How can one girl be so lucky, or my life story

When I found out in the fall of 1994, that I could apply to Texas A&M without an essay under their Early Admissions policy, I sent in my application the next day. It happened to be the postmark deadline. My application wasn't even complete; I think I forgot to include my transcript or some other vital piece of paper. My school counselor used my story as an example for the rest of her career to teach the concept that you should always keep a copy of any important document you put in the mail. By the time my acceptance letter came in the mail, I had written so many scholarship application essays that I decided not to apply to anymore colleges. I was sick of writing essays and I figured I would be happy at A&M. It didn't matter that I had never visited A&M's campus and that I only owned Texas sweatshirts.

I went for a visit to Baylor and knew the minute I walked into the dorm that it wasn't for me. I was not the perpetually cute, well-dressed, adorable, peppy girl that goes to Baylor. The only other school I considered applying to was George Washington because I loved Washington DC. Between the distance from home and the essay, I skipped it.

Being the dork that I am, I read books in high school about how to write a business plan. I even came up with this business where you would come into the store and use a computer to look at pictures of the clothes that you wanted and tailor them to your body on the screen. Then you would order them and you would pick them up at the store later. If Al Gore created the Internet, can I get credit for inventing the online store back in 1994? Anyway, A&M accepted me into their business school.

That was fabulous until I decided near the end of my senior year in high school that I couldn't be a stay at home mom if I went into business. Also, I had heard how long the lines were for freshman business majors registering for classes at their orientation. By the time you got to pick your classes, none of the good classes were left. The dept. of Modern Languages, on the other hand, had no line. I switched majors to Spanish during my orientation so that I could get better classes. I intended to switch back over to business once I could register over the phone for the next semester. The rest is history.

Before my Freshman Orientation, though, I was awarded a scholarship. It turns out that for all of the essays I wrote, for all of the letters of recommendation that I searched for, and for all of the personal references I tracked down, I received a scholarship based on a three paragraph essay I wrote one afternoon. I couldn't believe the irony and I was amazed when I considered how great a writer I must have been to impress them in so few words. My friends looked at me differently when they learned the size of the scholarship. Only the brilliant people who went on to become doctors and engineers received these kinds of awards. This line of thinking is what my uncle Don refers to as the teenage brain-dead mentality.

I walked on air until I read the newspaper article about the recipients of this scholarship-two recipients were chosen from each high school in the city. I recognized a face in the full page spread of photos. And then another. Finally I counted thirteen people I knew. In that one instant I realized that I hadn't earned this scholarship at all. I wasn't as brilliant as I'd come to imagine myself and I wasn't the tremendous writer I'd fancied myself to be.

During the spring of my junior year, my school counselor called me out of class to tell me that she had chosen me as an alternate to attend the Houston Rotary Club's Camp Enterprise. It seems that my old friend Matthew Reynolds couldn't make it that weekend, so it would be my opportunity to go in his place.

My dad drove me to the meeting place for the camp bus; we almost didn't make it because we got pulled over for some toll tag issue. My dad finessed his way out of it. (Pause here to laugh if you know my dad and can imagine this scene.) I caught the bus and arrived at camp where all of the students were divided into teams.

It's been so many years that I only remember bits and pieces of this weekend. The entire point of the weekend was to learn about business and entrepreneurship. We attended lectures and listened to guest speakers. There was a competition between all of the teams. We had to start a business selling sprockets and decide as a group when to invest in R&D, in personnel, in equipment and facilities, marketing, and quality/quantity. At the end of the weekend, whichever team's business was the most successful was declared the winner. I remember contributing to the group, but mostly the incredibly intelligent, type A guys on the team came up with the plans. Our team won.

As I looked at the photos of the scholarship recipients in the newspaper that day, I found quite a few people from my Camp Enterprise team. It so happened that the Rotary Club was the organization that decided on the scholarship recipients for the Jesse H and Mary G Jones Endowment Fund. (This fund builds hospitals, funds scholarships, wings of convention centers, etc, in Houston.) My photo was on that page only because I was on the winning team at Camp Enterprise a year earlier. All things, as in grades and extra-curriculars, being equal, I could chalk my scholarship up to the classic line, "It's not what you know, but who you know, that makes a difference."

I went to A&M on this scholarship and met Neil, who happened to have a Chemistry lab with Matthew Reynolds at one time. We were able to get married because of my scholarship. The direction my entire life would take changed as a result of one weekend at camp. Or it is possible that my life was headed in this direction and the Lord knew that I needed that scholarship to get here. Either way, thanks, Matt, for being busy. And I am grateful to the Lord, in His infinite goodness, and across the vast expanse of creation, for being mindful of me.

My prize for winning the team competition was a $10 share of stock in an
up-and-coming company you now know well: Enron. Too bad I didn't sell it back in 1999.

Finally, people wonder what I've done with my education. Another reason I decided to have kids so early was to put off deciding what to be when I grew up. I had no idea when I was 22 what I wanted to do, but I knew that I would have a better idea when I was actually a grown up. Teaching was not for me, and those were the days before job sharing, working part-time, and telecommuting, so I thought business was out. After my job last year, I now know what I want to be when I grow-up, and I can't wait.