I spent the week of graduation – my last week at Mississippi State - driving my friend Jerry’s old Jeep Wrangler. He was borrowing my truck to move his things back to Vicksburg. Every night that week I would go out driving my friends Dana, Stephanie, and Becky around town while they drank beer and I enjoyed the company of three very pretty former members of the Phi Mu sorority – one of whom was also finishing grad school that week.

When Jerry got back in town I offered to buy that old Jeep Wrangler from him. He laughed and said he would never sell the vehicle to a good friend. Jerry said it was so prone to break down that you would almost have to be a professional mechanic to keep it on the road.

At just that moment I was struck with a profound realization: Had I not been unexpectedly injured, I would have been a former professional soccer player by then. And I would have been a professional mechanic without a single college degree by then, too. Instead, I was a 28 year old PhD who had just landed a good job in North Carolina.

I promised the aforementioned hate mailer that I would not talk about religion in this column. So I’ll not even mention the obvious role of Divine Intervention in my academic turnaround. Instead, I’ll just try to inspire a little optimism with the following bit of advice: There is no tragedy or setback so great that it cannot be turned into a blessing with the help of a little persistence and hard work.

For those who are uninspired or otherwise unconvinced, there is a second part to this story. I plan to write it just as soon as I finish re-reading the Book of Job.

To Be Continued…

Mike S. Adams was recently named Director of the Men’s Resource (MR) Center at UNC-Wilmington. His office will soon be decorated with an autographed poster of Ashley Herzog wearing a Carolina Blue bikini. Applications for the MR Center’s new “Study a Broad” program will be available on-line some time in August.