Back to State
This morning I went to Raleigh, to NCSU, to get a campus ID made.
It was weird.
I started college at State in the fall of 1987. I wanted to go to their School of Design. I never got accepted, soI became an English major. I thought their English Department left a lot to be desired. NCSU is a land-grant institution which traditionally focused on agriculture and veterinary medicine. The humanities there are a bit of an afterthought. I ended up transferring to Appalachian at the end of my fifth semester.
During my sophomore year, 1988/1989, two friends of mine from high school who graduated a year after me lived in a dorm on State's campus that is shaped like a big letter "X." The ID card office is right next door. When I saw that dorm again I had a rush of memories that I hadn't thought about in years. The two guys, John and Justin, were good buddies of mine. Justin was a pretty brilliant person. Security entered their room one day when they were out and found stems in an ashtray. The university started disciplinary action against them. Justin went and spoke to a professor in the botany department who said - at that time - you couldn't tell what plant a stem was from if that was all you had. The university had to drop the charges.
Justin died of cancer in 1998.