Sample Chapter 21

CHAPTER 21
North Carolina



After I graduated from UC Berkeley in the spring of 1993, I went back to San Diego to vacation with my family for about a week. My mother, father, and my brother Ron dropped me off at San Diego’s Lindbergh Field International Airport where I flew to Raleigh – Durham International Airport in North Carolina. A research assistantship awaited me at the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory (TUNL) at Duke University.

When I arrived in North Carolina, I rented a car and drove to a motel near Duke University off Erwin Road in Durham. Immediately, I called my family in California to let them know I safely arrived in North Carolina.

“Ken, as soon as we came home, the phone was ringing,” my mother said over the telephone from San Diego. “A lady from Harvard said you were admitted.”

The news stunned me. Harvard had been my dream school since high school. It seemed impossible to get admitted to a such a prestigious university, especially with my grades and test scores. For the first time in my life, I would sense the Hand of God at work. People in Berkeley had told me not to bother applying there since Harvard routinely rejected Berkeley graduates who did earn straight A’s.

I graduated from Berkeley with a B+ grade point average. Common wisdom even today predicts that only people with straight A’s or vast wealth get admitted to Harvard University. I defined common wisdom by Harvard admitting me without straight A’s. My strategy of working in scientific research paid off handsomely. I graduated from UC Berkeley with a B.A. in physics. I won an ONR – NDSEG Fellowship from the US Department of Defense. Finally, Harvard University admitted me to the Department of Physics to pursue a Ph.D. degree. I clearly had just about everything I wanted out of life.

Still, I had yet to report to Duke University and to claim the keys to my apartment at Duke’s Central Campus. Harvard’s timing was bad for everyone, but I rode on the high of being a Harvard man. For the moment, I continued with my plan to work at Duke’s nuclear laboratory. My mother gave me the name and phone number of Beth Rigos, the graduate student coordinator at Harvard’s Department of Physics.

The next day, I called collect Mrs. Rigos at Cambridge, Massachusetts. I explained to her my situation that I had already committed to Duke University for graduate school. Further, I already relocated to North Carolina.

“There are ways around this,” said Beth over the telephone from Massachusetts. She invited me to visit Harvard University at the expense of the Department of Physics. I agreed to keep in touch with her and the rest of the Physics Department at Harvard. I then proceeded to the Department of Physics at Duke University.

Mrs. Donna Ruger, a southern woman, welcomed me to Duke. She had me fill out paper work making me officially a Duke student and employee. I reported to Professor Russell Roberson, Director of the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory. Professor Roberson likewise gave me a hearty welcome to TUNL and Duke. I decided to stay at Duke and forget Harvard.

In Berkeley, California I had spent months preparing to attend Duke long before I won the ONR – NDSEG Fellowship and much longer before Harvard admitted me. I didn’t want to waste all of my efforts. Yet, the prestige of Harvard called me. Duke, in spite of its reputation, didn’t exactly match Harvard on the prestige scale. I knew my career as a scientist heavily depended on the reputation of the university where I would earn my Ph.D. I strongly considered Duke while keeping in contact with Harvard’s Department of Physics.

Professor Henry Weller of TUNL and Duke because my principal investigator that summer of 1993. Henry studied gamma rays, and he had me study a doctoral dissertation on a nuclear physics instrument called a, “Moller polarimeter”. As a graduate student at Duke, I would construct a Moller polarimeter to measure the polarity of a radioactive electron beam. The polarity of the electron beam would provide vital information in nuclear physics experiments at the newly constructed Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) in Newport News, Virginia. I spent most of my days studying the doctoral dissertation on the Moller polarimeter.

Eventually, I notified Henry that Harvard had admitted me to graduate studies in physics. He had just become the Director of Graduate Studies in the Duke Department of Physics. He in turn notified the dean of the Graduate School at duke. The news created a minor scandal in the Duke Physics Department.

Duke had admitted me before I won the ONR – NDSEG Fellowship. Professor Roberson told me that Harvard admitted me because the fact I won a DoD fellowship meant it would cost Harvard nothing if I failed there since the DoD was paying for my graduate education, not Harvard itself. Professor Roberson had a good point, but he understood my desire to attend the prestigious university. Still, I feel today that Duke and Harvard are comparable in academic reputation. Yet, academic reputation guarantees really nothing as I learned over the years.

The American Council of Graduate Schools required me to secure a release of my commitment to Duke University before Harvard could offer a formal admission. The dean of the Duke Graduate School issued me a memo expressing his dismay at my departure from Duke. Yet, he released me from my commitment to Duke should I choose to leave.

On the Fourth of July weekend of 1993, I flew to Boston, Massachusetts. I took the T, Boston’s subway, to Harvard where I got lost. I knew I was at Harvard when I saw a red pickup truck with the words, “Harvard University” painted on the hood. Eventually, I found Jefferson Physical Laboratory, the red brick building that houses Harvard’s Department of Physics.

Carrying my brown suitcase, I was immediately recognized by a graduate student named Kent. He expected me to come around that time and the suitcase gave me away. We dropped off my suitcase at the departmental office. Ken worked for Professor Mara Prentiss, an experimental atomic physicist, who conducted research in laser cooling and trapping of neutral atoms. Kent rounded up Mara Prentiss’s graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Her laboratory took me to lunch in Harvard Square.

Afterward, I met with Professor Prentiss who discussed her research program in experimental atomic physics. Professor Gerald Gabrielse, another experimental atomic physicist. Finally, I met with Professor Howard Georgi, chairman of the Department of Physics. All of them welcomed me to Harvard and encouraged me to attend. I immediately decided to attend the university. Beth Rigos sent me to my lodgings for the weekend, a bed and breakfast in Harvard Square. That weekend, then President Bill Clinton send cruise missiles into Iraq in retaliation for Saddam Hussein’s plot to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush. That weekend, I decided to take a tour of Harvard and Boston.

As I walked through Harvard Square, I said to myself, “Harvard! Harvard! Harvard!” over and over. My dream had come true. I took the T to the New England Aquarium in Boston. There, I toured Boston Harbor in a boat after visiting the aquarium. The next day I went to the offices of Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) on Garden Street.

I gave the memo of release from Duke to an employee of Harvard GSAS. He said they would mail my admission letter to my apartment in North Carolina in a few days. By the end of the Fourth of July weekend of 1993, I returned to North Carolina. There, I prepared to relocate again, this time to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Back at Duke, I met a beautiful woman named Michelle Ponds. She had visited Duke the same day I did in the spring of 1993 and decided to attend the university.

When I saw her in the Physics Building in Durham, I introduced myself and she said she remembered me from the spring. As graduate students, we asked each other what our research fields were. I said I was researching experimental nuclear physics. Michelle said she researched chaos and nonlinear dynamics. I asked her what it is. Michelle said that chaos and nonlinear dynamics theory states in systems that scientists thought were too chaotic to study, there is actually a hidden order.

“That’s like a metaphor for God creating the universe,” I thought to myself as Michelle explained her research field. Thus began my return to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the Roman Catholic faith.