE kids. But I enjoyed my dorm. It was very diverse - hearing/deaf, graphic design/art students, printing, business, etc. I made a bunch of friends at the dorm, but never had any in my major. But it didn’t matter. I had a lot of fun.

At the end of the quarter, there was a bunch of stuff going on at the dorm, so I skipped all my classes in the last week. I worried about some quizzes and such that I missed, but I knew I had done well all term, so what the heck. When I got my grades, the only impact was I got a B+ in Calc I instead of an A… straight A’s otherwise - 3.85 GPA.

I went home for Thanksgiving then came back for the second quarter. It was an intense quarter with two programming courses and doubled-up advanced Calc courses. But, hey, I had skipped a whole week with no consequences, and there were only three weeks until Christmas break, so I didn’t really have to go to class. I could catch up in the new year.

Well, needless to say, I really struggled in the new year. I was way behind, getting really scared, and overwhelmed. My original roommates turned out to be a drug dealer and an alcoholic ex-army guy. We didn’t get along, so I moved down the hall with a friend. This friend turned out to be flunking out. He played online computer games all night long and slept all day. He never bathed, and I had to put six of those plastic mushroom deodorizers around my bed to not smell him. I dreaded going back to my room, and I slipped into a violent depression.

I muddled through the courses that quarter, drinking lots of whiskey on the weekends, throwing things out of my 10th floor dorm window to watch them smash below - with buddies of course - and otherwise taking my frustrations out on the facilities of the school. Lots of broken windows and trashed common areas. I never got in trouble, but I was on a binge, and I was incredibly frightened and confused.

I managed to pull a 2.0 GPA, but I got a D in a programming course and dropped a Calc course. In my whole life, I had never seen even a B-, and here I was getting D’s and being thankful. No one from the school ever checked in, and I never went looking for help. I just started wallowing in my own misery and breaking stuff.

Third quarter started. I went to all my classes the first week… and never went back. I would sleep fitfully in my room all day (by this time my roommate had flunked out, and I had the room to myself), get up when everybody came back to the dorm and I would stay up all night, drinking a lot on weekends. I feared returning to the classroom. I was ashamed of what the teachers might think. I was appalled at myself. Everything was black and dark.

I had dreams and daydreams of being a watchtower sniper clipping people from my 10th floor window until a SWAT team killed me. Toward the end of the quarter, I asked my friend Marty to get me enough LSD to go up and never come back. He always said, sure, sure but never got me any. I think he saved my life - on purpose.

Throughout this whole thing, I never told my parents anything. I would just say, it’s really hard and not give details. I finally got up the courage to drop one of my classes late in the semester and the teacher said, “I wondered when you would show up with a withdrawal form.” For some reason, I went to every one of my physics labs - for two different physics courses - and aced them. So I ended the last quarter of my freshman year with a 0.45 GPA.

When my parents picked me up at the end of the semester, I was sullen and quiet. That last weekend, I had gotten really drunk and did some major vandalism by throwing furniture out of an empty 10th floor dorm room onto a 2-story building below. Campus safety checked it out, but I didn’t get caught. I was deeply depressed, scared, and hung over while riding in my parents’ van the next day.

I went home and continued my depression, staying in my room and listening to music all day long. When my grades finally came in the mail, I knew I couldn’t lie any more. Sobbing and forlorn, I told my dad everything that had happened. He sat next to me on my bed, held me very tight, and just listened. He told me he loved me, that he knew that it wasn’t all my fault, that I was a brilliant and talented person. He was very angry at the school for letting me slip away through the year. He told me he would do anything to help me.

My whole view of my father changed that day. I had never shared much openly with my family; no more details than necessary. I kept my life to myself except when I was at home. Now I realized I never had seen how deeply loving and supportive they could have been at other tough times. I never respected them enough or gave them enough credit.

That summer, Dad helped me argue my way back into school - I had been suspended because of my grades. However, when I went back in the fall, I couldn’t cope, and I dropped out a month into the first quarter. I went home and worked for my dad that fall.

In the spring, I enrolled at the local campus of Pitt. For the next two years, I took 20 or 21 credits of classes per term - in sociology, economics, philosophy, psychology, even calculus to prove to myself I could do it. I also worked 15-20 hours a week for my dad. And I had a social life. I aced every single class, rebuilding my confidence, finding my enjoyment of school again, rebuilding my psyche.

I fell in love, got engaged, married, and moved to Virginia. My younger brother had enrolled there, and they had a curriculum that was cross-disciplinary that most of my credits could transfer into and I could graduate in a reasonable time. In Virginia, I worked at a multimedia company, IDD, where I met and became friends with Teresa. I graduated Cum Laude with a degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences with minors in Computer Science, Sociology, and Economics. I worked another year at IDD until moving to Akron, Ohio to work at Roadway. A year later, I ended up at Rockwell. A year later, I got divorced, reconnected with Teresa, and fell in love again - this time not from within a deep depression and a lot more mature.

And I’ve lived happily ever after.