Stephen Franks · Reflections

Reflections

Two narratives

A life turns on small moments.

Most of them you don’t notice when they happen. You notice them later — ten years later, twenty — sitting in a kitchen with a cup of coffee and the wind off the bay, and you realize: that was the day. That was the conversation that sent me one way instead of the other.

These are two of mine.

As a Student

Mr. High Score

Holland College, Charlottetown, P.E.I.

After years of avoiding it, doing many other things — whole different careers, let alone jobs — I was finally ready to go to college.

Holland College in Charlottetown had a unique curriculum for the time: outcome-based, self-paced, you could test out of items early. It was everything I wanted. I was able to complete eighteen months of work in six, and turn my co-op into a contract, and then a company.

One day, after testing out on some electronic AC theory, I was walking with my instructor — a gruff, ex-military man — past the student lounge. Some of my cohort were playing pinball.

“Who’s got high score?” my instructor called in.

“I do!” called back one of the students, happily.

We walked on. The instructor quietly asked me my own score on the game. I had to admit it was pretty low — I did not have much time to play.

He stopped and put a hand on my shoulder.

“That’s why you will graduate out of here early,” he said. “And Mr. High Score back there has not done a test yet. He will likely not make it. He does not know why he is here.”

I have thought about that line for a long time. I have wondered, since, whether my instructor said it to Mr. High Score himself — whether he tried. I would like to think he did. He was known for being hard to approach, but I would like to think it anyway.

What I remember is the certainty. The instructor knew, in the hallway, walking past a pinball machine, who was going to make it and who was not. He was not happy about it. He was just sure. And he was right.

As a Student, Again

A Masters, Late

University of Liverpool, by way of a kitchen table

More than ten years after I had last been a student, I found myself enrolling in a Master’s program. This was a surprise to me.

If you had asked me a few years earlier, I would have said no. I had no interest. All I needed I would obtain through industry certifications. I had no motivation to put myself through the expense of more formal education, or the work it would involve.

Two things changed.

First, the system — the college system I was teaching in — was beginning to look for higher academic credentials. If I wanted mobility, I would have to do something about it.

Second, my wife Laura was interested in continuing her education, and she wanted me along for the ride.

That second one was the one that mattered.

We chose the University of Liverpool, in the U.K. They had a Master’s in IT Security — one of the first to offer one. The program ranked well worldwide, and we both wanted an education that would travel.

So we jumped in. A year and a half of coursework. Nine months of dissertation. Two to three hours every night at our study, reading and writing, challenging each other to stretch and do better, competing against ourselves.

It was work. There were stretches when we wondered why we were doing it. Then we would talk about graduation, about how this would lead us along the path we had chosen, and the work would not seem quite as much.

We both graduated with Distinction. Two of only four to do so, out of a graduating class of nineteen. Many of our classmates had fallen by the wayside.

What I think about now, looking back, is the kitchen table. Two people in their forties, sitting across from each other on weeknights, doing their reading. That was the part that worked. The degree was the by-product. The motivation, all the way through, was the person on the other side of the table.

I would not have finished without her. She knew this. She had planned for it.

More from Stephen

Reflections are one kind of writing. The novels are another. The teaching philosophy that ran through the years between them is a third.

Read “Yoin” Explore the Rise Again Series