This was sometime around my sophomore year at Kearney State, back when I was absolutely convinced I was going to spend my life somewhere between aviation and computer science.
At the time, that sounded impressive.
“Aviation Computer Science.”
Even saying it out loud felt important.
I imagined radar systems, flight systems, maybe air traffic control someday. Something technical. Structured. Serious.
So there I was, two years deep into a degree that sounded a lot smarter than I actually felt most days.
I was taking almost nothing but major classes while also trying to play basketball for the Lopers, which meant most weeks felt like somebody had accidentally scheduled two full-time lives on top of each other.
Then came the Pascal incident.
If you were around computers in the 1980s, you already know where this is headed.
Pascal was one of those programming languages designed to teach “discipline,” which is another way of saying one microscopic mistake could ruin your entire night.
This particular disaster happened in the computer lab inside Otto Olsen.
I had been working for hours on a class project that refused to compile correctly. At first it was just a couple errors. Then a few more. Then what looked like a complete system meltdown.
Every time I tried to run the program, the compiler came back angrier.
Syntax error.
Syntax error.
Syntax error.
Eventually I printed the error log because that’s what we did back then.
No giant monitors.
No Google.
No AI.
No little red squiggly line politely telling you where you screwed up.
You printed your humiliation onto continuous-feed paper and carried it around physically like a criminal record.
I took the printout back to Mantor Hall and spread it down the south wing hallway.
I swear that thing stretched at least fifty feet.
It looked less like a homework assignment and more like evidence from a federal investigation.
I sat there on the floor staring at it, trying to track down what catastrophic chain reaction I had created.
And the worst part was that I genuinely started wondering if maybe I just wasn’t smart enough for any of this.
That’s what old programming languages could do to you.
One wrong character and suddenly you’re questioning your future, your intelligence, and possibly your will to live.
At some point my RA walked by.
Luckily for me, he was a computer science major too.
He asked what was wrong, and I remember being on the edge of completely losing it because I had convinced myself I had destroyed the entire program beyond repair.
He picked up the stack.
Started scanning.
Five minutes later he started laughing.
I had transposed a colon and a semicolon.
That was it.
One tiny piece of punctuation had detonated my entire evening.
And honestly, if he hadn’t walked by, I might still be sitting in that hallway looking for it.
But strangely enough, that wasn’t the moment that ended my computer science career.
The real ending came not long after during a visit to the Federal Aviation Administration for a career day.
Up until then, I think I had still been trying to convince myself the stress was worth it.
That this was what successful people looked like.
That eventually I’d settle into it.
But then we walked into this building full of FAA employees, and I remember looking around thinking:
These people look absolutely miserable.
Nobody looked excited.
Nobody looked energized.
Nobody looked like they had any life left in them at all.
It felt like a building full of people waiting for retirement.
And I remember having this sudden, terrifying realization:
I could become one of them.
That was the moment everything cracked.
Not the semicolon.
Not the error log.
Not the fifty feet of compiler rage.
The future.
Because for the first time, I could actually see mine.
And I didn’t want it.
Which created a pretty major problem.
I was already two years into college.
I had taken almost nothing outside my major.
I was playing basketball.
My entire identity was wrapped up in this plan.
Then suddenly I had to sit down with my parents and explain that I wanted to walk away from all of it.
The degree.
The team.
The entire direction of my life.
Starting over at that point felt terrifying.
But somehow it also felt like relief.
So I made the jump from one of the most rigid, unforgiving environments imaginable into something almost completely opposite:
Marketing and design.
Which, honestly, made no logical sense whatsoever.
I went from a world where one misplaced semicolon could destroy your entire night…
…to a world built around instinct, emotion, storytelling, and creativity.
And for the first time in a long time, things actually felt right.
I still think about that hallway sometimes.
About fifty feet of syntax errors stretched across the floor while I quietly questioned my future.
Turns out the compiler wasn’t just rejecting my code.
It was rejecting the life I was trying to force myself into.
If this resonated with you, you’re not alone.
