Choosing NC State
William Jackson discusses how an early interest in electricity led to him to study electrical engineering at NC State.
Interview on 2012-09-27 00:00:00 -0400
Transcript
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Well, I would have to say that the guidance that I got on that subject was almost nonexistence. My parents were such that they would support me in whatever I wanted to do.
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We didn't have money to go after big, expensive private schools. But I had a hankering for electricity. That was one of the hobbies that I had as a boy.
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I'd built crystal radios, and a rudimentary logic machine, and some other things like that with electricity that intrigued me so that sort of led to electrical engineering,
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and if you were going to do that then that was sort of where you would go in North Carolina. You would go to NC State. I remember that there was some school day, college day,
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at the school, and representatives from the various schools were there and I got a brochure about NC State. I don't remember the person who was there.
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And my father and I made a very poor visit to State. We came unannounced right after exams were over, there wasn't anybody here, we didn't really talk to anybody, but we walked around the campus,
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and I remember going into the engineering building and the professors had posted the answers to the final exams with the schematic diagrams and the formulas and all that.
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I thought, that really does look neat, you know? [Laughs] So that was a very poor basis for making a decision,
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but I thought electricity seemed interesting and if you wanted to pursue that then NC State was the place that you went.
This video is an excerpt from a longer interview. Contact the Special Collections Research Center to request the transcript of the full interview.
