by Tom Pantera
Columnist

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, “There are no second acts in American lives.”

Fitzgerald is my favorite writer, but I’m here to tell you: He was wrong. And I’m Exhibit A.

In fact, not only is my life living proof that there are, in fact, second acts, but it’s even more. A second act can be better than the first in a lot of significant ways,.

Since about May 12, the following has happened to me: I graduated with a master’s degree from the University of Missouri; I landed a full-time job as a journalism instructor at Northwestern Oklahoma State University in Alva; and I got engaged. Karon and I are getting married Oct. 17 in Las Vegas by an Elvis impersonator. Seriously.

And I’m left with a weird little mental exercise to work through. How are you supposed to react when your life exceeds your hopes?

This is going to sound overly dramatic, but it’s true. Coming to graduate school was the biggest gamble of my life. And not only was it the biggest gamble, but the stakes were huge.

First, the gamble part. I often thought of it as a “calculated risk,” but we all know what that really means. Even the most calculated risk is a gamble. Oh, I knew I’d do well enough; I never thought I wouldn’t graduate. Still, coming back to school three decades after I’d graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire wasn’t a sure thing. But it turned out I loved it and I succeeded. There were challenges, of course, but they were largely personal; I lost my Mom during my first semester and underwent two operations, one of them unsuccessful. But I graduated with a 3.774 GPA, nearly a half-point higher than my undergraduate GPA; made some great friends (there literally wasn’t a single jerk among my classmates and the teachers were not only the best in their field, but treated me with respect as not just a student, but a colleague); and learned from the best in the business at the best journalism school in the world. And it was fun spending two years in the life of the mind. I’m proud of what I did (while recognizing that I had a lot of people in my corner — first among them, of course, Karon).

And now, the stakes. This was my last chance at having anything like a comfortable, middle-class life. Had my gamble not paid off, I probably would have spent the rest of my life on the economic margins, scraping by but worrying about not just making the bills, but making the rent. It sure as hell wouldn’t have been easy to get back into journalism, because not many papers these days are going to hire a 54-year-old reporter.

Imagine what it’s like, then, to sit down at the table, go all in and be dealt a royal flush.

And – big bonus – it had occurred to me a few years ago that I very well could die alone. I was okay with that. I knew I had people who cared about me. But we all know that isn’t all you need. I told many people that given the workload in grad school, which is pretty titanic, I’d be living like a monk for at least a couple of years. Imagine my happy befuddlement, then, that within two months of my arrival in Missouri I met the woman I not only will probably spend the rest of my life with, but will spend it more happy than I’ve ever been.

The response from our friends and family has bowled us over. Neither Karon nor I believes in destination weddings, because it’s unbelievably self-indulgent to expect people to spend all that money on plane tickets and hotels to attend a ceremony lasting less than an hour. And our wedding actually will be online for 30 days after, so anybody who wants to see it can just watch it there. There was one person we sort of figured would be coming to the wedding, a classmate of mine who also is a good friend of Karon’s. But more than a few friends and family have told us they plan to come to the wedding. As somebody put it to me, everybody always wants an excuse to go to Vegas, and our wedding will provide one, but they could go any time. We always knew we had a lot of good friends, but this experience has been nothing short of humbling.

And now, I prepare to start a new life doing the only other thing I love as much as reporting, teaching.

I landed in this position with a large dollop of luck. As difficult as my life had been the last few years in Fargo-Moorhead, not many middle-aged men are in a position to simply roll the dice and start over as I did. But to cite another old aphorism, luck is the residue of design. I did everything I could to get to where I am right now. It worked. Life’s victories are rare enough that I’ll savor this a while before I begin the huge amount of work I have to do over the summer to prepare for my new job. I would’ve rather spent the summer doing something other than reading textbooks and syllabi, but even that will be interesting.

And as much as I loathe Tim Tebowian public professions of faith, I also have to believe the hand of God was in there somewhere. Virtually from the time I applied to Missouri, every time I’ve needed a break things have broken my way. I don’t believe God is a micromanager, or some kind of cosmic butler who gets you everything you need. He’s got a lot of other things on his plate besides making sure my life goes well. But my good fortune has been so consistent that it’s hard to see it as anything other than the result of some kind of plan. Nobody is that lucky. And those things were beyond my control.

So to repeat my question, what do you do when your life exceeds your hopes? You really can’t do more than what I’m doing: embrace it and be incredibly grateful.