Paul Smith's College and Curt Stager, PhD

*** Late Update *** I received an e-mail from Dr. Stager and he has advised that his book title has changed to "Deep Future: the next 100,000 years of life on Earth" and it's due out in March, by St. Martins Press.

I graduated high school in 1988. I wasn't a great student being more of a hands-on sort of absorber of knowledge. I managed to do well enough in my senior year to be accepted to Paul Smith's College in Paul Smiths, NY. My father died in 1987, so I decided to wait a year between graduating high school and heading off to college to help, in my mind at least, my mother with some bills and whatnot. She had her own major health issues starting in her late 30s with cancer and then another type of cancer in the late 80s.

I finally felt good enough about leaving, so off I went in the fall of '89. I had visited the college several times having a friend who was going there. I loved everything I saw.

I was accepted into the Ecology and Environmental Technology (EET) program and even managed to get the residence hall that I wanted to be in, almost on the shore of Lower St. Regis Lake. Paul Smith's is a small school on 14,000+ acres of land in the Adirondack Park with, at the time, under 1000 students. I am not certain how many there are today, but it cannot be that many more. Back then it was a two-year school, but now they have four-year programs and a bit more diversity in the programs. The EET program has been expanded and broken up into more specific majors that I would really have liked to have been a part of.

There are many stories I could share from my too short two year stint there, but my purpose for writing a little bit about the school right now is to mention a professor who really impacted my life and thought process.

Curt Stager, my professor for Biology and Forest Soils. I recently came across a talk he did at the college posted on YouTube and it took me right back to the classroom (which was mainly in this same auditorium). This talk is based on climate change and is about 45 minutes long, but well worth a listen. Curt is in the process of publishing a book called Whiplash: Climate Change and the Next 100000 Years in a Warmer World.

I was always fascinated by Curt's talks. He, like many of the professors there, were humble, and always interacted with the students, in many cases sitting down to have lunch with us, especially those of us in the EET program. Most of us were on first-name basis from day one. Back then Curt had a beard, but other than that he looks the same.

So, if you have the time, or even if you don't have a listen to Curt's talk. Watching this was good for me, or bad for me. I am not sure which. It did put a lot of 'would have - should have - could have' thoughts into my head, which does me no good. My Mom died during the holiday break just prior to my last semester, but I was able to stay and finished with my Associates. There is no going back, but I can follow along with some of what I missed now on YouTube and only ponder where I could be now. I'm happy where I am though so I guess it all worked out well for me anyway.