Transition Points

Transition points are times in your life that are defining moments...times that are highlights in your development...times that have major impacts in determining who you are and who you will become.

Research has shown that transition points are also the times that people past the age of forty - and I more than qualify on that count - remember most vividly. The beginning of the college experience is usually one of the graphic memories that people retain. I suppose that I would have made a good research subject, because this is one of the experiences that seems to have stayed with me. And, for some reason, I revisit it on a regular basis.

The year is 1959. A seventeen year-old finishes in the top ten in his high school graduating class of 156 without having to bother to develop any particularly strong study habits. He has a younger sister and two younger brothers. He has no particular strengths or weaknesses. He may feel a bit better than average were it not for his lack of confidence in himself and a lack of experience with some social skills peculiar to teenage boys.

His parents have spent most of their working lives as school teachers. His family has never missed a meal. In fact, they've never missed out on anything that they truly needed. But the prospect of financing college expenses for four children was an obvious and significant enough issue that even a seventeen year-old understood that the task could become daunting. He needed to find a way to help.

The local shipyard was the largest private employer in the state and they were beginning a co-operative education program. Two high school graduates would be selected. They will alternate attending school for a semester and working a semester and if their school work is satisfactory, they will be guaranteed a job each alternate semester until their senior year when they will attend school full time.

I was that seventeen year-old. I applied and was scheduled for an interview where I learned that all students must be engineering majors (whatever that meant, I had no clue). I would be required to attend either Mississippi State University or Auburn University. With Auburn being located in a foreign country (Alabama) that would require out-of-state tuition )that would come out of my pocket) the decision came easily. Mississippi State. Hands down!

My father was an excellent communicator. He had taken the time to teach me two of the basic facts of life. Fact One: High school graduation is not the end of anything. It is the beginning of something; either college or full-time employment...immediately. Fact Two: See Fact One.

In 1959, social security numbers were not issued until you were eighteen and you were required to have one to work in a defense installation. And, so, it came to pass that I graduated from Moss Point High School on a Friday night, slept late on Saturday morning, and packed my earthly belongings on Saturday afternoon. They all fit in one suitcase and an old footlocker.

On a Sunday morning in May 1959, my entire family, along with all of my stowage, fit into a Ford station wagon and began the trip North to a location where none of us had ever been for even a visit. Starkville, Mississippi.

I had no idea that this would turn out to be one of the longest-running memories of my life. So far, it has continued for a half-century. There is more to be written on this subject, but this is the way it began. And this is the way I remember it.