Ears to Hear

Reflecting on the time of November 23, 1975

Dear ’30,

I haven’t blogged for a while because it’s been a busy month. One thing that kept me occupied was visiting the colleges that my stepdaughter is applying to. Another thing was the chance to interview a candidate for your class. This high school senior has excellent potential at CGA, and I hope he chooses to join the Long Blue Line, although he is sure to have many other options. These doings prompted me to reflect on my own college search and the other schools I could have attended. Asking “what if?” is usually a waste of time, but maybe not in this case, if it helps you with your college decision.

Like you, I had a strong GPA and excellent test scores in high school as well as a lot of sports, service and leadership roles. As I mentioned, CGA was my first choice, but I was also admitted to Washington University in St. Louis and to Purdue.

To start, let me say that the difficulties I’ve encountered in life would been essentially the same on any path I had chosen. They were a function of yet-to-be-addressed character defects which would have tripped me up regardless of circumstances.

As to Washington University, there’s an odd coincidence. When I went to get a Master’s of Science in Civil Engineering many years later (using the Post-9/11 GI Bill, BTW), my graduate advisor often talked about his advisor, Dr. R. I came to find out that Dr. R. had graduated with a civil engineering degree from Washington University within a few years of when I got mine from CGA. He had a very distinguished career with many high-impact publications and is now the head of a leading academic institute on sustainability, a topic of great interest to me. When I learned about him, the thought that immediately came to mind was, “That could have been me.” Probably not, but what if it was? It would have been nice to receive such academic honors and to be a change agent for good.

Yes, but.

When I reflect on the honor of serving my country doing real-world missions that I believe in, the possibility of academic honors goes down a notch or two. True, I’ll never have the wide impact of Dr. R., but I can point to areas where I did have an impact, particularly in my service after 9/11. And now, even late in life, I am making a tangible difference in my community and the industry. I sustain life with clean water.

A Purdue degree would probably have led me to specialize in a particular field of civil engineering. In contrast, the USCGA civil engineering program is general and broad-based in nature. Perhaps, Purdue would have enabled me to scale the ladder in a national engineering firm, which could well have led to greater compensation over the years of my career. But I would not have enjoyed the variety of experiences that I have had in my CG and civilian engineering career. I’ve had breadth, not depth, which is fine by me. I like to learn about many things, and public service has been meaningful to me. When I was on the facilities engineering team at Training Center Petaluma, we laid out the master plan for base expansion, which has largely been implemented. It feels good to go back there and see that.

In the end, I am happy with the path I’ve taken and thankful to CGA for setting me on that path. I am wealthy in terms of honor and meaningful work.

May it be so for you as well.

Robert