Nicholas's Story
Copyright© 2025 by writer 406
Chapter 14
Nicholas finally had enough saved up to start at the university. Between the handyman business, which was now running smoothly and the small advance from Hartwick Press, he could finally make the transition from community college to four-year university.
Nicholas reminded himself that he wasn’t going through all of this to get a piece of paper saying he matriculated. He wanted what they had to teach him. The old saying goes that while an expert knows a lot about a subject and can apply it—a scholar knows everything about it. Nicholas wanted to learn from the scholars. He wanted to understand systems of thought from the ground up, to trace ideas to their sources and back, to see how philosophical frameworks evolved over centuries.
He decided to take classes in philosophy and psychology with maybe a smattering of anthropology and history. The combination made sense to him—the theoretical frameworks of human thought, the empirical study of human behavior, and the analysis of human cultures. Together, they offered different ways for examining the same fundamental questions he’d been exploring lately in his notebooks: How can I create meaning in my life? What constitutes excellence in different domains? How can I organize my life and work?
Nicholas’s first meeting with Dr. Abernathy, the philosophy department chair, was memorable. The professor was in his sixties, with wild gray hair and clever eyes that peered over half-moon reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. His office looked like it had been hit by a tornado of books—stacks on every surface, shelves overflowing, volumes open face-down on the floor.
“So,” Dr. Abernathy said after reviewing Nicholas’s transcript, “community college a 4.o and a GED? And a book on the way as well. That’s unusual.”
“Yes, sir,” Nicholas replied. He told him what the book was going to be about.
“Arete,” the professor nodded. “The Greek concept of excellence or virtue. Interesting focus for someone your age.”
He peered at Nicholas over his glasses, studying him with obvious curiosity. Nicholas was used to this by now—people trying to reconcile his appearance (large man, still bearing the markers of his past, a twice broken nose and battered features) and his age now twenty-one with his academic interests.
“What draws you to philosophy, Mr. Carter?” Dr. Abernathy asked.
Nicholas considered the question carefully. “I want to understand excellence, Arete. How different thinkers have tried to make sense of virtue, life and work.”
“That’s what brings most people to philosophy,” the professor said. “But few stick with it. It rarely provides definitive answers.”
“I’m not looking for definitive answers,” Nicholas replied. “Just the answers that the smart people asked.”
That seemed to satisfy Dr. Abernathy. He signed Nicholas’s enrollment forms and handed him a list of recommended courses. “You’ll find Professor Sanchez’s seminar on Virtue Ethics particularly relevant to your interests. It’s usually reserved for graduate students, but I think he’ll make an exception in your case.”
And so began his university education. Nicholas approached it with the same disciplined focus he brought to everything these days—creating detailed study schedules, reading far beyond assigned materials, filling notebooks with observations and random thoughts. He hoped to be surprised, to have his assumptions challenged; to explore intellectual territories he hadn’t known were even there.
Professor Sanchez’s survey course introduced Nicholas to the virtue ethics beyond the Stoics—Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, of course, but also Confucian thought, Buddhist ethical frameworks.
The Psychology department’s courses pushed him to ground his philosophical interests in the empirical research, introducing him to studies on expertise development, flow states, and the psychology of habits.
Nicholas found himself drawn to cultural anthropology—the study of how different societies organize themselves. Dr. Thompson’s course on ethnographic methods gave him new tools for his current observations, helping him learn to see different behavior patterns, teaching him to question his own cultural assumptions.
Meanwhile, the editing process for the book was a pain but well worth it. Mrs. Harrington was teaching him so much. He would have paid her for the opportunity. She was a patient but demanding editor. She respected his voice and perspective but pushed him to clarify, to elaborate, to make the connections explicit that were implicit in his original notebooks.
“Your reader won’t have the benefit of your entire philosophical framework,” she explained during one of their sessions. “You need to provide enough context for them to understand why these observations matter.”
They meet weekly, sometimes at her office, sometimes at a quiet cafe near campus. She’d mark up his drafts with precise questions and suggestions, never rewriting Nicholas’s words but always challenging him to make them clearer, more effective. It was like having a personal tutor in writing and thinking.
He dedicated the book to Mrs. Edwards, the librarian, who had gone out of her way to help him. And Al, who had taught him about craftsmanship.
Nicholas spent much of the break after summer classes in the Hartwick building, as an unofficial intern. He met agents and learned about their work, observed the design team as they integrated his photographs with the text. He sat in on marketing meetings where they discussed how to position his unusual book in the marketplace.
He even went out once with a sales rep named Frank to visit bookstores. That was an education in itself—seeing how books made the journey from concept to reader’s hands, how decisions at each step influenced a book’s chances of finding its audience. Frank, initially skeptical of this philosophical book by a kid, became increasingly enthusiastic as they read portions of the manuscript.
The designers created numerous mock-ups for the cover before settling on a simple, elegant design: a close-up photograph Nicholas had snapped of Al’s hands holding a framing hammer, the wood grain of the handle showing years of use, the metal head bearing the marks of countless nails driven home. The title — “The Excellence of Ordinary Things”—appeared in a clean, sans-serif font beneath the image.
When they showed him the final design, Nicholas felt a strange emotion he couldn’t immediately identify. Later, he realized it was pride—the earned pride of seeing something worthwhile take shape through careful effort over time.
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