After high school, life was many late-night adventures, friendships, and figuring out who I was. The transition from structured school life to total independence was abrupt, but I embraced it. Lydia and I had started dating at the end of high school. I spent a lot of time partying, drinking, and pushing boundaries—sometimes recklessly, sometimes hilariously, but always in a way that felt like I was truly living.

Most of my early college years revolved around the Detroit Terror Team, a group of friends that made everything feel like an event. We had no problem hopping in a car and driving across state lines for the hell of it, making fake forged bus passes for spontaneous cross-country trips, or partying in some tucked-away spot beneath a highway interchange. We crashed in basements, threw house parties that went on until sunrise, and had a revolving door of new characters entering and exiting our lives.

One night that stood out was when we convinced a guy selling stolen clothing in Wicker Park, Chicago, to come back to Michigan with us. It turned into a complete disaster. After a stop at a nitrous bar in Detroit, the guy got left behind, and someone from the crew ended up keeping all his stuff. The guy later got arrested in Ferndale after smoking weed in a garage down the street. He called the police trying to get his stuff back, but a few friends flipped the story and convinced the cops he was stalking them after a wild night. In the end, he was put on a Greyhound back to Chicago, humiliated and broke.

We had a habit of picking up random vagrants, partying with them, and seeing where the night took us. There was Uncle Craig—some random Royal Oak vagrant we got hammered at a basement party one night across from my parent's house. He woke up the next morning on the pristine lawn of a neighbor who prided himself on winning the Ferndale Beautification Award, completely unaware of how he got there. My dad had fun with that one and eventually found out I had something to do with it.

When I wasn’t throwing myself into reckless fun, I was working as a math tutor at Oakland Community College, making a few bucks helping people out getting C's to transfer elsewhere. It was satisfying work, but I wasn’t exactly focused on academics. I had originally started at Lawrence Technological University, going for Computer Engineering, but EverQuest destroyed my grades. I was addicted—spending entire days in front of the computer without sleep. I even beta-tested the game. Eventually, I realized I needed a fresh start and transferred to Oakland Community College, where my focus wasn’t much better.

As time passed, I transferred again to the University of Michigan-Dearborn, where I switched to Electrical Engineering. Lydia, who had graduated from high school by then, started going there too, studying marketing. The shift to a more serious academic setting wasn’t easy. I wanted Revenge of the Nerds—frat parties, chaos, rebellion. So I joined Theta Tau, an engineering fraternity, hoping for that experience. It didn’t turn out to be what I expected, but it did help with networking and gave me access to old test banks that made studying easier. I’d bring Lydia and the Detroit Terror Team to the fraternity parties, but the mix of personalities didn’t always work. We started partying more in Ann Arbor instead where I met that clown Darrin Tracy who kinda stole my bathrobe cosmetic appearance and later ~$450k in crypto; we'll find him.

Somewhere along the way, I built Lord Chugs—a massive, four-person beer bong made from a converted trophy. It was a hit at every party we brought it to. It symbolized the kind of excess and absurdity that defined those years.

I also worked on an inversion circuit for the plant process computer and had an opportunity to interview at AMD when they were rolling out the Clawhammer processors. I even got to touch the prototypes, but I didn’t land the job. Around the same time, I also interviewed at Rolls Royce in Ohio for another internship.

Despite all the chaos, I wrapped up my degree. But when I tried to land a full-time engineering job at DTE Energy, nothing worked out. With no solid opportunities in Michigan and feeling the need for a reset, I accepted a job offer from Honda R&D in Raymond, Ohio. It was a turning point. I was done being broke, done partying endlessly, and ready to take things more seriously. There was a sadness to leaving—I had built a life in Michigan, and I wondered what would have happened if I had stayed. Maybe Lydia and I would’ve worked things out. Maybe my life would’ve been a lot more tame. But the path was set, and I was ready to see where it led.

The next chapter would take me to Ohio, where my focus would shift to work, travel, and an entirely new set of experiences. Honda, business trips, MySpace dating, acceptance in a new community—all of it was ahead of me.

Despite the distractions, I did well academically. I aced my Embedded Systems class, and I was naturally good at anything involving applied mechanics. But things with Lydia were becoming strained. We were growing in different directions, and by my last semester, the writing was on the wall.

By then, I had moved into the massive Theta Tau house at Wayne State, and my life had turned into pure madness. The house was legendary for its wild energy, and I fully embraced it. One of my roommates was a former cop who had dropped out of engineering school. He had this Jeep, and we’d go off-roading down train tracks drunk as hell. Somehow, he never got in trouble if the police showed up. He also had a weird hobby of using vagrant drug addicts near Cass Corridor for BB gun target practice from the house. You’d hear screaming and profanity in the night.

Meanwhile, I was bouncing between different engineering jobs—testing school bus seats at Tachi-S, designing automotive wiring harnesses at SY Systems Technologies (which I think Denso later bought), and getting hands-on experience in the nuclear industry. My two summers working at the Fermi 2 nuclear plant were intense. I was in the Emergency Diesel Generator room when a turbocharger failed, blasting powdered aluminum out of the engine block as it tore itself apart. I had to fight against a vacuum seal to get into an adjacent air filter room to escape.