Category Archives: School

anonymity

September 1, 2015 6:34 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I must have been 12 or so.

6th grade at Paul Revere middle school in any case.  A shiny new school at the time but already overcrowded.  Rather than build another school, the district decided to invest in “temporary buildings”.  Basically double wide trailer homes converted into classrooms behind the main building.

That’s where you might get in trouble.  At lunch time no one is supposed to be back there.  Everyone is supposed to wait and hang round the cafeteria till the bell rings.

As for me and my friends?  We just figured that was a polite suggestion and didn’t apply to us.  We would regularly sneak out of the cafeteria and hang out on the steps of the temporary buildings.

So there we are hanging out with other kids when we hear a commotion.  The vice-principals are out hunting.  Corporal punishment was very much in vogue back in the early 80’s.

We sneak behind the buildings and peek to see who’s coming.  There’s old man Brailsford.  A sadist that loved to wear a dark blue, three-piece, pin stripe suit and mirrored sunglasses in 90 degree heat.  Slowly swaggering down the road.

He seems to know exactly where to look.  He catches most of us, except….

I duck round the side of the building.  Nowhere else left to hide.  He just has to turn the corner to spot me.  My only chance is to go around him right in the open.  I take a deep breath and walk slowly and steadily around his right side. He’s busy browbeating my friends. I can’t believe this is working but I don’t dare stop walking. At most I’m 20 feet away from him and walking without any cover.

My friend Dean is there with the rest of the kids that got caught.  All the kids are lined up against the wall of a temporary building like criminals.  Dean looks right at me but doesn’t say a word.  One foot in front of the other.  I finally step out of sight and break into a run and make it back to the “safety” of the cafeteria zone.

I later catch up with Dean.  Everyone else got saddled with 3 days detention.  But rather than being mad at me, they celebrate my great escape.  I still can’t believe it.

This wasn’t the last time that this happened.  I’ve walked in front of people who I know in coffee shops and they’ve been totally oblivious to my presence.  Sometimes I have to obnoxiously wave to people for them to notice me.

I have “one of those faces”.  Nothing extraordinary about it.  At times I have been mistaken for almost every imaginable ethnicity.

In a culture where everyone wants to be distinct and individualized it can be a bit bothersome to think that I am totally indistinct.  But I suppose that I have to appreciate this gift for what it is.  The ability to blend into the background and not be bothered when I don’t want to.

Posted in: activities, life in general, school

Old school ties

August 12, 2015 6:50 AM , 2 Comments ,

Every once in a while someone will send in a resume through our sales inquiry form or they’ll call the main line and ask if we’re hiring.  I suppose when you’re looking for work you need to try every approach and take any opportunity to ask.

Once in a really long time I will get a professor from my old school contact me about a protegé that needs work experience or some recent grad will look through the former student rolls and randomly call people and push the “old school ties” to see if they can land a job.

“A” for effort but that’s not going to work with me.  I suppose it may have been possible at one time that going to a particular university may have insured you landing a good job no matter what your qualifications may have been.  I’ve personally never met anyone who claimed this dubious honor.  I know I wouldn’t brag about it if I had landed a job like that.

Nowadays I really can’t see this happening anymore.  Employees are investments as well as resources.

An employer will spend a significant amount of money recruiting, paying a salary to, setting up benefits for, and providing training for a new hire.  In small companies every employee is crucial to the success of the business. Many times employees in small companies have to take on a wide variety of different jobs and there really isn’t room for such favoritism based on something so arbitrary as having the same university in common.

You need people who can do not just the work assigned to them but be flexible enough to take on other responsibilities as well.

If I see a resume from a fellow former student (There is no such thing as an Aggie alumni) I will wish them luck.  I will reminisce with them about the school.  I will acknowledge that they went to a good university.  I know that they are willing to work hard.  But that’s all I know.  I can’t draw any other inferences from the university that they attended.  I don’t know anything about their ability to think or how they work with other people or what their particular strengths or weaknesses are.

Old school ties belong at reunions, they belong at tailgate parties for football games in the fall, they belong on maroon t-shirts but they definitely don’t belong in the job interview process.

Posted in: business, career, relationships, school, work

Hidden biases and how they may affect others

March 13, 2015 6:44 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Most people have by now heard about the racist chant incident at the University of Oklahoma.  They have also probably heard about  the University’s swift response in dealing with the incident.  Most people will leave it there.

I would like to believe that the incident was an anomaly.  A fluke that only existed in a single chapter of a fraternity and that it wasn’t representative of a hidden problem throughout the Greek system.

It’s difficult to tell as the national organizations that coordinate the Greek system don’t carry statistics on the racial make up of these frats.  By accident or by design we are left in the dark as to how integrated these groups are.

Why does it matter?  It matters because first and foremost these frats (and sororities) are networking clubs.  Social connections that help bind future business, political, and military leaders of tomorrow.  The people who help set the agenda for the rest of the population may be found in some of these groups.

Secondly, the opinions, attitudes, lessons, and biases that they receive while they’re in these frats may affect these individuals hiring practices, social attitudes, and thinking patterns well into adult life.

Lastly, the fact that these groups are exclusionary and in some cases may be deliberately excluding people based on some arbitrary standard means that some groups may be denied the opportunities to rise that these frat members enjoy.

Look, I’m not saying that every frat in America and every frat member is a bigot of some sort.  Far from it. Many fraternities are very community minded groups that really do take to heart the ideals that they espouse.  They help to mold young college students into the future leaders of America.  While all that is true however I think there is also no denying that some individuals and even chapters out there are trapped in outdated and bigoted mindsets.  Mindsets that purposefully try to exclude others for a variety of reasons.

It’s long past the time that these type of ideas are allowed to exist, even unofficially, in these type of groups.  The Greek system owes it to the nation as well as to itself to root out these attitudes and clean its house of this hidden cancer.  If fraternities an sororities want to stay relevant or even just exist in the 21st century then they must leave the 19th century behind.

 

Posted in: life in general, racism, school, social networks

The high cost of success

December 17, 2014 6:23 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note.  This is a reprinted blog posting from June 2008]

 

I was bored Friday night and decided to rummage through the closet for things to donate on Saturday to the local charity thrift store.  As I was sorting through old college notebooks and receipts I came upon a cardboard tube with my name on it and inside was my diploma.  I had never gotten it framed partly due to circumstances and partly due to laziness.

It was early December of ’93 and I had just cleared my library record, I had settled all my accounts on campus and I had gotten clearance from the registrar to graduate.  I went home and sneezed as I was cleaning my apartment since my parents were coming for the graduation.  That was the beginning of a three week-long flu bout.

By the next morning I could hardly get up.  Heavily fortified by NyQuil and pig-headed determination I somehow attended the graduation ceremony and stumbled across the stage to receive my diploma and then went home to lie in bed for most of December.

The diploma lay forgotten in some moving box. I was out of college but poor as a church mouse and living on credit cards as I tried to find a job, so framing a diploma was the least of my concerns.

Couple years later, I’ve got a job and I wander into a framing shop and they quote me 60 bucks for framing it.  Being lazy and needing to save money for vital things (aka going out and drinking) I put it off.

So it’s 2008, I take it out of the tube to look over.  There’s a slight crease along the side of the diploma from the graduation when I, half out of it due to the Nyquil and the fever, took the diploma out to look at it and then jammed it back in the tube hard.

On reflection, graduation should have been one of my proudest moments.  Not just for the occasion but due to the fact that I received my diploma from Michel Halbouty and shook his hand.  Who is Michel Halbouty?  He’s the last of the great Texas Oil men.  It would be like an engineer receiving her diploma from Thomas Edison or an art student receiving his degree from Leonardo da Vinci.

In any case, I finally took the diploma to a framing shop and found that success does indeed have its costs, as does laziness and procrastination.  There were frames to pick, backgrounds, different types of glass, and in no time a 60 dollar frame job turned into 390 dollar job and will take 2 weeks to be done.

The diploma will be custom fitted, sealed and protected from the elements in a dark red cherry wood frame with gold edging on a maroon and white (the school colors) background.  Normally I don’t like conspicuous display, I find it vulgar.  However, some things do deserve to be displayed and some things are worth showing off. This now sits in my home office.  The only decoration in the room.

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Posted in: education, life in general, memories, school

Love me, love my Aggies

November 9, 2014 6:45 AM , Leave a Comment ,

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An old saying goes that you don’t become an Aggie, that it is something you are from birth.  Your mindset is supposed to be more attuned to accepting the “Aggie way of thinking”, you hold some opinions that are adamantine, and that won’t change for anything.

I don’t know about any of that.  Coming from a foreign country at a young age I had no idea what an Aggie was.  College was in fact a non issue to a then 7-year-old kid recently arrived from Colombia.

It  was December of ’77 and my family and I were spending our first Winter and our first Christmas in Houston.  My mother discovered Foley’s, the local big name in clothes and housewares, in what was then the posh Sharpstown Mall.  She needed warm sweatshirts for her son and she picked an orange one with a cow skull and a maroon one with a block ATM on it.  The choice was left up to me as to which I would prefer and I gravitated towards the maroon sweatshirt.

Now, was this an example of fate making itself manifest through a simple choice in outerwear?  Did this simple choice unconsciously predispose me to one school rather than the other?  Or did the maroon jersey just feel more comfy?

I would like to point out that in between that Christmas and my application to A&M about a decade passed.  I had in fact applied to a variety of schools besides A&M including that other school up in Austin.  I had been accepted to that school as well as a couple of others but in the end A&M represented the best choice as far as engineering schools, which I intended to study at that time.

When I arrived in College Station my plan was to get on with my studies and not pay attention to any of the distractions of college life.  But being in a small town and around such a dedicated community of zealots, the camaraderie and esprit d corps  became contagious.

Some telling incidents occurred that first semester.  On a trip back home at a local grocery store an old gent approached me.  I was wearing school colors and he became visibly animated and shook my hand vigorously.  He had lost his ability to speak but the grin on his face spoke volumes.  He was just glad to meet another Aggie.

Another time I was working on the yearly bonfire.  It was around midnight and I was sitting by a small campfire resting.  An older student came by and sat with me and we started talking and talking for at least a couple of hours.  He shared a flask of something ‘non-regulation’ and a cigar.  Eventually he wandered off into the darkness.  Never did find out his name.

I began to develop a sense of community and belonging.

Now, I am not as fanatically devoted as many of my fellow former students when it comes to school ties.  I’ve known former students that won’t speak to friends and co-workers due to differences on the football field.  I remember during my freshman Spring Semester at school seeing an ad for a lecture for graduating seniors entitled “Can a t-sip (student from that school in Austin) be a friend”.  I rolled my eyes and wondered if they were being serious.  I would learn later on that in some ways they were being serious.  Happily that mindset was and never has been present within me.

But I do have to admit that I was one of those dumb Aggies that people make jokes about.

Just for the record, the first thing that they teach you at A&M IS how to write.  My first course was ENDG 105 engineering drafting and design.  I got one of those big pouches that they issue to architecture students.  A pouch full of rulers, pencils, erasers, and other odds and ends.  They then taught me how to write everything in block letters for blueprints and maps.  A habit that shows up from time to time in my handwriting.

I am one of those Aggies that stands steadfast by his convictions, feelings, and friends.

One of the things I cherish is the way that we don’t sway with the winds of change just for the sake of change.  We stand firm when it might not be the most popular or expedient way of doing things.  We will always greet and feel a familial feeling for any and all Aggies no matter when or where we meet them

I will always be one of those Aggies that wears his oversized  school ring everywhere.

That will wear maroon in a room full of orange, and that despite all the evidence to the contrary still believes that he went to the finest school anywhere.

Posted in: activities, football, school, sports

Rivalries

October 28, 2014 6:45 AM , Leave a Comment ,

It’s not the best of years to be an Aggie football fan.  The season has begun to turn sour.  But age puts these things into perspective.  Seasons come and go just as chapters in our lives begin and end and what was a disappointment this year may turn to joy the next.  I rarely let it affect my mood as I once did.  Certainly I’ve lost the fiery passions of my youth with regards to the game over the last twenty years.

I think part of that has to do with the new league that we find ourselves in.  In 2012 we broke with the schools in the Big-12 conference and moved over into the SEC (southeastern conference).  Partly to forge an identity of our own but mostly we moved for monetary reasons.  the reasoning went that we would step out onto the national stage on our own and we would no longer be subjected to constant comparison with our sibling school down the road.

Gone were the old rivalries with Baylor, Tech, and of course texas.  Saturday afternoons in the Fall.  Traditions shared from generation to generation for a century were now gone with the stroke of a pen.

Now we’ve been assigned rivals.  Yes, assigned. The league office announced in 2013 that the University of South Carolina would henceforth be our rivals.  As if they were assigning dance partners for us at some elementary school cotillion.  I hardly know anything about them, certainly nothing that would lead me to believe that I want them to be our rivals.

I look across at the rest of the conference and I have to admit that I find it hard to work up any sort of antagonistic feelings against any of them.  Alabama is the big bully of the conference but I harbor no animosity towards them.  Perhaps it’s because we beat them in our first meeting against them or just simply that Alabama is a good team and I find it hard to find fault with them.  LSU?  We’ve had some run ins with them in the past but we don’t hold much contempt for them.  The rest we really don’t know.  I don’t mean the team statistics.  Any fool can look those up online.  What I mean is that we don’t have a shared history or experience with these schools.  Perhaps with decades to come some sort of rivalries will unfold and to new generations this will seem perfectly natural.

To me it won’t.  Rivalries, whether you perceive them to be good or bad are essentially relationships. Relationships can’t, or at least shouldn’t, be terminated so abruptly.  Bonds exist, bonds that have lasted decades and ought not to be ripped away for considerations such as money or TV ratings.

I still miss those gaudy burnt orange flags, that garish marching band, that ludicrous popgun cannon, that overgrown walking hamburger, and our yearly “family reunion” just after Thanksgiving.

Posted in: football, life in general, school, sports

summertime blues

September 10, 2014 7:05 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I was coming out of the Alamo Drafthouse one Saturday in mid August.  Some of the movie workers were gathered round in the parking lot talking.  I caught a good deal of the discussion as I wandered past.  Some of them were quitting and headed back to school.  Whether to high school or college I couldn’t make out.

They were glad to be leaving work and to start the new school year but also dreading the monotony of constant schoolwork.

This brought back some memories of working during the summers in college.  Particularly a summer that I worked construction out at NASA.  My then brother-in-law got me a job as a day laborer for the company he was working with.  He was a shift foreman for an electrical contractor and needed some muscle to move parts and supplies for a new office building at the NASA complex in clear lake.

I started out by going to the early 1990s Heights neighborhood, which at the time was much scarier than the now fashionable Heights neighborhood.  I arrived around 6AM and was lost.  I stopped at a convenience store to get directions and a guy in a long green coat sidled up and offered to sell me “new tires” out of the trunk of his car.  I’m surprised he didn’t kosh me over the head with a lead pipe.

Anyways I found the main office which turned out to be a part office and part warehouse where I and 3 others watched a safety video and got a lecture from a middle management type about being very careful since we didn’t have health insurance and that was all there was to it.  I was now a day laborer.

So I spent the Summer driving out before dawn with my brother-in-law and working 14 hour days for 5 days a week and 10 hour Saturdays.  The double pay really added up over the Summer, specially since I was too tired to spend any of it.  On top of everything I signed up for a community college course to finish off an elective course in college.  So between that and work I was pretty much exhausted the entire Summer.

Work itself was tedious.  The electricians were all journeymen and were a motley crew of individualists here for the duration of the contract.  Once it finished they would all go their separate ways and get whatever jobs they could.  Union seniority was really the only distinction.  The shop steward made sure that we didn’t work a second after quitting time and reminded me often and loudly that as a non-union day laborer that I wasn’t covered by the Union in case of accident so I should join up and pay dues.  I explained to him several times that Summer that I wasn’t interested in making construction my life and that I was in fact in school.  Didn’t seem to matter to him.

I expected to be ostracized due to the fact that I was in school but the opposite seemed to take place.  Most of the electricians were interested and asked questions about modern college life.

I can’t say that I made the best laborer.  Most of these guys had been working hard since high school and were fairly muscular and large.  By comparison I was small but apparently they appreciated that I tried to do my job as best as possible.  Apparently day laborer isn’t a very well thought of position.  They apparently are often late to work or don’t show up at all and spend an inordinate amount of time hiding in the supply shed trying to avoid working.  Being naive as I was I didn’t know enough to hide from work and as a result I was being requested by various teams of electricians on different floors for whatever they needed.

Eventually this got me in trouble.  One of the older electricians had a son who was a day laborer.  This laborer was a snappy dresser and was not fond of getting his clothes dirty.  He was as lazy as some of the other laborers.  The older electrician took me aside one day and threatened me.  He said “Do you want to live longer?  Then stop working so hard!”  At least I think it was a threat.  Hard to tell.

The threat didn’t matter to me.  It was mid August and my time was coming to an end.  Community College was long over and I needed to get back to school and get my stuff out of storage and move back to College Station.  I walked up to the foreman’s trailer and gave my week’s notice to the site foreman.  All of the foremen there got really quiet.

“Can’t you wait for one more month, we’re almost done”  I couldn’t and truthfully I didn’t want to either.  Construction was a good experience for me but it wasn’t what I wanted to do for my life.

My last Friday came and I checked out.  The site foreman announced it on the walkie-talkie and all the electricians wished me good luck at school.  It was oddly touching.  As I was leaving one of the junior electricians came up and took me into the supply shed.  He looked left and right and behind him and handed me a scrap of paper.  “Just in case you’re interested”  Then he was off again.

It was a notice to some Christian revival meeting out in some small town I had never heard of.  Unexpected but very kind of him and I could see why he would be nervous.  The company would probably frown on this sort of thing.

I drove home that night and by Monday I was back in College Station setting up my apartment.  I had my working summer and was glad to be out of the hard world of construction work but I was also dreading the monotony of school life once again.

Posted in: Houston, memories, school, work

Lee memories

June 4, 2014 6:34 AM , Leave a Comment ,

My niece graduated college the other day and someone on Facebook noted that they graduated high school in 1989, the same year I did, and that it happened to be the 25th anniversary this year.  So I decided to blog some high school memories about old Robert E. Lee high school.

What can I say about Lee High?

It was nice….once. Built in the early 60s, to teach the then prosperous Galleria area kids.  It was a direct pipeline to the University of Texas.  A lot of rich people came out of that school back then.  Though the only really famous person that ever came out of there was Billy Gibbons from the band ZZ Top.

By the time I got there in 1985 it was starting to get run down.  The rich families that supported it had moved farther west so there was less money to spend on it and it was crowded.  I think around 2500 kids.  There was a shortage of teachers so they hired just about anyone that walked in off the streets.  One teacher quit in the middle of the school year and took off never telling anyone.

We didn’t realize how crappy an education it was till we got to college.  I think of the seven of us that tried to study engineering in college, not one of us made it past two years before changing majors or dropping out.  The high school diploma I got was nothing more than a cheaply printed piece of cardboard.

Besides the education it was a fairly apathetic experience, the football team lost more than they won.  At one point the marching band was down to 10 people.  Clubs of course and I got into those mainly for my college application but there wasn’t all that much enthusiasm.  Drugs hiding in the background, not much gang activity.  Like I said apathetic.

I think people just wanted to get through high school and get on with their lives.

People ditched classes a lot, but really I never got the sense that the staff cared all that much if the kids attended class or not.  There were parties of courses but it was all very cliquey and you had to be in “the group” to be invited.

My fondest memory of that time is that I finally got a job and a car and I had some limited freedom to be out on my own.

As far as my future education went, I was uninterested in school until I got placed into home room with Stan Pipkin.  Stan was one of those guys that could do anything or be anything that he wanted.  He was ridiculously intelligent (went onto be the valedictorian), He was a baseball player, he got along with everyone, and everyone wanted to be his friend.  I think he inspired me to take school seriously and think about college.  He did way more than any teacher or counselor in the school to get me into college.

Time passed and we graduated and went to college or got on with our lives.  The school district got tired of the school’s controversial name and changed it to just Lee high school and disbanded the football team that had no student support.  The school is still there of course.  It now sits in a fairly overcrowded part of the city, and there’s already talk of demolishing it.

I haven’t seen most of my high school companions in ages.  I went to the 5 year reunion.  If you saw the movie “gross pointe blank”, it was somewhat like that (same 80s music, same type of people) but with less murders.  I’ve thought about going to another reunion but I don’t sense much enthusiasm for it from the people who I do keep in contact with.

Some things are best left in the past.

Posted in: aging, school

A rough start

March 16, 2014 7:18 AM , 2 Comments ,

A couple of weeks ago I posted about my 20th anniversary out of school.  It brought back memories of that December graduation in 1993 and the events thereafter.  It also made me think how that time frame went a long way towards shaping the next 20 years of my life.

My last semester in college and you’d think I could just cruise through it on auto-pilot.  Not hardly!  If anything it was the most challenging of all my semesters.  I was taking the most advanced research and computer classes I could before graduating.  I knew that my financial situation would not be great after school even if I landed a job immediately so I wanted to be current as possible before I got out into the big bad world.  On top of that I was taking elective courses like civil engineering surveying and environmental sciences to cross train as much as possible and have a wide range of knowledge.

I wanted to be a rabid football fan but I just couldn’t spare the time that fall.  I spent as much time as possible buried in books and classes that I had to give up much of my social life too.

Besides all of that I was worried about what all college kids worry about.  Finding a job.

I was in Colorado the previous Summer at a field camp doing some geology classes.  We were all sitting around in a beer garden one night after class when I had the realization that this was it for me as far as formal school.  That final vestige of childhood was being stripped away from me and for better or worse I was going to be fully on my own.

I took advantage of the school’s placement resources when I got back to campus that Summer and all through the Fall.  I wrote up a resume as best as I could and taking all the counselor’s advice and used the school’s print center to run off as many copies as I could.  Among other disadvantages, I would be without a computer or a printer.  I wouldn’t have a personal computer again till 1995.

So we skip ahead to finals week.  I had my classes well in hand and I was boxing up my apartment.  My lease was also ending so I had to be packed and ready to leave.  I had applied to get a refund for my utility and rent deposits.  The resumes I had sent out so far had yielded no results yet.

The registrar verified I had no outstanding loans or library books and cleared me to graduate.  I stepped out of the office and sneezed.  That was a sign of things to come.

I made my goodbyes to my friends.  I was much more socially awkward back then and really didn’t know how to handle such things.  In particular I bid goodbye to one young lady I really liked.  She still had a year to go in school.  We promised we’d write and we did for a while but I think we both knew we’d never see each other ever again.

The night before graduation and I’m deep into packing up.  I’ve got a raging headache, it’s unusually cold for early December.  I’m feeling even more miserable.

My parents show up.  They want to take me to dinner but I beg off and go to bed.  The next morning I can barely get out of bed.  My sinuses are pounding and graduation is an hour off.  My parents and other family members are waiting for me.  I take some cold medicine to keep me going an somehow I stagger to the graduation.  I’m dizzy, nauseous, coughing, and miserable.

Michel Halbouty, a legend in the Texas oil industry, hands me my diploma and shakes my hand.  I barely notice him.  It’s all I can do to keep from falling over.

After graduation my parents realize just how sick I am.  They pack up the rest of my stuff and drive me back to Houston.  I spend the next 2 weeks in bed with the flu from hell.

So I started my adult life after college in a sick-bed with a couple hundred bucks from deposit refunds, a car that was on its last legs, no girlfriend, and no job.

It would in fact take me six months to land my first job.  I had several false starts with recruiting agencies and want ads in the paper but I finally landed the job I would have for the next 8 years.  I got the job by walking in and asking for it.  And it wasn’t due to my degree or my work experience but by trading on my “computer expertise” and working for a small consulting company whose execs knew even less than I did about computers.

I started at 6 dollars an hour and felt like the biggest failure ever.  This is what I went to college for?  Over time of course that improved and my job skills would expand and my responsibilities would make me a more valued asset at the company but it was difficult to see the upside back then.

Posted in: career, decisions, future, illness, jobs, life in general, school

going home

February 24, 2014 6:29 AM , 2 Comments ,

Last December the 20th anniversary of my college graduation came and went.  I was overburdened with work and family obligations so I didn’t really pay it any mind.

My dad was feeling somewhat claustrophobic these past few weeks.  He is particularly susceptible to the cold and he hadn’t dared show his face outside.  So since the weather had warmed up and I had a somewhat free weekend we decided to take a day and roam round the campus on a Saturday.

I’ve been back several times before of course but the changes always amaze me each time I go.

The first obvious change is in the trip there.  Houston Sprawl.  In all directions.  More strip malls, more subdivisions, more car lots, just more of everything.  For all intents and purposes Katy is now part of Houston proper just as Bellaire and several other smaller cities were engulfed decades ago.  You can’t tell where one starts and the other stops.  Beyond it the sprawl continues West at a furious pace.

We reach the village of Brookshire on I-10.  No doubt in a generation this too will be part of Houston.  For now it’s still somewhat isolated.  I take what for me was my little secret shortcut to College Station; FM 359.  A short two lane road connecting Brookshire to Hempstead.  After falling prey to a speed trap in Prairie View in my freshman year of college I vowed to never again feed the system and found this little road to bypass it and all the sprawl in Northwest Houston.

Of course my secret shortcut is now well-known.  A convoy of vehicles ahead and behind me.  Swarms of bikes on the road shoulders with people biking all the way out here from the city.

At one time this was just pristine prairie with the odd cow or horse to break up the monotony.  Now it’s dotted with tiny farmsteads and weekend houses for urbanites to getaway from city life.  Some build lavish homes, others live in squalid trailers and have junked cars in the front lawn.  Somewhat ruins the pristine beauty of the road for me.

I don’t even see Hempstead.  The new bypass goes round and continues on.

Another big change.  A new proposed landfill to service Houston.  The locals are fighting tooth and nail against it but it seems to be a lost cause.  Shame.

I pass Navasota in minutes and approach the outskirts of College Station.  The very first sight of it as always is the giant water tower that can be seen miles away.  Just the sight of it gladdens the heart.  Some things never change.  Some do.

College Station fits the definition of an exburb perfectly.  If you had fallen asleep in west Houston and just woken up you would swear that you’d never left the city.  What was once a two lane road running alongside the railroad tracks is now a divided 4 lane freeway with frontage roads.

Huge billboards advertise land for sale, new subdivisions starting in the 200s.  Woods, farmland, and open prairie are now subdivisions, man-made lakes and strip malls.  New big hospitals are building next to the highway.  Every imaginable chain restaurant or store can be found here.

We skirt round the campus before plunging in.  The west campus on the other side of the railroad has blossomed with new construction.  All sorts of research labs, state agencies associated with the University and class buildings now dot the landscape and there is still yet more room to grow.  The George Bush library is packed with tourists and visitors so we decide to skip it.  On the north side is the new crown jewel of the University.  The new Mays business college.  My dad asks me why I don’t go back and get my MBA from A&M.  I ask him if he has eighty thousand dollars lying around doing nothing.

We park at the visitor’s garage next to Kyle field.  The rebuild of the stadium is well underway.  I can’t believe that they’re spending 450 million on this.  But then the whole campus seems to be in a building craze.  They have to be with over 55 thousand students.  Far larger than the 40 thousand of my day.

Some of the old dorms and buildings are gone.  Sad.  But the room is needed to keep up.  The heart of the University is still intact though.  I see many of my old buildings still standing.  Old Halbouty hall, the geology building, decorated with trilobites.  The old chemistry building with weird astrological symbols along the roof line.

We take a break inside Evans Library.  Expanded and modernized.  The old microfiche and microfilm stacks are gone.  Everything is digital now.

The commons dorms where I spent my first year.  Four impersonal concrete bunkers but somehow they seem quaint now.

The corps of cadets.  Some in uniform, some not.  All distinctive due to their crew cuts.

Such a rush of memories coming at me from all sides.  I don’t know if it’s the same for alumni from other schools (although at A&M we don’t have alumni, we have former students).  I’ve seen people from other schools describe their college life in fairly plain terms.  They go to nondescript schools and take generic classes.  But I’ve yet to meet an Aggie that describes their school life in less than glowing terms.  It’s hard to explain to outsiders but it’s a feeling of being bonded to the school.  Maybe it’s the remoteness of the town (at least it used to be remote), maybe it’s the feeling that the school genuinely seems to be interested in your future.

Whatever the case may be, It’s no wonder that we call school visits, “going home”.

Posted in: school, travel