Almost 20 Years On

Middle Daughter asked, just now, what year we graduated from college. We've never thought of it that way before. We pondered the question for what seemed like an eternity but was really two seconds and replied, 2002. 

We entered Wesley College* in 1992, met a local girl, and then transferred to an undisclosed non-Jesuit University in Washington DC. Bastards. In 2001, after months of futility, we went back to school online, at American Public University System. This was when nobody understood what we were doing and asked questions like, 'You mean you do everything on line?'

We did, on a dial-up modem. We studied World Military History. Why not? We finished our degree in just under a year with a 3.9 GPA. Not bad for someone who graduated 106 out of a class of 134 and scored 850 (out of 1600) on his SATs. We stayed on and earned an MA in the American Revolution.

Those grad and undergrad term papers became magazine articles thanks to a suggestion by Professor Brian Todd Carey. In early 2002 we got an idea for a novel but were too busy. In March of 2003 we began that novel. It became A Line through the Desert.

*Here's a Will at Wesley reminiscence. Here's another. And yet another.