The Ring You Earn Later

My father thought I attended the same college because he did.

The truth was that I wanted a classical education, a true-and-full liberal arts education and that college offered it through personal instruction and a dedicated academic advisor for the full four years. 

He wanted me to study business and fiance, I planned to study philosophy, but wound up studying computer science. 

It was during my senior year when I took accounting to please him that I got into trouble. 

His logic was sound, take some accounting courses and a few finance courses so I’d have an idea on the profit and loss side of a business.

Problem was the only course I could get into was a senior level accounting course that I didn’t have the prerequisites for. 

Now I was not only floating along in that class, at the same time I was trying unsuccessfully to back-learn as much as I could along the way.

One of the senior class rituals at the end of the fall semester was to pick out your college ring. 

Rings were a thing at the college, the guys wore them and the girls hung them from a chain around their neck. There really wasn’t anything to pick out, as everybody always got the same design save your class year and major engraved on it. 

A ring from 50 years ago looked the same from one of the rings of today.

It was such a tradition that everybody always wore the ring.

My ring arrived the same day I got the letter in the mail that I was failing my accounting class, and that if I failed it I’d be in jeopardy of not graduating.

How could I start wearing my ring if I was in danger of failing senior year?

This was the start to feeling like a fraud when I wore the ring on campus.

All the seniors had one, and you couldn’t not have your ring on.

I took that letter and did what I had to do.

I went to the professor and explained my case, asking if I could do some extra work to boost my grade.

Everything else in my academic record was solid first and second letters, and that I was taking some accounting classes to round things out, I wasn’t even an accounting or business major...

The professor listened to me, distinctly noticed my ring, and told me not to worry about it, no extra credit or assignments would be needed.

His words were that I already had my ring.

It took a few years after college to establish myself.

Entry level programming, on the side contact work, the plan was to get my code out there as much as possible. I’d wear the ring to work and take it off when working as it was heavy on the fingers. 

Computer Science engraved on the side of it, I was on my way, and finally felt like I wasn’t a fraud in wearing it.

That I could code, that I was a programmer. 

I did well for a number of years, but as life tends to take one in different directions, opportunities outside of programming and computer science were starting to present themselves to the point that if my career was going to go in a different direction, now would soon be the time.

It was during a vacation that summer that I found myself at the top of one of the states largest mountains. 

A cog railway to get to the top and an hour or so later there you were. 

Scenic overviews, one more climb to the tallest platform where supposedly one could see into four other states at the same time. 

At the top of the platform it was only myself and an older gentleman.

There at the top of the world, hoping for some reflection and silence, he struck up a friendly conversation with me. Personable enough, I found myself sharing my carrer with him, and the decision that I was slowly facing and needed to make.

To stay or to go.

He just listened and then gave me such solid advice that I knew right then and there I had to go. 

There might be other opportunities in the future, but not this opportunity, and while it meant leaving my major, it was more inline with what I had originally intended for myself in college.

When I genuinely thanked him for the advice, that is when he warmly thanked me for taking him in confidence and extended his hand for a handshake, at which point only then did I notice his ring.