Bruce Roberts, 20 Years Later

Greetings! Over the last few months, I’ve been reading and enjoying everybody’s blog entries, and only in the last few days has it occurred to me that it isn’t fair that I’m consuming, but not contributing. Add to that a friendly reminder I got from Matt Wiltshire on my cell phone the other day, and here I am with my crack at this.

After graduation, and a summer of working a couple of odd jobs, I left for San Diego State. It was quite an adjustment to go from Chaminade’s smaller, more intimate campus to a place like SDSU, where there were well over 30,000 students at that time. While my first year there was a total blast, the next couple would prove to be more challenging as I tried to balance a full school schedule with a job. Somehow, I was able to pull it all together, and I graduated in 1991 with a degree in Information Systems.

During my third year at SDSU, I met a beautiful girl, Anita, and we hit it off right away. She graduated from USD in 1991, and upon our respective graduations, we were engaged. At that point, both of us got started on our careers, with Anita landing a teaching position in her home town of Escondido as a second grade teacher, and me finding work as a support analyst with a point-of-sale systems company in San Diego. After settling into those jobs, we married in June of 1993, and have been together, happily, ever since.

Our first few years of marriage were quiet and easy. We were able to focus our attention on our careers and on buying our first house. We were able to do the latter in 1994, and by buying in Escondido, we sunk our roots a little further there. Right after that, I changed jobs and started working at Mitchell International, first as a support technician, then as a systems administrator, and finally as a software engineer. During this time, we were able to travel around the country a bit to visit family and friends in places like New York, Chicago and San Francisco. However, after all that, it seemed natural that our next step was children. We knew from the beginning that we wanted kids, but we also knew that we wanted to wait until the time was right. Right around the time we started trying, though, my wife had the wild idea to complete a graduate degree she had started a couple years earlier. Our son Gavin was born in January of 1998, and my wife got her Master’s degree just six months later. That wild idea turned out to be contagious. Taking advantage of a special program at Mitchell, I was able to go back to SDSU to get a Master’s degree. I started when Gavin was just a year old, and by the time I finished, we had our daughter Grace. She was born in October of 2000, and I finished grad school in May of 2001. Looking back on all that, I am still not sure how we got through jobs, babies and grad school all at the same time, but we made it!

After all that, it was time for another change. We sold our house and bought a bigger one in 2002 (again in Escondido) to accommodate our growing family. I changed jobs one more time, this time going to the San Diego Unified School District, which is where I still work. I currently am a systems analyst, and most of my time is spent supporting and implementing the district’s monster of a PeopleSoft system. Anita was able to find another teacher with whom she could split a contract, and she teaches kindergarten here in Escondido part-time, which has allowed her to volunteer at our kids’ school from time to time.

Gavin is now nine years old. He has tried a variety of sports and other activities, and his latest is Pop Warner football (much to my delight). Grace is now six years old, and she enjoys dancing. Last year, she joined a competition team, and she enjoys that immensely.

Of course, I’m not including a lot of detail, and what I’ve written may not seem terribly exciting, but with a career, a family and all the things that go along with those, the last 20 years have been quite a journey. Along the way, I’ve experienced some of the highest highs (welcoming my children into the world) and some of the lowest lows (such as the passings of loved ones, particularly Anita’s mother a couple years ago). When we graduated from high school, I had no idea what was ahead of me…but I do feel blessed.

Favorite high school memory…I have a lot of good ones. There are too many to list, and it’s difficult to choose just one, but something I do remember is one of the visits to “the bowls” (some of you will know what those are). I believe it was Halloween on this particular visit. Somebody decided to light a small fire at the entrance to a tunnel, which prompted a police helicopter to visit us, shine a light on us, and demand over the loudspeaker that we put it out. At the time, it was a bit intimidating, but it’s definitely one of those things where I look back and laugh. Believe it or not, at one time, I had some of that exchange between the police and our group on (audio) tape! I doubt I still have it.

Contacts…sadly, I’ve lost contact with many of the friends I had. Two notable exceptions, though, are Matt, as mentioned before, and Steve Orr. Matt and I have remained friends throughout this time, and in his initial blog, he referenced a visit we had at his brother’s bachelor party over the summer. Matt and I had not seen each other for several years before that, but when we saw each other, it was like we had never lost touch. I’ve been in contact with Steve through email. We’ve commiserated with each other over old football stories. (Steve – I vividly recall the “conditioning” we got after that lopsided loss to Alemany, but remember the Aerial Circus we had against Moorpark the next week!). My parents recently sent down a box of my old stuff from their attic, and one of the items in there was the football program from our game against Bell-Jeff in 1986. Sprinkled around this program were pictures from Homecoming, Vice, and the like. Talk about a flood of memories…

One last thought…I’ve read, and can relate to, the comments that have been made on this blog about getting older. A couple of you have mentioned receding hairlines. Well…it seems my genetic makeup has decided that the top of my head should go the full monty, so my hairline has receded, and because of that, rather than make bad attempts at covering it up, I just shave it all off. It’s actually pretty liberating, and it’s certainly one less thing to worry about, but I just hope it doesn’t shock anybody at the reunion. I’m told it suits me well, but I only seem to hear that from the likes of my wife and mother…

I will be going to the reunion next month -- the check’s in the mail (seriously). I look forward to seeing everybody there.