When we went to Western together, my friend, John, used to gripe all the time about how bad his timing was. It had improved greatly by the time he completed his master’s degree at Austin Peay. A couple of years after that, he walked into the professorship in the guitar department just as David Kelsey exited that position. Don’t get me wrong, John worked hard for both those degrees—they don’t just hand them out—but, a few years later, his timing would adversely affect mine.