My Story: Life Before Tragedy (Part 3)

At UAM I think I was one of only two from my graduating high school class that attended and we were not that close in high school.  When we would see each other in high school or at the college we would always speak but we were on very different paths.  I say all of this to say that I basically came to UAM without any close friends.  I think this was very important in my college career.  I quickly (in the first few weeks) made new friends and became very close with many of them.  Still to this day I am blessed to be friends with many of the people I met at UAM.  I will discuss more in future paragraphs what these friends mean to me.

In GIS we took classes with forestry management students and land surveying students. The Introduction to GIS class had to be taken by all natural resource students at the school.  The GIS degree option was part of the Spatial Information Systems (SIS) degree program.  In this degree program were both GIS and land surveying students.  GIS and land surveying students covered the same classes then were separated as we got further in our degree paths.  In our degrees we would take basic GIS and surveying classes together then take more advanced classes separately.  As we started the Introduction to SIS class was full of students.  There was standing room only in the first class of the school year.  The SIS class was quickly whittled down to a smaller group as students decided on other degree paths and career options.

One day at the beginning of my college career we had an interest meeting for Spatial Information Systems students that would be interested in joining the SIS club.  This meeting had a free pizza lunch so SIS and a free lunch checked all the boxes for me so I went.  In the meeting one of our professors talked about gaining experience outside the classroom to make the most of our time at college, he said there was no way to learn all we needed to know in class and suggested working one on one with a professor.  I immediately went and talked with him after the meeting about this idea.  He suggested I wait until at least after my freshman year to do anything like this.

In the start of my sophomore year I went back to this professor with the idea of working to gain more experience.  Have I mentioned that I could barely spell GIS (still have trouble).  He told me he had a research project that he could use help on but the project could not pay for help.  I was good with just the opportunity to learn so I started helping on the project.  With this project I was able to work with thermal aerial photography and do a land classification analysis process (what’s on the ground – trees, open areas, etc.)  of a wildlife management area that is nearby (both projects that would be useful in the future).  The ultimate goal of this project was to identify deer in thermal aerial images and the type of land classification they were on at the time of being photographed by thermal aerial photography taken from a helicopter.  One day I walked into his office to begin work and he dropped a big bombshell on me.  He told me that a company in town had called him looking for a student worker and he had told them about me and that he would send me out to their office that afternoon.  He told me I needed to leave immediately and go to their office, he said he would call and let them know I was on the way.  I was definitely a broke college student at this time and did not have anything in my dorm room to wear to a job interview (this was the last thing on my list) but I went as instructed.  I was working at the time as a lifeguard for the school at the college’s indoor pool for a senior citizen’s water aerobics class.  The pay wasn’t much but something to help me buy supper.

During the interview I met with the manager of the department and the business owner.  To this day the manager is a good friend of mine and he even gave me the opportunity to be an usher in his wedding.  The business owner and I have a close relationship.  He and his wife visited me multiple times while I was in the hospital and we have visited in my recovery time several times.  During the interview they would ask me if I had experience doing blank or if I had ever done blank.  The answer was always no but I told them I was in the Introduction to GIS class and had done work on this research project for my professor.  I thought to myself, “There is no way I will be hired for this job” Even though my answer was always no, they offered the job to me immediately and I accepted.  I left the interview and went and bought some polo shirts to work in at Wal-Mart.  I think my wife has finally cleared our closet of those shirts!

So here I was still working for my professor on the research project at the college and as a student worker at the local business, I should have all kinds of experience now I thought.  This local business was a forestry company that had three offices around the region.  It also had an Aerial Photography department within the business.  This aerial photography department started out in the ’80s doing aerial photography for forestry clients in the southeast but grew to doing aerial photography and other mapping or GIS projects for clients in other sectors.  The week I started at this job was the week that Hurricane Katrina or Rita hit the gulf coast.  Our planes were tasked with taking aerial photography of the damage from that storm.  During my first week’s training I can remember me and my manager friend taking a look at the weather as the storm rolled in.

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