Nirvana’s debut album Bleach was released in June 1989. Three months later, during my first week of college, Soundgarden released their second album, Louder Than Love. And that November, Mudhoney’s self-titled debut arrived. “Grunge,” I quickly learned, was a real thing, and bands from Seattle were playing powerful, heavy, sweaty music at exceptionally high volumes and rebelliously slow speeds.

In 2006, 13 years after I graduated from University of Puget Sound, I was invited to speak to the university’s Business Leadership Program. The moment I received Professor Jeffrey J. Matthews’ invitation, I considered what my presentation might look like. At the time, I co-owned Sonic Boom Records, a chain of stores in Seattle; I ran my own record label, The Control Group; I toured the world playing drums in my band, The Long Winters; and I worked as an A&R scout for Epic Records.

When Francisco Menéndez ’85 was a young boy, his aunt took him to see his first film in a theater: The Wizard of Oz.

Things started out well enough: He was already accustomed to watching television programs, like Batman and The Avengers, in black and white. But by the time a tornado hit Dorothy’s house and knocked her unconscious, he began to grow anxious. All bets were off when the screen suddenly bloomed into Technicolor.

While growing up near Seattle, Adam Sowards ’95 wasn’t exactly a lover of the outdoors. In fact, when he enrolled in an environmental history course during his junior year at Puget Sound, he was driven more by the insistence of his advisor, Bill Breitenbach, that he diversify his coursework as a history major than by the prospect of actually learning about the subject. And then, in about week three, inspiration struck. “All of a sudden,” Sowards says, “all the history I thought I knew looked different when I looked at it from this different angle.”

Ted Parker ’22 fully intended to finish his bachelor’s degree when he first enrolled at University of Puget Sound in the fall of 1974. But after four years—and three majors—he had a wife, he had a job, and he was ready to begin the next chapter of his life. The only thing he didn’t have was a bachelor’s degree.

“I simply ran out of time,” Parker says. “By 1978, life was moving on.”