After Kenny Kinds begins lying to his parents about his grades, he has to question why he is in engineering school in the first place.

Kenny Kinds is an application developer/comedian and yes, those two things pair together nicely. He also co-hosts the monthly storytelling show Sorry Please Continue at The Heavy Anchor in St. Louis.

This story originally aired on August 16, 2019 in an episode titled “The College Years.”

Story Transcript

Marine Biology is what you pick when you don’t know anything about marine biology.  That’s how I found that out.  Nowhere near water is where I am. 

Anyway, I should have known something was up because I was at a seminar.  I’m sitting at this seminar, I’m 17 years old and I should have known something was up because I was there with my dad and it was a weeknight.  My dad never left the house during the week.  He worked for General Motors and he worked from 6:00 to 2:00 and he would come home and he'd be asleep by 3:00 p.m. and he was done. 

But we were sitting at this seminar and there was nothing but this line of… this was the early ‘90s so you don’t really know how old a dude was.  I think they were middle aged but they could have been between 23 and like 70.  I don't know. They’re just wearing the shirts you get at like Target back then off mannequins and which was like several degrees of taupe.  They looked like drywall is what they looked like. 

But I’m sitting there and I’m looking at my dad and my dad has nothing but like hope and love in his eyes, because he really likes this. At this point, I don't know what’s going on until they start talking about the University of Missouri-Rolla, and I’m thinking to myself, “Oh, my God.  My dad wants me to go to engineering school.”  

And that’s not compatible with how I know education works because, a little bit about me, when I went to high school I always associated education with fear.  My dad grew up in Mississippi in the 1930s and 1940s and he came up to Missouri as part of the great migration.  He came here after his mom came up here and so education was always very important to him, but it wasn’t very important to me. 

In fact, in my placement exams in high school we had to fill up this Scantron while we took this test.  On this Scantron, I just made a Jesus fish.  That’s a true story.  Which made sense because it was a Jesuit high school so it’s like who loves more about God and education than I do?  Evidently, they don’t because they put a bunch of remedial classes.  So that was my high school career. 

And my dad, God bless him, he didn’t go to high school, he didn’t graduate from high school, didn’t really get a lot of formal education in his younger years but then he was always trying to help me with my homework, which he was the last person who should have been trying to help me with my homework.  Just imagine trying to help somebody learn how to swim when you also don’t know how to swim. 

So it would just turn into these yelling matches.  And I remember distinctly one time he tried to help me with my math homework and we got into a gigantic argument because he used the phrase comparing apples to oranges and I told him you could compare those two because they're both pieces of fruit.  That ended up with me crying and him yelling at me until he literally just went to sleep. 

So anyway, I’m at this seminar, fast forward.  I have no options, right?  I’m not very good in school.  I’m not going to get a scholarship.  I know a state school is cheap so what I'll do is I'll just apply for the University of Missouri-Rolla and that I did. 

In my senior year, I remember it was right after I got home from school in the afternoon, I got a letter from Rolla saying that I got in.  Somehow, by the grace of God, I did. But looking back on it, I compare it to Snow White getting the poison apple, because I was screaming like, “Yeah, man, I got into college.  I got into the University of Missouri-Rolla,” but at the back of my head I’m like, “Oh, shit.  I don't know what I’m doing.” 

It’s like at that moment, the thing that Curb Your Enthusiasm should come up and then that’s it.  Directed by Robert B. Weide, and that’s the end of my life.  That’s where I fucked up right there.  It wasn’t even me. 

So I was really excited to go to college. I go down to the University of Missouri-Rolla and I’m meeting all these people.  I realize then that I don't fit in here at all because they all seem to know what they're doing.  They all seem like they want to be there and everything is going fine except I’m taking an Intro to Engineering class.  It was just a survey class.  That’s all it was.  And I ended up getting a C in that class, which should have made a point that I shouldn’t have been down there. 

But I remember sticking with the dude who taught the class, was this guy who wore like a General Pershing hat or a pith helmet.  I don't remember now.  I’m trying to remember it.  But he wore that General Pershing hat and he wore like a duster.  He was one of those people that if he came into the room you'd be like, “For real, dude?  Are you serious?  This is a real person right now?” 

And he was talking about how tough engineering is and I assume it was a weed-out class.  It was just to let you know that, hey, this is what engineering is. But I’m sitting there like, “Man, given the opportunity, I could kick your ass.  I mean, come on, dude.  For real?”

So I ended up getting a C in that class because I would just fall asleep in class all the time because I wasn’t drinking coffee then. 

But I’m struggling through these classes, I’m struggling through my first year in college and then that year is over and my grades were not that good.  But this was the thing.  It was the early ‘90s, so all you had to do was just blame things on the post office when your parents asked you where your grades were. 

I just said, “I guess it’s the post office man.” Why don’t they just go to school, right? 

Ironically, my mom worked for the post office so this was not… what’s going on, right?  Where’s my… where will I bottom out? 

So my sophomore year, it’s the same thing.  Things are getting worse.  I’m taking chemistry classes, chem lab, and I can’t ask these people for help. I’m too proud to ask for help. But also, I don't think these people want to give you help because they also expect you to know these things.  It’s like most of the people down there were like if Reddit had their own college, that was in University of Missouri-Rolla at that point. 

So again, sophomore year is done and my grades aren’t any better.  I’m thinking to myself, “Well, at some point, somebody is going to find out what’s going on and pull me out of here.”

My parents asked me for my report card and the same thing I said last year somehow worked this year.  I don't want to make it seem like my parents weren’t diligent.  They were.  I was just very adept at not telling the truth. 

So I’m coming up on my junior year and I’m driving down to Rolla to register for classes like the weekend before classes start.  I’m driving down because Rolla is only like an hour-and-a-half away so I’m driving down there.  Again, at this point, my grades aren’t really that good.  They're just… well, I wouldn’t tell you that but you'll have to ask my report card also.  You're not getting that. 

So I drive down there and, at this point, I need a school to get into because every school at this point you have to apply for school to get into if you want to continue going down there and I was out of options.  So I just went to the Environmental Engineering School.  I just walked in.  I know nothing about environmental engineering.  I just kind of walked into the building looking for the dean, seeing if he would sign my paper to let me go here.

So I get a meeting with this dude and I go into his office and he was a nice man.  He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt with a tie.  I’m not going to hold any of this.  We all make bad decisions in our lives.  He was the dean.  I can’t really make fun of him that much, right? 

So I’m sitting there and I’m waiting for him to sign the paper like every other dean did except this time he looks at my grades and he looks at me and he's like, “Why are you down here, man?” 

Normally, I would say something to try to get out of the situation, just make up something.  But, at this point, nobody had ever asked me why am I down here and it was like a great weight had been lifted off my chest.  Somebody had finally said, “Man, this isn’t for you and you should probably leave.  Now, I had a reason to leave. 

So he's like, “Listen, man.  This is what I’m going to do.  I’m going to sign this piece of paper so that you can come down here again for this semester.  But you don’t come back here, all right?  I want you to promise me that you will not sign up classes again and you don’t come back down here.” 

At first I felt bad because I was rejected by an entire school.  But as I thought about it I was like, finally, I can make a decision now on what I want to do, because I hadn’t thought like that in my life up to that point. 

So I went one more semester, but the joke is on him. I stayed down there another semester, just living in Rolla, Missouri, which is as bad as it sounds.  I was just down there just lifting weights.  I was like fit as hell but for who?  This was all dudes.  Like come on, man.  Really? 

So that last semester my dad comes and picks me up and we’re driving back.  We happen to get into… I’m driving and I fall asleep as I’m driving the car back, which is a theme of my college career.  I fall asleep and, by the grace of God, we go into a median.  We don’t go into oncoming traffic because it was two lanes of traffic. 

Everything gets destroyed.  Like the car gets wrecked, I lose all my stuff.  It’s all over the highway.  When we get home that night my mom is like, “Hey, I’m just glad all of you are okay.  You know, you could have been killed but the only that happened was the car was wrecked so I’m just happy that all of you are safe.” 

And I was listening to my mom say that but in the back of my head I’m like, “This woman is going to kill me when she finds out I can’t go back to college where they had been sending me for three years.”  It’s a money pit for the most part. 

So I finally worked up the courage.  This was like later on in the summer and it was getting to that point they were like, “What are you going to do?”  I finally worked up the courage where I just told my dad. 

I’m like, “Listen, I can’t go back down there.  It’s not for me.  I’m struggling.  I know you want the best for me.  I know you want me to get a college education.  I know you love engineering but I can’t do that, so I don't know what I’m going to do.”

And I was expecting my dad to explode.  I thought he was going to come crushing down upon me and I was going to end up on the streets.  But he, as like most older, like your parents do when you think they're about to fuck you up or just kick you out on the street, he looked at me and he was like, “Listen, figure it out.  Just figure out what you want to do.” 

That took me aback.  I was like super shocked that he said that. 

So fast forward, and my dad passed away a couple of years ago, but I was able to have conversations with him right before he died.  One of the things we talked about, I was finally able to tell him what happened when I was down there at school.  One of the things that he impressed upon me was like, “I didn’t want you to get an engineering degree.  I wanted you to get an engineering degree but it didn’t matter to me.  I saw you struggling and trying to find something to do and I thought engineering would be good for you,” because one of the things I wanted to do, I know I said marine biology but that’s not completely true.  They asked me when I wasn’t thinking.  I wanted to be a filmmaker.  I wanted to go to school for film but, as you know, college film school costs a lot of money. 

But he said to me, he was like, “Listen. I saw you struggling and just trying to find something to do.  What I wanted you to learn, I wanted you to learn how to survive.  Because with math and science, they can’t take that away from you.  Two plus two will always be two plus two, but art is subjective.  It’s up to somebody else to say that’s good or that’s bad.” 

Like back in my day it was just Spike Lee.  Ask your parents.  That’s all it was. 

So that was my experience with the University of Missouri-Rolla.  Thank you.