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Kindred: ‘Dr. J’ was a gift that keeps on giving for Illinois State

The walk to Schroeder Hall was a nervous one. The stomach does somersaults on the way to your first college class.

When you grow up in a town of 1,600, a campus of 20,000 is intimidating. And it would all start with this, a Monday morning class in a lecture hall of 250, maybe 300 students. It seemed like a thousand.

The class was Introduction to Psychology, but for a jittery, pudgy freshman from Atlanta, Illinois, it was the introduction to Illinois State.

There were so many unknowns on that August 1976 morning, but sometimes you get lucky in life.