I willed myself through a junior college to a university and, ultimately, a Ph.D.

At a personal level, when I moved from the 1/2 mile to the mile as a college junior, I used the experiences and stories of those milers who came before me for education and inspiration. Don, too, moved from the 1/2 mile to the mile in college, and his 3:58.7, which made him the third-fastest miler ever when he ran it, was remarkable in part because he ran it on the same day that he took a final exam in Berkeley. For an athlete like myself, who aspired to be a student and an athlete throughout my career, Don was and is a true role model.

I got through college.

Darwin didn't walk around the Galapagos and come up with the theory of evolution. He was exploring, collecting, making observations. It wasn't until he got back and went through the samples that he noticed the differences among them and put them in context.

A university is a college with a stadium seating over 40,000.

You might think they are going to (the University of Maryland) College Park and they end up at Mount Saint Mary's or Harvard.