10 Years With UAH

8/23/2007 – 5:05 pm

I drove through UAH’s campus today, like I do a few times a week. Typically I’ll drive around campus during or after eating lunch; I work right across the street, and well, the school holds a special place in my heart.

I first visited campus in the summer of 1996. Mom and I had planned two trips for me to visit colleges, based on the (grossly little for the amount of importance it truly had, if I am honest with myself) research I had done into prospective colleges. My plan was simple: two trips, visiting two schools each. I was interested in five universities overall, ranked as follows:

  1. The University of Illinois
  2. The University of Missouri-Rolla
  3. The University of Alabama in Huntsville
  4. The University of Tennessee
  5. Mississippi State University

State was my safety school: it had the major I wanted [although not the emphasis I was interested in] and would more than pay for itself. Honestly, I was interested in Illinois and Rolla because they were far away from home. UT interested me only because I was born there and thought that I’d enjoy going to a SEC school.

Our first visit was to UT and UAH. We drove out early to Knoxville and visited with two of my dad’s old cadets, who’d married and had kids and all that rot. They’re the cadets my folks talk about the most when they reminisce about our Knoxville years. I had a good time that night, but when I visited the department the next day, it was all wrong: poor computers, old books, etc. It was not on the cutting edge. I left there having mentally crossed them off of my list; I was only interested in their scholarship offers in an effort to extort more money out of potential suitors. [See also: how I used Mississippi State to get more money out of UAH.]

Our next stop was, of course, my now-alma mater. Despite the trip being hosed up eight ways from Sunday—I brought us into town down a route that is an hour longer than the most efficient, so we were late and there were all sorts of issues getting checked into the dorm for the night—something clicked. I’ve never really been able to express what it was that I felt—or what it was that I still feel, honestly—but it felt right. After a great visit the next day, I was sold. On the way home, I told Mom that we could forget the other trip. I’d found my top choice. I don’t remember what we spent the money she’d saved up for that trip on instead, but it was something worthwhile.

Anyhow, not long after that trip, I was accepted to UAH—yes, a full year before I graduated from high school. [As I remember it, they had to key things into the system to note that I'd start fall 1997 rather than 1996; subsequently working in Admissions that next year, I understood. It was a screwy system.] I tried to get other friends of mine to come with me, but I ended up being the only member of my graduating class there. [Alternatively, 25+ members of my class went to State.]

There were times when it looked like we weren’t going to be able to comfortably afford UAH, but in the end, some really good days taking standardized tests were paired with my hard work in school and I went to school pretty much only having to pay room and board. Mom made me a deal: she and Dad would pay for the first two years, but after that, I was on my own. I paid a lot more for my education than my parents did in the long run, because I went another three years and all that. They helped me out a fair bit with money and more than my fair share of moral support. But the taxpayers of Alabama are really who put me through school. Thanks, y’all. :)

As I drove through campus at lunch, I realized that today is the ten-year anniversary of the day I moved to Huntsville. I have lived in this area longer than anywhere else in my life, and it’s the first place that I chose to live independent of my family. [Yes, I'd left to go to school in Columbus prior to that, but I was restricted to being there because I was a Mississippi resident.] I have, at times, regretted coming here, but that’s when I thought that I was headed in the wrong direction. I think that I’m mostly headed in the right direction now.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here for ten years. It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long, but then there are many new things on campus since I started:

  1. A new University President.
  2. Two new dormitories.
  3. The University Fitness Center.
  4. Greek Housing.

I was but one voice of many in arguing for all of these things [save replacing Frank Franz; I love Frank] as a student. It’s great to see UAH making great progress as we go forward into the future. I was at UAH at a great time to be a student there, and it’s getting better every year.

I’m proud. To be. A U-A-H Char-ger.

By Geof F. Morris | Posted in Introspection | Comments (0)

On Racism

8/11/2007 – 10:08 pm

Stephen wrote eloquently about racism earlier this week in support of International Blog Against Racism Week, and the further I get away from my comment in reply, the more self-frustrated I get.

I still think my best experience in life when it comes to race relations was living on a white-minority hall at MSMS for a year. I did a lot of listening that year.

I guess what I needed to say—and didn’t—is that I learned a lot by shutting up. I need to do that a lot more.

The other thing that got me to really thinking recently was watching the first six hours of Eyes on the Prize. I don’t know why it didn’t hit me at any level other than intellectual before, but as I watched, I realized: “The decade I value most as a fan of space history and the decade to be most valued in bringing about civil rights change are one and the same.” It helped me to realize that all these important events in our nation’s history—truly starting us down the path of equality—just weren’t that long ago. When I think about that, it gives me pause. What it drives home is a very simple message: these changes started not long ago, and we are still feeling the first- and second-order effects. Our racial rifts in this country formed over a couple of centuries, and four decades is not going to erase that collective memory. It’s a start. We have to keep walking … together.

By Geof F. Morris | Posted in Introspection | Comments (1)

Two Years

5/28/2007 – 7:24 am

Two years ago today, I stood by my brother as he got married.

Today, I’ll stand by him again as he grieves.

This is not easy, but it is necessary. :sigh:

By Geof F. Morris | Posted in Introspection | Comments (0)

Off

2/1/2007 – 9:02 pm

I feel compelled to explain why I’ve just not made many tracks on the Internet lately, but … I guess that if you’ve followed along, you understand why.

I think that, like the rest of my family, I just feel pretty wrung-out right now. The hard part for me, I think, is that I’m usually such a verbal person, and when not verbal, I write. Words are how I deal with things and how I think things through. [Just yesterday, a colleague of mine---who is, himself, notoriously verbose---asked me to "use shorter sentences". This was on a teleconference, so the co-worker on my end and I had a good laugh at that.] My way is certainly no better than any other; it’s merely what works best for me.

So when I’m at a point when the words don’t come easily, things are definitely sucking.

I think that part of the issue lies in the fact that I feel like I have to dam a lot of the flood of things going on in my head. I mean, for my brother’s sake, I should shut up and stop verbalizing all this crap, because, on the scale of things, we all know that his life’s been far more rocked than mine. And as with the passing of any family member, the absence of Cindy in our lives merely reveals the flaws in all other relationships, as those relationships become strained as we all struggle to cope with this new existence. But as with many such things, the strain also strengthens things. [You can take the boy out of mechanical engineering, but you can't take the mechanical engineering out of the boy.]

But in the midst of everything else, well, my sleep pattern is radically off. I put some of that on environment—I never sleep well away from home—but that surely can’t be all of it. All I do know is that my body really struggles to know what time it is right now. [At work, all it knows is that it must be quitting time somewhere.] That’s just sapping anything else that I’ve got going, and it’s making me damnably ineffective at anything I try my hand at. Of course, that’s always a dangerous spiral, because I have this weird conception that, if I’m not any good at something, I just don’t do it. But right now, that’s being a bad negative feedback loop—not coming up to par on anything that I’m doing, I don’t feel like doing anything. And that, well … that’s bad.

So I’m trying to take it a step at a time—writing it out a bit, and also seeking to take some better care of my sleep habits with the idea that being rested will have positive benefits. Here’s hoping. [And if you're saying, "Yeah, he wrote himself out of this even as he talked about writing out of things," you've gotten the point. This is far more for me than it is for you. It's probably only for you if you have to put up with me. :)]

By ijsmorg | Posted in Incoherent Ramblings, Introspection, Recaps | Comments (2)

An Update on the Jan 2007 Resolutions

1/22/2007 – 10:24 pm

Well, I’m officially breaking my make-to-be-broken resolution tonight; I’m behind enough on laundry that I won’t be laying anything out tonight for work. It’ll still be in various states of being laundered when I go to bed [an hour fast approaching, honestly]. In fact, it’s a strong possibility that I’ll be 0-for-3 on the resolutions, but … that’s okay. Doug called Dad and I “my right arm and my left arm, and most days, my right leg and my left leg” the other day. That’s enough for me. Silly resolutions pale greatly in comparison to being there when your family needs you. And boy, did we need to be there.

I take it as a matter of faith that y’all will respect the radio silence around here. I’m still finding words for the thoughts going around in my head. And all this feels very cheap to write, because, well … you know, I’m not Doug right now, who has a far heavier burden to bear. He’s not bearing it alone—thank God for that, quite literally—but it’s a heavy burden.

God? This sucks. But you didn’t promise us a bed of roses.

By ijsmorg | Posted in 2007 Resolutions, Incoherent Ramblings, Introspection, Recaps | Comments (0)