Part Two - Journey From Wealth Seeker To Wealth Creator

I graduated with honors from a Catholic High School In Chicago, Illinois and, after looking over a dozen scholarship offers accepted one at Harvard University. I had a National Achievement Scholarship for four years of college, some loans, and basic room and board.

Now, no offense to Harvard University, which still counts me as a member of the class of '75, but I might have been better off matriculating at a university similar to the kind of small Catholic High School from which I graduated. Why? Because I often think I might have performed better at a smaller school, not because of the academics, but because of the personalized interaction a smaller college affords. Or maybe not.

My AP scores allowed me to take advantage of an offer to skip out of freshman year and start Harvard with what was called "sophomore standing". I came into the school big, bad, bold and ready, I thought, to kick ass, graduate and get out into the world.

Not quite. I spent one year at Harvard. Harvard didn't beat me, however, I beat myself by not studying hard enough and not being organized and focused enough. I did well my first semester and basically failed one class the second semester, and on the basis of that performance, the freshman dean at the time asked me to "take a year off". Harvard adopted this approach, I think to give first-year students struggling with college life an opportunity to clear their heads and come back when they could be more focused on college life.

I took the request as a rejection, however, and not wanting to come back to Chicago as someone who had been asked to leave Harvard (which would not have been as bad as it sounded, as it turns out, because Harvard requested that many students take that year off, and they then returned after a year, completed their four years and graduated with a Harvard degree, which is what I could have done with less of a prideful attitude than I adopted).

Instead of staying out for one year, coming back to Harvard and catching up, I decided to try to attend school in Chicago. And naturally, I chose the most prestigious school in Chicago - the U. of C. Now the U. of C., even though it was located in my hometown less than 25 minutes from where I grew up, was a place where if anything I felt even more isolated than I had at Harvard. I didn't live on campus, I was living at home. Worse, they accepted few of my credits from Harvard including my AP credits, which meant I started over as a freshman (I know, it sounds dumb now even as I'm writing it and what kind of advice was I getting then? Very little, and those few words came from people with no real sense of what was happening to me).

I enrolled in the economics program at U. C. but in less than a year I'd gone from a stellar student who was on track to graduate in three years from Harvard University to a lost freshman behind by a year if I stayed at UC. I barely attended classes that year at all and ended up that second year owing 2 different school loans, no scholarship and less than 2 years of credits from more than 2 years of work.

Now how did I end up from the academic circumstance I just described to a wealth creator, business owner, nationally known columnist, grantwriter and someone who has created a system to earn a million dollars cash in six month? Stay with me.