Not Your Typical Student: College of Ag Senior Says Just Being Here's a Privilege

By: Jamie Creamer

Every morning at 5:15, Victor Harris hits the ground running.

By 6:30 a.m., he's pulling bus 06-01 out of the Auburn City Schools transportation center.

One hour and 20 minutes later, with close to 100 elementary, junior-high and high-school students safely delivered to their respective schools, he's parking the bus, hopping in his silver Dodge Ram 1500 and making a beeline to the Auburn University campus, where the senior horticulture major has his own full day of classes.

"I'm lucky this semester because my first class isn't until 9:30," Harris says. "It's when I have an 8 o'clock that it can get tricky."

Harris isn't your typical AU student-and not just because he drives a big yellow school bus every morning and every afternoon. No, youthful appearance notwithstanding, Harris is the "big four-0," the single parent of a Stillman College freshman and an Auburn High senior, and a man who gives thanks daily that he's a part of the student body at Auburn University.

"One of the biggest privileges ever in my life was getting accepted here," Harris says. "I thank AU for believing in me and giving me the opportunity just to be here. I never take that for granted."

Though he's from just up the road in Opelika, Harris took the long way around to get to Auburn.

He first enrolled in college-at the University of North Alabama-in the fall of 1985, right out of Opelika High School. At the time, however, academics were not his top priority.

"I was there on an athletic scholarship; I was all about football," Harris says. "I wasn't doing a lot of thinking about majors and careers. My plan was that football was going to carry me through life."

But injuries early on ended his college football and NFL dreams-and his time at UNA-and basically left him in limbo.

After whiling away a couple or three years back at home, Harris decided the military was the way to go, and in 1989, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps. He and his family-he had a wife and two toddling boys by then-spent the next four years stationed at Fort Pendleton, Calif.

In '92, when the military stint was up, Harris moved the family back to Opelika, and he spent the next eight years basically working for a living.

"I kinda worked different jobs-construction, car sales-whatever it took to support my family," he says, "But it got to the point where I started wanting more out of life than just to be able to pay bills."

He began to do some soul-searching: What did he really enjoy doing? The answer surprised even him.

"What I realized was that I loved working with plants and shrubs, and growing things," Harris says. "And it hit me that, yeah, something to do with landscaping; that's what I wanted to do."

So he took action. In 2000, he quit his job in the car business and launched his own lawn care company.

"I started out with just a push mower and a home-type weed eater," Harris says. "It was a big risk, and there were times when I'd say oh mygosh, what have I gotten myself into?

"I wasn't quick and efficient because of my equipment, but I just concentrated on doing a good job, and pretty soon, some of my customers began referring me to other folks."

They also began asking him questions about landscaping and lawn care-questions he couldn't answer.

He made up his mind: If he was going to seriously pursue a career in landscaping, he was going to have to go back to school.

So it was in the fall of 2002 that a 36-year-old Victor Harris, taking advantage of GI Bill benefits, enrolled as a freshman at Southern Union State Community College in Wadley.

"I didn't have a clue about what lay ahead, I'd been out of school for so long, but I was determined that I was going to make it," Harris says.

It was about the time that he started at Southern Union that he got the job as a bus driver for Auburn City Schools.

"I did that out of necessity for my family-for the insurance and benefits," says Harris, although he admits now that he loves his route, and the kids.

"I really look forward to it," he says. "Plus, I see it as a service for the community and for the school system."

While he was at Southern Union, Harris' schedule went something like this: He'd run the bus route every morning, go mow and edge a yard or two, run the afternoon bus route, go to classes at night and then go home and study.

"I was stretched pretty thin," he says. "Sleep's something I didn't get much of-and still don't, for that matter."

After a couple of years at Southern Union, Harris got up the nerve to apply to Auburn. Initially, he didn't get accepted.

"But I stayed persistent," Harris says. "I kept applying and kept applying till I figure they eventually got tired of me applying and said, 'OK, OK, come on.'"

That letter accepting him effective summer 2005 is among his most prized possessions.

"Getting accepted gave me the most tremendous feeling of accomplishment," Harris says. "I'd always dreamed of coming to AU, and now I had fulfilled that dream."

Being a generation ahead of his fellow students hasn't ever been an issue with Harris or his classmates, the majority of whom would never guess he's old enough, well, to be their dad."

"I was in a calculus class a couple of semesters ago and we were going over something in there, and this kid next to me said, 'Man, I haven't had this stuff in two years,' and I said, 'Two? I haven't had this stuff in 20 years! ' and the kid was blown away," Harris recalls. "He said, 'Man, how old are you?!'"

Harris says he's gotten incredible support through his time at Auburn from the horticulture department faculty.

"A year or two before I got here, I would call Dr. (Harry) Ponder with some landscaping questions my customers were asking me, and I'd tell him someday I was going to be at Auburn and he'd say, 'Come on; we've got a spot for you.' That kind of support is what I still feel.”

Getting accepted to Auburn was one thing. Graduating, in May 2007, will be quite another.

"That's going to be a major milestone in my life," Harris says.

And a turning point as well.

"I'll hopefully get a job with a landscaping company, and that'll probably mean moving, but I'm up for that," Harris says. "I'm ready to get my career going."

Looking back over the last four years of his life, Harris says he hopes that it will in some way serve as an inspiration to someone.

"I think my going back to school was a good example for my sons, because they both have just assumed they're going to college," he says. "But I want other people to see that with persistence and hard work and the right attitude, you can do absolutely anything."

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