It wasn’t until the year of graduation, or a bit before that year, that I had even heard of Full Sail. I originally wanted to go to DeVry University, a college in Illinois, or to Champlain College, a college in Vermont. Both options were alright.

I mean, I wasn’t exactly blown away by DeVry. The website looked alright, and the program for Game Development looked alright. Keyword: alright. But it was close to home, so I wouldn’t have to move out-of-state to attend it. Now, Champlain College had a much better vibe about it. It had a nice campus, it had a great website, and the game development program looked interesting. But it was all the way up in Vermont, and I was in Illinois. So that meant I would’ve had to move. That meant the option of going to Champlain kind of sucked.

It sucked because it probably would’ve been the equivalent of breaking up with my girlfriend who I had been dating since 8th grade. There were two options for me in regards to me going to Vermont for college: my girlfriend Cali would come with me or she wouldn’t. One of these options would turn our relationship into a long distance one, and we all know how those work out: exceptionally well. Too well honestly.

So okay,  what if Cali came with me to Vermont then? Well, that would’ve been stupid as hell of her. Cali wanted to go to school to do something in the medical field, and there were no medical schools near my college that she could’ve gone to. And it’s not like Cali didn’t not want to get a college degree as well.

So I was conflicted: do I go to a college that didn’t seem as great as the other in order to stay in a relationship with my girlfriend or go to a college out-of-state that would probably end my relationship? I mean, I’ve always been the type of person who makes decisions that are purely in my interest, but still, I didn’t like the outcome of either decision. I’m honestly not sure if I ever decided on a choice or not.

It wouldn’t have mattered though if I had picked a choice or not though. Because one day, while I was at school, Cali was conducting some research. She didn’t particularly like any of the choices I could choose, and she knew that I wasn’t too excited about either as well. So she decided to try and find me a college. And she did.

She ended up showing me a college that was further away than Champlain, but it seemed even better. It had a bunch of awesome degrees: Film, Recording Arts, Creative Writing, Game Design, Game Art, and Game Development. And it also had a pretty decked out campus. I’m, of course, referring to Full Sail University.

The way Cali found out about Full Sail was interesting. She was looking for colleges that had online game development or game design degrees, and Full Sail has a decent amount of online degrees. This way I could take classes at Full Sail while still living in Illinois.

I eventually decided on signing up for the game design degree even though I had taken C++ programming classes in college in hopes of becoming a game developer. And I was content with that decision. Only for a while though. Something in my gut told me that doing an online program would be garbage. Being able to “network” with other game designers, game developers, and game artists in person would be crucial for my future as a game maker. So I was left with a decision that wasn’t completely satisfying.

Cali knew that I wasn’t too pumped about having to do an online program instead of an on-campus program, and one day she told me that she would move down to Florida with me to allow me to pursue my career as a game designer. This was pretty big because most of her family lives in Illinois, and she would be leaving them even though she is very family oriented (leaving wouldn’t be a problem for me because I had left my house years before that).

But the decision to move to Florida with Cali got rid of every big problem with all the other decisions, and I finally felt content. Something interesting that came out of the transition from online to campus was that I changed my degree.

Full Sail didn’t have an online game development program at the time, so it never was an option. But now it was. This meant I had to reconsider some things.

My heart was totally into the idea of being a game designer, but my brain wasn’t too sure. When I checked the credits for GTA V after I beat it, I noticed there weren’t as many game designers as there were programmers, so I thought that it might be tougher to get a job as a game designer. Really, though, the biggest thing for me was this: get a game developer with no game design experience to design a game and then have a game designer with no programming experience to develop a game. Who would do better? This question was the deciding factor for why I switched to game development.

Now, with my degree change came a new test that I must face: a math test.

Fun Fact: The last year of high school, during the time we knew we were moving down to Florida, we found out that the college Cali wanted to attend was going to get sued. This was because in the degree she was going into, Radiology, the students were forced to vaginally probe each other. If they decided they didn’t want to probe each other, they would fail!

P.S. She ended up switching degrees.