are you passionate?

i just got back from paying my graduation fee. the fee goes towards paying for your cap and gown and diploma. i wanted to take a picture of me and the girl working in the registrar's office. i don't think she understood how important that moment was for me. after i paid it, i drove around downtown thinking of my three years at UHD. here's what i thought of:

- my first day. i took the bus downtown because i had decided that the bus was going to be my new mode of transportation. the morning ride was a success. i made it to class on time. but after class was a different story. i waited by jones hall for 45 minutes without seeing a bus. finally, i decided to take matters into my own hands. i began to walk and i walked all the way from downtown, down memorial to my apartments at memorial and shepard. i never took the bus again.

- the fun semester. last fall, i took intermediate acctg. II, individual tax, AIS and some HR class. it was the first semester in the new business building. all i remember about that semester is standing around outside with tim and lindsey talking about internships and jobs. that was the semester i got the job at SPX and left fox sports. i was getting married the next semester. it felt like everything was finally changing.

- the rainout. during the first summer session in 2006, we got rained out for a few days and the school was closed due to flooding. i took the opportunity to see for myself what was happening. so i got on my bike and rode in the rain downtown with my digital camera wrapped up and dry. i took tons of pictures around the campus and over the bridge. it was amazing to see the bayou area right behind the spaghetti warehouse turn into a raging river. i was soaking wet and dirty as hell by the end of it, but it was great to see what a little rain can do.

- the test. i had to take a test for an online class on campus early on a saturday in february of 2008. i had studied the day before but convinced myself i needed to do more studying at school, since that was where i was going to take the test and somehow the information was more likely to stay with me. anyway, i got there and blew off studying. i went walking downtown. it was february and it was grey. it was early too, around 9:30. no one was moving around, except the bums. downtown looked like the old downtown i knew when i was younger. it was ugly. it was dirty. and i felt completely isolated there.

- one time i drank so many energy drinks, i could barely keep my hand steady during my exam.

- i remember wanting to fall asleep every night in intermediate acctg. III and auditing because i had been up since six that morning, had worked all day and was ready for a nap. i also remember during my final for intermediate acctg. III, my professor had a cold and she kept hacking and sneezing and wheezing during the entire exam. on top of that, i had drank two diet sodas right before the exam. so i was in agony trying to concentrate and not piss myself while constantly being distracted by my phlemmy professor. i wanted to knock her out.

- i remember riding my bike to school one day. i rode from my current address. the morning ride was fine. it took a little under an hour to get there. but the ride back was anything but easy. i didn't know it, but i had picked the windiest day on record. winds were clocked at record speeds. those winds made my 50 minute morning journey a two hour journey home. i actually called my wife to pick me up from the restaurant down the street because i couldn't make it home.

- i remember finally realizing the library had real books and i didn't have to buy so many books. i could check them out. i checked out three and read them in a month. i can't wait to have time to read again.

- i remember everyday wondering if i had made the right choice, if i was good enough and smart enough to pull this off. this wasn't a question of competition among my fellow students like so many times before in school. this was a question of myself. could i do this? did i have what it took to concentrate and focus and learn an entirely foreign industry? there were a lot of days i doubted myself.

- i remember parking everyday what felt like 5 miles from the school and walking up the bridge over the bayou, sweating my ass off carrying three, sometimes four books in the same backpack i used in high school.

- finally, i remember what it was like to pay for my graduation fee. i'm not done yet. i still have a few weeks, a few papers, a few tests. but looking back, it's amazing where i started. i was working at fox sports. my days off were tuesday and wednesday. i had a girlfriend and i lived alone. i had no idea what i was in store for.