In answering the question "why did I return to school" it is as important to explore my original departure from academic life as my return. Ultimately, the exit and return were greatly influenced by two life events – birth and death.
             At the end of the summer of 1988, as I was preparing to enter my junior year at Columbia University, while sleeping at home, a family friend woke me with the news that my mother, sleeping in the next bedroom, was not moving. Ironically, I rarely slept at home, even during the summer months, preferring an on-campus apartment at Columbia's Morningside Heights. On this particularly unique occasion while enjoying my parents' hospitality, I bore witness to my mother's final moments. Shortly thereafter, my father suffered a stroke and following six months in the Intensive Care Unit at New York Hospital and a brief stay at a hospice, he too died from what the family agreed was a broken heart. Clearly loosing one's parents is an event which all children must anticipate; however, there is little, if any, way to prepare yourself for the back-to-back loss of your parents. Death appears as another life requirement and the ways in which we adapt ultimately define the balance of our adulthood.
             During my father's illness, I continued with my studies, but with less enthusiasm and increasingly became concerned about things economic more than academic. Unfortunately, rather than taking an academic leave of absence, I continued to muddle through my course work and when it appeared that I might suffer a grade of 3.0, or God forbid 2.5, thus irrevocably altering my hard earned GPA, I would drop the course.
             By the middle of my senior year, although I had completed much of the course work for my degree, and undoubtedly could have found a way to complete the program, albeit with a poor or near worthless GPA, I chose to withdraw and pursue new business opportun
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