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No, not really. It’s just my car.

Sometimes, in college, you find yourself studying in some pretty weird places… this was one of those times. My wife is a development officer for a small college in northern Indiana. While she was meeting with an alumnus inside a cool, comfortable, air-conditioned bank, I was outside in my library, I mean car, sweating it out, reading about social psychology. “What is a development officer,” you ask? Well, jokingly I tell people my wife shakes down old people for money. That would be wrong. What my wife really does is travel around visiting with alumni, keeping them apprised of events and activities on campus, and of course, providing them with opportunities to support the institution. Someday, I hope to be one of these people… that is a “visitee” rather than a visitor (one officer in the family is enough; there’s a lot of traveling and hard work involved). I can’t really imagine, right now, that I would want to give money back to the university… I mean, wouldn’t that be kind of crazy? But, that is where a substantial portion of university funding comes from, alumni contributions. If you think about it, we pay tuition, but without alumni contributions, the costs would be much higher. I guess it kind of means someone helped us through school, so we should return the favor. Hopefully, (fingers crossed) the education we receive at IU East will enable us to do so.

I think it has for at least one recent graduate, and my new role model, Stormi Shafer. You might remember her from an earlier post when she met the creator of the Internet, Walter W. Walb. She recently graduated from IU East with a BSS degree with a concentration in psychology. Yesterday, she text messaged me saying, “i love my job.” She used her degree to land a job at Pearson Education. “Who are they,” you ask? Take a look at one of your textbooks. There’s a pretty good chance, it’s a Pearson Education product. Cool. As I sweat and study in my car/bookmobile, I tell myself, “Think about Stormi, she graduated, and so can you.” I’ve just got to make it through the summer. Hopefully, in a few years, Stormi, myself, and all the other folks studying at IUE, will be successful to the extent that… people like my wife will be shaking us down.

10-4,

Barry

P.S. Don’t worry, I never read while driving… it makes it too hard to take notes.