My Story, Part 2: Psychology or Business Law?

College was a big challenge for me. The University of Florida (“UF”) was much bigger than my entire home town. So many pretty girls. So many people smarter than me. So many people from big cities who had very different childhoods. Freshman classes were huge. I signed up to be pre-med and took chemistry and calculus my first semester. I was completely in over my head. I had to get a “A” on both final exams in order to end up with two “Cs”. My counselor said I should change from pre-med. So, I changed into education believing I wanted to be a football coach and I majored in Math and Educational Psychology and became a student leader while continuing to work with the UF Football Team as a statistician. I adapted well enough to graduate Magna Cum Laude, which made my parents so proud. That meant a lot to me.   

I fell in love with humanistic psychology and educational psychology and in my senior year I was accepted into a great Ph.D. program in developmental child psychology at the University of Minnesota. That was in 1968 and I was very involved in campus political movements at the UF and in the Spring of 1968 right before graduation, I was part of a small group that was introduced to United States Senator Bobby Kennedy, who was running to be the Democratic candidate for President of the United States.  He captured my mind and heart and I immediately decided that I had to go into politics and that I wanted to go to Law School at the University of Virginia (“UVA”) where Bobby Kennedy went.  However, there was a problem. I had not applied to law school nor had I taken the pre-law entrance test and the Class for the coming September was chosen months before. Nonetheless, on a Friday afternoon late that Spring, I called the UVA Law School and asked to speak with the Dean. Amazingly, he took my call and after a 45-minute conversation he accepted me on the call into the graduating Class of 1971 starting that September. I was on that legal journey until 1980 when I decided I had made a mistake – my life was meant to be in psychology.

 So, I then got accepted in a world-class Cognitive Psychology Program under the tutelage of Dr. Lyle Bourne, Jr. I had found my true love. Well, that turned out to be even more true than I expected. During my first year at Colorado, I met and fell deeply in love with a classmate. Marriage raised a big issue for me. Should I spend the next five years getting my Doctorate or should I return to the practice of law to be able to support a family? I chose law. I dreaded having that conversation with my mentor Dr. Bourne. Dr. Bourne was very understanding and supportive and has been a dear friend and professional mentor now for over 39 years even editing from a science perspective two of my recent books and being the source of many hours of illuminating making-meaning conversations over many visits to Boulder staying with him and his wife. He, like Coach Grisham opened up new horizons for me. So, time to move on to law practice.