Lee Geiger

You don’t raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they’ll turn out to be heroes, even if it’s just in your own eyes.

Walter M. Shirra, Sr.

Question: What’s the Skinny Kid up to? You haven’t written about him in forever.

Answer: He’s rockin’ his world in Orlando, Florida.

Question: Is he hanging out with Mickey, Minnie and Goofy?

The last time I wrote about Keith Geiger, my 22-year old son, he was living in Pittsburgh and fighting the battle of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). What follows is the short-version of a very long story, a grueling journey that taught me more than a few lessons.

August 2012– Fresh off a successful tour of duty at Campolindo High School, The Skinny Kid matriculates to CMU’s College of Engineering. However, before he even sniffs a beer pong table, a pot of collegiate drama is already brewing. Keith’s desire is to major in computer science, but CMU’s School of Computer Science, considered by many to be the Juilliard equivalent of computer science programs in the U.S., has “waitlisted” him for his freshman year. Keith bides his time running cross country, acing Introductory Computer Science and Japanese, and scores an awesome summer internship at BioMarin Pharmaceutical in Novato, CA. Nothing ahead but rainbows and peanut butter lollipops, right?

Summer 2013– CMU’s School of Computer Science says “nyet” to Keith. I guess he needed to invent the next Facebook to get in. Time for Plan B.

Spring 2014– Keith vents to The Pretty Blonde and me that he’d rather stick pins in his eyes than pursue a major in electrical computer engineering. He’s wired to program and code, not design and build. Keith lobs a verbal grenade and says he’s considering a transfer to Full Sail University, a for-profit school located in Winter Park, FL offering campus and online degree programs that are designed for the world of entertainment and media. Full Sail offers a bachelor of science degree in game development, an option not available to him at CMU. The next sound Keith hears are his parents’ jaws hitting the ground.

August 2014– Acquiescing to his parent’s wishes, Keith returns to CMU for his junior year. Still anchoring to his techie self, Keith resorts to Plan C and changes his major to information systems, a move that requires an internal transfer to CMU’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Simple, right? One semester later, the CMU powers that be tell him they already have enough students pursuing that major. Can you say Plan D?

January 2015– In a meeting with his CMU academic advisor, Keith is informed that at this late stage of the game his best chance of graduating with a bachelor’s degree on time is to major in either decision sciences or economics. Backed into a corner, Keith chooses economics, which makes about as much sense as me majoring in fashion design; it’s a colossal waste of time and talent. Keith soldiers on as best he can, but he is not a happy camper. Nor should he be. Plan D turns into a dumpster fire.

February 2015– Desperate, I buy a ticket to a CMU fundraiser in San Francisco, hoping I’ll run into a big-time CMU muckety-muck to plead Keith’s case. I succeed, and over the next few months Keith meets with various CMU officials to craft Plan E, a “student-defined major” related to his interest in video gaming. But as with anything and everything at CMU, this is not an easy process, and Keith must jump several academic hurdles to make this happen. Complicating matters further is the fact CMU offers only a smattering of courses pertinent to what really interests Keith, which is game development, not game design. Game design, we learn, is like a painter creating a work of art from a blank canvas, whereas game development is akin to a software developer coding an app for a smartphone. Or something like that.

Summer 2015– Mentally tarred and feathered by the whole CMU experience, The Skinny Kid waves the academic white flag. After a plethora of heart-to-heart discussions, everyone invested in Keith’s education decides it’s in his best interest to apply for a leave of absence. Keith spends his gap year in Pittsburgh with his school buddies, reading books on game programming, eating cheap Chinese food and building a portfolio of video editing projects related to the burgeoning world of esports. Meanwhile, I spend twelve months trying to convince him that earning a degree from Carnegie Mellon, even one in underwater tap dancing choreography, is better to insure his financial future than any degree he can get from an online school. Keith once again indulges his parents, but deep down he’s not buying it. One thing about Mr. Keith Geiger; when he knows exactly what he wants, The Skinny Kid can be a stubborn cuss, a trait he inherited from his father’s end of the gene pool.

May 2016– The Pretty Blonde and I are in Panzano, Italy, hunkering down for a carnival of bloody meat and red wine hosted by Dario Cecchini, the town’s famed butcher. Sitting next to us at a festive communal table is an attractive thirty-something gal who says she’s from Winter Park, Florida. Before the first course of prosciutto and melon hits the table, I ask her if she’s ever heard of a school called Full Sail University. “Of course I have,” she says. “In fact, I worked there for eleven years.” Team Geiger goes into full investigatory mode, giving our newest best friend the third degree regarding Full Sail. By the time the Sambuca arrived, Miss Winter Park had sold us on the legitimacy of Full Sail, whose graduates have earned scads of Emmy’s/Grammy’s/Oscars. The moral of the story? Never underestimate the educational value of a good Florentine steak.

August 2016– Keith packs his 20-year old car with everything he owns and moves to beautiful downtown Orlando. In twenty months (May 2018) he’ll graduate from Full Sail with a bachelor of science degree in game development. Six months into his program he’s enjoying his classes, making pals with people who are as passionate about game development as he is, and generally is as happy as a pig in slop.

After four years and enough headaches to earn a masters degree in migraine management, what did I learn from this experience? A few lessons shall remain private, but here’s what I can share.

First, Keith attending Carnegie Mellon was like a workaday square peg trying to squeeze itself into a redoubtable round hole. Try as we might, no amount of shaving and bending of Keith’s edges, by either the university or his parents, was going to make his interests fit into the CMU mold. This was the fault of no one. College students have been transferring from schools for a host of reasons since the invention of the Thursday Night kegger. Stuff happens.

Second, I placed too much pressure on Keith to have the perfect college experience, to construct for himself an academic and social arc that only traveled north by northeast. Carnegie Mellon is a terrific school filled with lots of brilliant students, but it’s also a meat grinder of an institution. I wish Keith would have made more of his experience at Carnegie Mellon, but not everyone who attends CMU loves it, and a piece of paper signifying graduation is no guarantee of a successful and happy existence. On the contrary, mountains of evidence point to tragic outcomes when college students experience excrutiating pressure when they believe they haven’t performed to their parent’s expectations. Despite all the setbacks, The Pretty Blonde and I reminded Keith at every stage of his journey that we loved and respected him, and where he went to college would never change that.

Third, it’s incumbent upon parents to invest themselves in their child’s dreams, and to provide a path for them to pursue their passions. Keith discovered his passion early, and he did his homework as to the best path he believed he needed to take to fulfil his dream. He should be lauded for this; he knew what he wanted to learn and he knew where he wanted to learn it. It’s only recently that I realized Keith earning a degree from Carnegie Mellon was MY dream, not his. It may have been his dream when he first stepped onto the CMU campus, but when circumstances changed he quickly adjusted his expectations. I, on the other hand, took much, much longer.

As parents, you hope and pray for your children to find their passions, to devise plans to pursue them, and to take responsibility for their actions and decisions. Keith has done that and, with a lot of dogged persistence, hard work, and yes, even some dumb luck, my goal for him is that one day soon he can afford to take his parents to Disney World.