(TSU) My lasting legacy from Texas State-San Marcos did not

Alumni Survey

Describes the student body as: Describes the faculty as:

Male

Quite Bright

Date: May 28 2006
Major: (This Major's Salary over time)
My lasting legacy from Texas State-San Marcos did not happen in the classroom. It happened through a campus ministry (Baptist Student Union/BSU). It was through the infuluence of peers that I made a lifetime commitment to Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior. No matter how many successes or failures I will encounter in this life, I am grateful to God for placing me in the atmosphere where I accepted His lordship in my life. Regarding the academics--it was a much smaller school than it is today. While there, part of me wished I had gone to my first choice of college--UT Austin; but another part of me was grateful to be in a smaller, more personal atmosphere. Because of my grades, I was able to reside in an "Honors Dorm"--a new concept at that time. In a small way it shielded me from the partylike atmosphere of the other dormitories, even though during the first two years I was there it also served as an "overflow" dorm since more students wanted to live on campus than there were rooms available. I do wish that the School of Education had taken more of an interest in me as I prepared for my teaching career. They did not monitor me as closely as colleges are nowadays with their teacher preparation programs. This fallacy came to root when I student taught, as I had a horrible experience teaching at the high school I had graduated from four years earlier. Subsequently, it took me three years to get a "real" teaching job. I had to prove myself in substitute teaching, as well as having to retake one of my state-mandated certification exams (a relatively new concept in the mid-late 1980s). And as far as being a math major, I feel that a course bridging lower-level problem solving courses (like Calculus) with upper-level, proof-oriented courses (like Abstract Algebra, Topology, etc) would have been required. I struggled quite a bit with the proof-oriented classes; and I feel that if this "bridge" course were required in my degree plan at the time, I would have done better in those courses--as well as being a bit more motivated to attend graduate school in mathematics.

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