Reply #4: I did both, and loved every hard minute of it ... I think [View All]

When I got out of high school at 18 about 5,230 years ago I had no idea what I wanted to do. I went to a 4 year college because that's what we did in my family. I did fine in the courses I enjoyed and badly in the courses that were boring. On average, obviously, I did poorly. So, I left after 3 years.

I worked around, discovered what I could do best, and went back to tech school at night, effectively starting over. In the mean time I had gotten married and had a child. Now, ain't that education enough for one lifetime?

It took forever for me to finish, but I did. I graduated with a respectable GPA from the University of South Carolina at Spartanburg after years of night classes. The funny thing is that the computer science department, in which I had taken a lot of classes, wanted to make me their "Student of the Year" in 1996. I said "Sure dudes, let's go for it!" The only problem was that I wasn't in their department, but I didn't know at the time that it would be a problem. They eventually told me that I didn't qualify as their top student because I was in another academic department, but they did dedicate the blank space for 1996 on the big hallway plaque to me.

I feel honored, in an odd sort of way.