At some point, I talked about how I had never graduated college. I dropped out my sophomore year to start MercyMe 21 years ago. Part of the reason was I felt like I was treading water.
The Reeves Nelson debacle, that hurt me. There are certain things regarding him that I couldn't say then and still can't. But I should have pulled the plug on him after his sophomore year. We tried to make it work, but we couldn't make it happen.
Usually you have a feel for what a kid's abilities are by the end of their sophomore year.
I learned hard lessons in life; I had to because I had so much happen: My mother died my sophomore year in high school. The next year, same day, my brother dropped dead. Two years after that, I got married because my girlfriend got pregnant. The year after my wedding, my father - who I had only recently met - died.
In real life, one of my friends was killed in a car accident during our sophomore year.
I started breaking out of my shell in sophomore and junior year.
My family moved from California to New Jersey in the beginning of my sophomore year of high school. I will never forget the first day in a new school, walking into the cafeteria during lunch and not knowing a single soul. I didn't feel confident enough to share a seat at just anyone's table.
I was going to play pro baseball. That was the dream. But in my sophomore year of high school a teacher who knew I performed, singing in church, she said, 'You know we have a speech team,' and she handed me a copy of 'The Crucible.'
A lot of people have trouble with their second novel - the dreaded sophomore jinx. I wrote three books in between the two novels, and they just weren't very good.
I went broke after sophomore year, gambled away all my money, sold some guns, turned $750 into $10,000, flew to Vegas, turned ten thou into $187,000.
