"Near the end of high school, I still believed that engineers mostly drive locomotives, but my guidance counselor pointed out that with my interests in math, science, and computers, I should probably be an electrical or computer engineer. He then showed me a college guide to convince me that some school in Missouri was one of the "top" (it wasn't listed there), and I looked over his shoulder and saw the top 3 schools listed as "MIT", "Stanford", and "Illinois". He didn't seem to know anything about "Illinois", but I made it my mission to learn about it. I figured that MIT and Stanford were only for rich people from another planet, but Illinois happened to be the name of that state on the other side of the Mississippi River from St. Louis. I soon realized that "Illinois" was UIUC, which was actually the home of the fictional HAL 9000 Computer from 2001! It was to be completed in 1992 (movie) or 1997 (book), which meant I had a chance to help realize at least part of the glorious future of that movie. It took me a couple of years of complicated scheming to borrow money in every way possible to cover the triple out-of-state tuition rate. When I finally figured it out, I had to personally petition to UIUC Engineering Dean to even be allowed to apply as an out-of-state transfer student, and they said I was the only one they let in over the past decade. Persistence! I then fought for two more years to get all prior credits transferred, and finally graduated as one of the top students from Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1989."