During my last year in college, my programming languages professor (he was one of two CS professors I had who wasn't a complete boob) asked to have a meeting wi

During my last year in college, my programming languages professor (he was one of two CS professors I had who wasn't a complete boob) asked to have a meeting with me some afternoon. He pitched me on joining his graduate program since I was doing well in his class. I said I was hoping to do something with my skills that people would actually use, and his only response was some university team in another state helped contribute something to the USB mass storage spec. Uhhh no thanks. Left that meeting without another thought. I'm sure academia works for some people, but I wanted nothing more than to be as far away from that environment as possible.