Mark Didn’t Finish College

When I fill out certain surveys, I get asked what level of education I completed. I always have to check "Some College." Little do they know that for me, "Some College" was only about three weeks of classes.

About a year after graduating high school, all of my buddies had moved to Missoula to attend college. My jobs in Great Falls didn't seem like they would make me rich. So, I decided one day that I was going to college.

I packed up and moved all my worldly possessions in my 68 Impala. Everything I owned fit. And it all fit in one trip, even with tying my single mattress to the top of the car. I could have been categorized as "from North of town."

I got a job at Godfather's Pizza the next day working forty hours each week. Three weeks later I was hired to do six to midnight six days a week on "Three In A Row KYSS Country." Then a short time after that, I got on with Beech Transportation driving a  school bus. This job paid about quadruple what the others did.

Then college starts. I'm working hundred-hour weeks and now I've somehow got to add eighteen credits of college classes and time for homework. Swell.

In high school, I could kip a class or two and still be able to fudge my way through the tests. College isn't like that.

Somewhere near the end of the third week of classes, I'm sitting in Algebra 101 that's taught by a Korean teacher who I quite simply could not understand.

That's the day that I quit school.

Now that my daughter is thirteen and asking questions about work and success, I start with the stories where I didn't succeed. I want her to never give up. That's my message.