As I mentioned earlier, I had started to swerve right in my politics and by 1988, I was a full-on, William Buckley conservative. As a new Christian, I also began to see the importance of family and the traditional family structure: the husband and father provides, wife and mother manages the home. This was what I believed was best and wanted for my life.
After my break-up, I met a girl at work who was a freshman at Calvin College and a believer. We got to know each other fairly well. I won't expand on that story line, but one day we were talking about traditional families and I told her what I wanted in my life. I remember she looked a bit puzzled and said to me, "Well, if that is what you want, do you think you can accomplish that working at UL as a technical correspondent?" That hit me hard. She was right. How could I support a family being a human test subject and pumping propane? That exchange literally changed my life. Thanks, Debbie, wherever you are.
I decided to find a career. I went to the library (no Internet yet) and looked through the Department of Labor's list of occupations. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of listings. I decided that human resources was something I could do: I liked to help people - I figured HR people did that. I tried to move into HR at UL, but the director said I didn't have the experience or education. OK, so I decided to go to graduate school. I applied to The Ohio State University, University of Rhode Island, West Virginia University, and Rutgers University. I was accepted to all of them, but Rutgers gave me the most money: a teaching assistantship which included full-tuition remission and a stipend.
In the summer of 1990, I said goodbye to the shock treatments and the Weather Channel people and headed to Piscataway, NJ to start my masters degree in Industrial Relations and Human Resources. I felt like I finally had some direction in my life.
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