17 - Sweet Melody

Summary

Music is the universal language of mankind.

–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The universality of music is hard to debate. Fans in a country that doesn't speak English sing the lyrics to “Satisfaction” loud and proud along with Mick Jagger as if they were also from England. Many people first learn how to speak foreign languages by singing songs. Singers lose their accents when performing. And, in some remarkable cases, those with pronounced stuttering problems can croon as smooth as silk when given a melody and a beat to follow.

An oft-cited metaphor stems from the riff … as good news is considered music to one's ears.

Such a harmonious vibe must certainly have filled the Rich household back when young Jack Rich, a top-of-the-class student with big aspirations, opened his college acceptance letter from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Not only had Jack been accepted into the world's preeminent engineering university, he had also been granted a scholarship to attend!

Following a well-tread path, Jack opted into the Electrical Engineering program at the end of his freshman year, and it would seem that he was clearly on the road to future success.

Then came a summer of discord … a cacophony of conflicting thoughts. Though Jack's extraordinary intelligence ensured he was doing well enough in school, he finished his second year, packed his bags, and began making plans for whatever he might opt to do next. Like a needle scratching across a pristinely pressed 33-rpm record, Jack had decided to leave MIT.

“It's true,” Jack would later confirm. “I had come to a point where I simply didn't care. Electrical engineering at that time was all about transistors. And I did not care how transistors worked. So, I was doing the work. But mentally I was dropping out.”

Come that summer, he was dropping out in a way far beyond mentally.

“So,” he continued, “I dropped out for the summer. But then, at the end of the summer, I didn't have a job as everyone else was going back to school. But I still had a scholarship. I decided to go back to MIT, but not to electrical engineering. So, I reregistered as a music major.”