A Dream is Not a Destination — It’s a Guide
A story for anyone who feels like they’ll never truly “arrive”
The Wrong Place
My story starts in the wrong place. It was a sunny morning in September, the first day of my first year at college. Computer engineering technology. That’s the path I had chosen for myself. 8:00 AM. I walk into a large classroom, flooded with harsh fluorescent light, row after row of tables and chairs, and a whole bunch of strangers. I didn’t know anybody. I was in a new city, a new school, a completely unfamiliar situation. I remember looking for a place to sit and thinking, clearly, These are not my people. I don’t belong here.
That feeling stuck with me for the entire three years of my program. Somehow I stuck it out and graduated, but there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t feel out of place. Computer engineering was a far cry from art and design; it never once occurred to me to enroll in a more creative program.
Fortunately, within a few weeks I made some friends. One of them, Julius, and I bonded particularly over being more artsy and creative. While we should have been listening lectures about Ohm’s Law and transistors, we would be drawing silly things in the margins of our notebooks. One day, Julius says to me, “Tom, you’ve gotta come check this out.”
