From Self-Doubting College Dropout, to Scientist, Entrepreneur and NASA Operator

Have you ever had to make a decision so embarrassing that you felt society would ostracize you for it? Not embarrassing like getting a bad grade on an exam, or running out of toilet paper and having to squat-walk to the next stall. I’m talking embarrassing to the point you don’t tell ANYONE - not even your closest friends or family. And you lie about it to those who ask.

That’s where my story to academic coaching begins.

I grew up in a household that placed a high value on higher education. We had a strong household understanding that myself, my brother and my sister would all be attending college. Which was also combined with a strong marketing messaging from my teachers, the government, and the media that went something like this: “you need a college degree to become successful,” and, “you need a college degree so you won’t have to work at [insert the minimum wage fast food joint of your choice] your entire life.” I also shouldn’t forget the one that said, “if you get a degree you’ll make a crap-ton more money and don’t have to live in a carboard box under a bridge somewhere.”

College was the path to success. It was the place you went after high school to guarantee you made something of yourself, escape the sentence of homelessness you would have received otherwise, and make your parents, teachers, and society proud. To not go to college was, by definition, to become a failure and societal outcast.

And so when I graduated high school, since I had been heeding the standard collegiate messaging for 12 years, college was where I went. Logically.

I thought I wanted to become an astronaut, but outside of that didn’t have an objective for higher education. I just didn’t want to live under a bridge.

Moving into the athletic dormitory at Auburn Universtiy.

Being a competitive swimmer at the time, I had aspirations for the Olympics and was offered a redshirt position on Auburn University’s swim team, which at the time was the top swim team in the country. I gladly accepted and declared a major of Aerospace Engineering. Since I wasn’t 100% certain about what I wanted to do, I reasoned I could figure it out while there.

It didn’t take long for me to realize I didn’t know how to study, and that I had overextended myself with the combined workload of the swim team’s 2-3 practices/day and aerospace engineering coursework. After my grades dropped to an F in a couple classes, I quit the swim team to focus on my studies, and at that point didn’t have much of a reason to be at Auburn University anymore.

I moved back to my home state of Georgia, attended a local two year school to accumulate more credit hours, then transferred to a well known engineering school in Atlanta and declared a major of Environmental Science. I was still unsure of what I wanted to do but found out very quickly I didn’t enjoy aerospace engineering.

Unfortunately for me, with the differences in state curriculums and standards, not all the classes I took at Auburn transferred to Georgia, so I had to take a couple over again. An annoying but minor setback in the grand scheme of things, but this became the first crack in the dam which would eventually lead me to question everything I had been told about college.

A couple classes into the Environmental Science major and that field of study proved it wasn’t for me either. I switched to Mathematics; a subject I had always been decent at and had been told a lot of potential career paths stem from.

Back on Track, or Maybe Not?

So, the engineering school I attended is a great school for some students. For others it’s not. I fell into the second camp, and I’m purposefully leaving the name out because it’s not important. You could insert any prestigious engineering/technology school in its place. Maybe my experience wasn’t the norm, but I seemed to get stuck with the professors who either: 1) didn’t speak English fluently, 2) had their TA’s teach the class and were barely present, or 3) taught the class themselves but blasted through the material so they could get back to their research.

To be fair, a couple of the best professors I had during my college career, I had while here. But when it came to the overall experience, by and large I was met with professors who valued their research more than their students and had extraordinarily heavy course loads and little forgiveness for imperfection.

After four or five semesters putting in massive amounts of study time only for that to result in mediocre grades, and many professors who either didn’t seem to care or were barely understandable in English, I was mentally checked out. I stopped going to class, my grades dropped, and I was put on academic probation. Or maybe it was suspension - I don’t fully remember. The point is, it wasn’t a good experience.

It may not seem like much time has passed, but by now I had been in college 4 years, gone to three schools, and changed majors twice. To say I had become a little disillusioned with the whole college thing would be an understatement. I had to take two classes over due to interstate administrative red tape, and now at what I believed to be one of the best colleges in the country, most of my professors didn’t seem to care about their students’ understanding of the concepts. And so much for that assumption I had of being able to figure out what I wanted to do with my life while here.

Criticism was also beginning to come from my parents’ direction; from their perspective it looked like I was going in circles. And I certainly was - my grades showed it. From my perspective, however, and one I never felt would be worth trying to explain, those circles were a result of my struggling to find the right path while trying to please both my parents and society by getting a degree. I wanted so badly to make my parents proud and not be seen as a failure by the general population. I was just struggling to find purpose and meaning in what I was doing so far.

At this point in my life, even though I had done a lot of emotional maturing, I didn’t understand who I was. I didn’t believe in myself, I lacked confidence in my abilities, and to the point of this story, I didn’t believe I was worth anything without a degree. Earning an income I could live on wasn’t even a thought in my mind due to how powerful the “go to college and get a degree so you can become successful” messaging was. Or else I would have dropped out and tried.

The next lap around the circle.

I had enough of the engineering school. I transferred back to the two year school I had attended before, to a campus that would eventually merge with a brand new, four-year institution. “This should be the one,” I thought. This is where I’ll finally be able to earn a degree. A brand new school where professors teach because they actually want to teach, not because they want the prestige of a school name.

This school unfortunately didn’t offer a mathematics program, but since I was becoming very interested in genetics and biochemistry, my advisor suggested I declare a major of Biology, as that curriculum would eventually overlap with the Biochemistry major which was currently in development, and would allow an easy switch when it became available. So my next major was Biology, with a pathway to Biochemistry. I couldn’t use all the credit hours I had accumulated in mathematics, but at least I’d have professors who were interested.

Unfortunately it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows here either. I experienced even more at this school that would make me more deeply question the standard college messaging.

I scored a 5 on the AP Calculus test in high school and was able to go straight into Calculus II at Auburn. From there I took Calculus III, Differential Equations, and a number of other advanced mathematics courses at the other schools.

This school’s computer system, however, as a prerequisite to the Biology major, insisted I take their introductory algebra course in order to begin my other classes. I couldn’t start my major’s core classes before I took intro algebra, even though a dozen math classes on my transcript proved I already understood the class inside and out.

Annoying as it was, “I’ll just talk to one of the administrators and get this sorted out,” I thought. “It’s probably some sort of fail-safe built into the online system to ensure students don’t register for a class they don’t have the foundation to understand.”

If only it had been that easy.

Over the next two months I went from one administrator to the next, to the next, to the next. It was like living in the twilight zone. Nobody seemed to understand I already understood what the class would cover - far beyond it - and it would be a waste of my time and money, and the school’s resources for me to take it. But because I hadn’t taken this one specific class, because I didn’t check this one particular box, I couldn’t move forward.

I am on a college campus, correct? Where critical thinking is supposed to be valued? If these people had two brain cells to rub together they would clearly see I didn’t need this course. I wasn’t even offered the option to test out of it. Probably a good thing I didn’t verbalize everything I was thinking. After two months of progressing through the administrative hierarchy, I finally found someone who understood what I was saying and got that prerequisite waived. But it shouldn’t have taken nearly that long. That issue should have been solved in one or two conversations.

Invited to Work at the CDC

Due to my interest in genetics and biochemistry, I actively searched for internships or part-time work in those areas. I happened to run into a very kind lady who was in charge of a lab at the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), and she was willing to give me a chance on her team. It was an unpaid position, but it would offer me real-life experience in one of the top labs in the country. This was well before the agency had come under political controversy like it has in more recent years.

*Life hack: networking with people and getting to know decision-makers is a great way to bypass any potential gatekeepers between you and what you want. The position at the CDC would have required a degree had I gone through official channels. But since the person I ran into had the authority to bring me in, I went directly through her instead of a government HR department and multiple interviews.

Three months into working at the CDC and I was feeling fairly comfortable with my responsibilities. About 8 months in, I had gotten so good that my supervisors requested funding to hire me full time.

Wait. Full-time?

A full-time position at the CDC, with government benefits, doing genetic research, without a degree?

Yes.

This was the next major head-scratcher experience I had. With two years remaining before completing my biology/biochemistry degree, my supervisors were fighting to hire me full-time. What was going on here? This ran so counter to what I had been told, beginning in elementary school mind you, that a degree was essential to getting a good job and becoming successful. Yet here I was, some random kid with mediocre grades and an apt for changing majors, about to get hired by the CDC. Four months later I was notified that due to budget constraints, the lab had been unsuccessful in acquiring funding, and shortly after that, due to the straining commute time to and from the CDC, I said my farewells and thanked the team for an incredible experience.

The Million Dollar Hydrogen Fuel Cell

It was around this time I started a science project in my garage centered around a process called electrolysis, a process which has been around hundreds of years and is still used in submarines today. My purpose with it was to determine if it was possible to develop a kind of “reverse” hydrogen fuel cell. To split water molecules into their Hydrogen and Oxygen components, drive those into a combustion engine, and create a hybrid engine. It worked.

I partnered up with a friend who built custom engines for a living, installed this fuel cell into his car and ran it for a few weeks alongside regular gasoline. Not only did it improve gas mileage, it also cleaned excess carbon buildup from his engine. We also successfully ran one of his dirt bikes completely gasoline free for about an hour, until the fuel cell ran out of water to split.

We had been running into heat issues, so one afternoon after chemistry class I was curious to know if my professor knew of any ways to make the process more efficient. I showed her my calculations and development thus far, and to say she was impressed would be an understatement. That part of the story I’ll save for another time, but her words to me were: “Mike, this is far above the work I’m having my graduate students do.”

Eventually my friend and I landed a meeting with Atlanta’s leading public transportation company and were offered a life changing amount of money if we could improve the gas mileage of their buses by 5%. Which I believe would have been doable, as we were seeing improvements well above that in our test vehicles. The only caveat was, for more street credibility, they wanted us to get involved with a third party engineering program.

Upon further conversations with that program, I learned our fuel cell project would essentially be taken over. My friend and I were out of money, and this would have provided the funding to continue development, but it also meant we wouldn’t have much control over the project anymore. It wasn’t something either of us wanted to agree to, so development basically came to a halt.

The reason I bring this up is this. When I first started development and experimentation of the fuel cell, I knew very little about what I was doing. It started with curiosity and an idea. Over the 6-12 months of research and development, I had gone from beginner hobbiest, to somewhere between graduate and PhD level scientist, with a seven figure offer to develop this project further. On my own. In my garage. Without a degree.

Even though this particular company didn’t work out, we could have pitched the idea to another business. We could have gone to a venture capitalist for more funding. We could have done a number of different things to keep the project alive.

But none of that mattered.

As much as this rattled my brain and foundationally challenged what I believed about a college degree, I didn’t believe in myself without one. The idea that I had to have a degree to be worth anything was so deeply entrenched in my mind that I believed I wasn’t worth the money.

Severe Discontentment and Existential Crisis

This was year 7 in college. I was at my fourth school and into my fourth major and still didn’t know who I was or what I wanted to do with my life. But I did know one thing: college wasn’t working. The past few years had been miserable. Classes were boring. I no longer learned well by sitting in a classroom listening to someone lecture. Time and again I had experienced the polar opposite of the messaging pushed on me during childhood - that a degree was necessary to make something of myself and become successful.

For the past few years, an internal friction grew in my spirit that got larger with each class I attended, and had now amassed into an almost-overwhelming, persistent anxiety.

On one hand, I had a strong sense of guilt that I even felt this way. Shouldn’t I stay with it and finish well? Shouldn’t I make my parents proud? Shouldn’t I complete society’s requirements of me? Going to college to become successful is what everyone needs to do, right? Isn’t this what I had been prepared for since the first grade?

On the other hand was a deep conviction in my soul that this wasn’t working, hadn’t worked for years, and I needed to start listening to my intuition. I was bored out of my mind, lacked purpose, direction and fulfillment, and felt like I was a prisoner in a system meant to turn me into a robot.

I desperately needed to escape.

Two things kept me in school: 1) a toxic, guilt-driven desire to please other people and not rock the boat, and 2) being scared to death of what would happen if I dropped out. Would my parents reject me? Would I be able to find a job? Would I be destined for minimum wage my entire life? What would my girlfriend say? Would she break up with me? Would my friends still talk to me? How would people look at me knowing I didn’t have a degree? How would I look at myself?

I enrolled for another semester but barely went to class. My grades dropped again and I was put on academic probation for a second time.

A few months later a letter came in the mail saying my grants and scholarships were about to run out - oddly enough not related to my grades, but due to the amount of time I had been in college. I would need to take out student loans for next semester.

Next semester came.

One of the biggest sinking feelings in my stomach I ever experienced happened in the enrollment office applying for those loans, but I took them anyway because I believed I needed them. What was I going to become? A college drop out?

…Yes.

Shortly after that semester began, the psychological distress and discontentment of staying in college finally outweighed the fear of dropping out. By now the only reason I was in school was to keep up appearances. I was utterly checked out otherwise.

Eight years after graduating high school. After studying aerospace engineering, environmental science, mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, and many other subjects. After accumulating enough credit hours for a master’s degree but not even obtaining a bachelor’s. After almost landing a full-time job at the CDC without a degree. After developing a hydrogen fuel cell and being offered a bunch of money to work with public transportation without a degree. After all that and still hearing my professors and the media tout the fundamental importance of a degree in our society, I had had enough.

I dropped out.

Unfortunately the student loans stayed with me.

And even more unfortunately, a large amount of psychological garbage and limited beliefs were still present in my mind that needed to be overcome.

Half-Way to Freedom

I wish I could tell you that in that moment, my life instantly changed and I became a superhero multimillionaire the next day. That wasn’t the case. However, I did experience an immense amount of relief. If you can imagine being trapped underwater unable to breathe, feeling suffocation approaching, then with little time to spare getting your head above water, gasping for air and fresh oxygen filling your lungs again. That’s how I felt. I could breathe again. I also felt 200 pounds lighter. Like an unbearable burden was off of my shoulders.

But the relief of that burden came with the addition of another one - shame.

I was now a college dropout. My parents were going to freak. Answers to all the questions I was wrestling with before were about to become my immediate reality. I was about to experience the fallout of disappointing everyone I loved in my life. People who wanted nothing else but for me to succeed.

What was I going to do now? I had no idea. I was living with my mom at the time to save money, and there was absolutely no way I was going to tell her. I had to lie about it because she believed I was still in school. Unfortunately that also meant lying to a lot of people.