In February 1994, I was working on a consulting project for Scott Paper Company with Dr. Eric Denna, one of my professors from BYU. I needed to visit the Scott Paper plant in Mobile, Alabama. At the time, I was seriously considering pursuing a PhD instead of taking a job after graduating from BYU in August 1994. So, I arranged to visit Florida State University during the same week I was in Mobile.
Annette and I had babysat the Denna’s five kids earlier that year while Eric and his wife were in Hawaii. As partial payment, Eric bought a ticket for Annette to fly to Mobile to meet me, and we rented a car to drive to Tallahassee to visit FSU together.
It was my first time in Alabama and Florida. Annette had been to Mobile a few years earlier, in the summer of 1989, when she competed in the America’s Junior Miss national competition. We stayed in Mobile the night after she arrived. The next morning, it was quite cold. I turned on The Weather Channel while we were getting ready to leave, and the announcer was talking about how unusually cold it was, mentioning that the snow line was going to be quite far south.
As we drove east on Interstate 10 from Mobile toward Tallahassee, I started to notice piles of white along the side of the highway. I pointed them out to Annette, and we were excited to think we might be in Florida for one of those rare times it actually snowed there.
A few miles later, we stopped at a rest area and discovered that the “snow” along the highway was actually white sand. We laughed about it for the rest of the trip and still do whenever we see white sand today.
That visit to Florida State turned out to be far more consequential than I realized at the time. I met Dr. V. Sambamurthy, also known as “Samba,” who would later become one of my PhD dissertation co-chairs. The visit to FSU convinced me that pursuing a PhD was the right path, even though it meant a few more years of graduate school before starting my career.
.jpeg)