Between life, NC State, and UNCG I'll say it this way:
I realize in retrospect I've gotten a hell of a good education,
okay, and I have to give them all equal due, not just State.
But I've been very fortunate in that education. Now with that,
as someone who's taught at Appalachian I can see some similarities and differences between State
and I don't agree with the large classes. That's a bad idea for a lot of reasons
but I understand the economics of it.
But the one thing that it does teach you to do is survive. To learn on your own.
So while that's not necessarily the best way there's value there
and then of course we had a lot of great courses. Both schools, I've had some phenomenal professors,
and there have been poor ones too.
When you got people like Kelly and Petrea and Norm Anderson and any number of professors,
and then you have a lot of young professors who were not that different than you and really could still know where you were
were but maybe didn't cross the boundary but would get up next to it in terms of relationships; that was nice. You get that.
So I think that as I look back, I'm sitting here doing theoretical work on thermodynamics and optics and I say, how do I know that?
Where did that come from? And I think it has to go back to the schools and of course, you know, learning to learn.
That's a very big deal. You get static and you're stuck there,
and of course as you get older you tend to get static more frequently, but we won't go there.
But I would say that that exposure.
The one that I think that--not the one thing but one of the big things--is problem solving.
I realize that my experiences, you know, State had a lot of labs,
even though you could do them ahead of time and go in and turn them in, which is kind of bad,
but anyway a lot of good labs,
and then it just being the '60s and early '70s you had all the social stuff
and you saw professors on a different level, and there were a lot of professors that had issues with the war.
I think grade inflation came along at the time. If I were a professor realizing if I'm going to give this guy a grade that maybe he earned but that that would be his meal ticket into the army,
that's stressful for the professors. Why do you want that responsibility?
So I think there was a lot of things very positive about that.
I think learning to think, learning to get information, I think networking with people,
all those were good, and I still have a deep love for NC State.
I mean the alma mater always kind of makes me tingle, so I feel that way. I feel that way about service and the American flag as well, so, you know, they're right there.