Choosing NC State
John Earnhardt discusses how, while he was in high school, he decided to study engineering and therefore to attend NC State.
Interview on 2012-11-15 00:00:00 -0500
Transcript
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There were a few people that had attended State in my church. There were two engineers and somebody that had been in agriculture.
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My grades were very good in all technical things, and my mother actually, at church,
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asked one of these older people who had been to State to just talk to me a little bit because there was nobody in my immediate neighborhood
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to talk with that would even know what engineering or agricultural education was all about. So I talked with, Harry [Hollick?] was his name, and he was an electrical engineer.
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He told me what kinds of things I might be doing as an engineer, and that appealed to me: Conservation of natural resources, how to make things work better, how to have a concept and make a product,
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engineering and production and so on. So that was some of the help that got me started toward NC State,
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and of course I liked the idea that in engineering the school was strong.
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We were a large family and not a wealthy family so it was very important that I could go to school,
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and while I didn't mind incurring debt, I could go to school and be able to pay off my loans.
This video is an excerpt from a longer interview. Contact the Special Collections Research Center to request the transcript of the full interview.
