There were kids from schools all over the state, perhaps five or six students from each. We were divided into groups of about twelve and assigned to different counselors who had prepared activities and things for us to experience. The counselors were high school seniors who were participating in a different part of the same study. It was a co-ed group with many attractive young women as both guides and students. We spent the next fourteen days living together as college students. We attended classes and ate at the Student Union. I became particularly attached to one very attractive sixteen year old counselor. We had a lot of one-on-one time together during that second week and she was my "date" to the farewell dance on our last night. To her, I was probably the little brother she never had. To me, she was my first romantic interest and there was nothing brotherly about it. We held hands, hugged, sat together, walked together, danced together, and got very personal. ...and then she was gone forever. I will always remember you my ol' buddy, ol' pal, ol' friend.
In addition to falling in love for the first time, I fell in love a second time when we toured the engineering department of the university. Not only did they have a hydrogen-powered car (in 1981), but they also had a computer graphics department. For the first time in my life I saw a completely computer-generated animated short story. It was about a skeleton playing pool. "...eye-ball in the corner pocket..." I was shown the code used to generate the images. It was all done by-hand in those days. This was a couple years before the movie "Tron" became the first feature-length film to incorporate that level of computer graphics. I was immensely impressed and my future career was discovered at that moment!
