I was fortunate enough to be accepted in midterm as a graduate student at Cornell in 1961, immediately after receiving an undergraduate degree in journalism from The University of North Carolina. With my BA in Journalism from Carolina, combined with an MBA from Cornell, I felt assured my education would be perfect for a career with an advertising agency.
I was never around for graduation ceremonies at either college, because of the timing of my degrees. As soon as I learned a Carolina diploma was forthcoming, I returned to an Ithaca winter. The business school, then known as the Graduate School of Business and Public Administration, was later renamed the Johnson Graduate School of Management in honor of its major benefactor, the philanthropist Sam Johnson, president of S.C. Johnson Co., and one of my father’s friends. Getting back into the same university I busted out of redeemed my earlier failure. It was pleasing vindication, but I had no idea what I was getting into.
At Carolina, I had concentrated on marketing courses. Needless to say, my undergraduate courses were not heavy in statistics, finance, economics, accounting, or math of any sort. I was prepared as a writer and creative thinker, and quite unprepared to handle statistical formulas that would take up a paragraph in a New York Times editorial.
When I first set foot in the building, I found myself surrounded by students carrying around what I thought at first were little white “sticks.” It took me a while to realize that they had movable parts, that I was surrounded by engineering graduates, and that I was more than somewhat out of my league. These slide rule predecessors of today’s computers were, in the hands of the engineers, quicker than the eye could follow, and they were used to solve all the test problems in courses that dealt with figures, while I was still trying to decipher numbers in my head. I never did learn how to use a slide rule, and the courses in accounting and statistics just about did me in.
My struggle with accounting reminds me of the story about the time a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of a huge company was honored in front of all the employees at a dinner party. He had taken the giant corporation from red ink to solid black, and the CEO, at the end of his speech, asked him his secret to success. He said he had noticed the CFO opened and closed his top desk drawer quickly first thing every morning, and wondered what was there he had been referring to. The CFO said, “Debit to the left, credit to the right.” I had a tough time in accounting even keeping that much in mind.
At the Johnson School my major, once again, was marketing, and I also got high marks in the business administration, business law, advertising, public relations, personnel, political, and production courses. I enjoyed solving the case history problems, but I never would have survived statistics and finance without the help of a friend. He was a wrestling teammate back at Lawrenceville, and Doug Rowan came back into my life again for the third time.
We had both entered Cornell as undergraduates and had spent much of our first year together before I busted out. Later, when I came back to business school, Doug was there again. He was a genius with figures; for him, statistics was a walk in the park.
With his help, I was able to keep up my grades in those courses without pulling down the high marks I got in the rest of them.
It’s an understatement to say my first semester in the business school was hard work. I was living with my parents on a third floor, lonely as hell, and spending a lot of time missing Tetlow and writing letters to her. The second semester was even worse. During Christmas break I made a decision that would change my life forever—and much for the better.