Send Ken To College

High school in Ottumwa, IA in the early 80’s…

High school was generally boring. I did well or I did badly. There were few C’s on my report cards. My grades were either low A’s or high B’s or they were D’s. I like classes like my history of western civilization class with Mr. Warren, I kind of enjoyed math class and I really like the time that I got to spend on what we would now call a PC.

My junior high and high school both had a TRS-80 Model II computer (one of which my slightly dubious acquaintance, Bob, has locked away). I was one of the few people allowed to lay hands on it and only because I had taught myself programming in BASIC. This was one bad-ass machine with it dual 5.25 inch floppy drives, 48K (yes, K not M) of memory and the cassette recorder so that we could write our programs to cassette tape.

In my senior year in high school they finally built a lab with 8 Apple IIc’s and IIe’s. This was before they became Macs. Mr. Stoneking, the science teacher, undertook a programming class which I happily joined. I was already well ahead of the curve since the Apple BASIC was pretty much what I had already learned. Mr. Stoneking had us do a final project which was to simulate a multiple listing service like a realtor might use. He stated we could use any resources open to us. That was my first professional programming gig. I sold copies of my code to classmates. I made a couple of hundred dollars which kept me in junk food and video games for awhile. I received an A- on that project because in the words of the teacher, “I got tired of seeing your code by the time I got to grade it”. Yes, I was considered a fair resource for this project and as such my classmates were allowed to purchase my code.

Fresh of this triumph I decide college was a good place for me so I packed up my 2.37 GPA and my 29 composite score on the ACT test and headed north to Iowa City and the University of Iowa. Forget computers, I discovered hard core partying and off I went…

To be continued!

It was a cold and dark December morn in the far away land of Ottumwa, IA.  It is a morning my mother still remembers well because she missed breakfast birthing me.  At about 7:10 am, I came kicking and screaming into the world and some say I still make too much noise.

From that beginning, over a rather long and rough (at times) road, I have got to where I am today.  I am doing what I should have done 25 years ago, getting a college education.  I gave it a try after high school but I’ll be darned if I didn’t discover partying and I did it well.  That was it for college until 2003 when I got downsized (note to self, see if anyone still uses this annoying reference).  I decided I would give the local community college a try.

3.5 years later I left Kirkwood Community College with an Associates degree in computer programming.  This degree did little good in finding me a job so I decided to pursue a Bachelors degree in computer science at Mt. Mercy College.   Now here it is about 1.5 years later and I am a senior expecting to graduate in May ’09 and what have I done?

I have begun applying to graduate schools.  Part of this was due to the incessant nagging of Bob, one of my acquaintances of a slightly dubious nature.  In part my decision to apply to the University of Northern Iowa was due to Dr. Bohy, one of Mt. Mercy’s new CS faculty members.

The major problem with all of this book learnin’ is that it costs money!  More on this later….