Hi ho, hi ho, it is off to school he goes. My third son will be a freshman at the Colorado School of Mines this fall, and today he is officially theirs. It is with great pride, and not a little trepidation that I set him free to pursue this next step in his life.
This boy marches to a different drummer than his brothers. He has always wanted to be an engineer, although his skill at taking things apart far exceeded his ability to reassemble things up until recently. Throughout his childhood, friends and family would drop off non-operational items at our door step for Abe to take apart. Which he did, and it brought him endless enjoyment to do so.
He has been curious, smart, and impulsive, in about equal parts, since he was very young. He learned to siphon as a three year old, practicing without fail on his fish tank, which effectively ended fish as pets in our household. I worried endlessly when we were on a boat in the Pacific Ocean when he was 6 years old that he would just jump off--it was the sort of thought he would have, and as often as not he would literally leap before he looked. I was particularly fearful of an open spiral staircase between our deck and the one above us. His eyes widened with joy when he spotted it. The only thing that lessened my anxiety was when the captain took them up to the wheel house, and told them that if someone falls overboard it takes them 1/2 hour to turn the boat around--which really impressed Abe--he did not want to be in that big ocean alone for 1/2 an hour. The captain did not mention what I know, which is that even in cases where the passenger is seen going overboard, they only find them in about 10% of cases. Hence my worry!
I think Mines is the perfect choice for him. It is populated by his kind of people. Established during Colorado's illustrious mining boom years, it now offers a broad range of engineering options--no liberal arts options to speak of, but plenty of technical ones. It is a small school, and offers excellent academic support for students who are newly away from home. It is practical in a way that suits Abe. My only hesitation is that true to it's mining past, Mines offers a blasting certificate course to every student, regardless of major. So every fire bug, techno obsessed student gets trained in explosives. Is that a good idea?
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