Farm life has given Mike an unusual opportunity to pay for his education. He literally raised the money.

At age 9, Mike joined 4-H, a community youth group, as a member of the Portage County Steakmakers Club and began to raise steers to be sold at the Portage County Fair until he was a senior in high school. The steers sell for $2 a pound wiith the average steer weighing 1,250 pounds.

He put the money away for college. Now a senior in high school, Chris is following Mike's example.

Mike says raising steers is hard work. Every day he would get up before school and care for three young steers. Day after day he would feed them and walk them on a leash. By the time they were big enough to be sold, he had put so much time into them he was glad to see them go.

"It wasn't that easy to let them go at first," Mike says. "When I was 9, there was a particular steer I loved, Red. His black hide was sun-bleached, so he looked red. I cried the day we led him on the truck."

Now that he's here, he is taking advantage of his time at Kent State, he says.

As a freshman he tried to juggle his normal work on the farm with classes. When his grades suffered, his parents allowed him to devote his energy to school. He has since improved his grades and joined a fraternity, Delta Tau Delta.

Mike says he is good to have around the fraternity house.

"One of the first times I was hanging around the fraternity house, some guys were complaining about the steps off the back door being broken," Mike says. "They were going to pay someone a lot of money to build new ones. I just told them to buy the wood. I ended up building the steps myself. They were shocked."

His fraternity's homecoming float won first place in 2000. Mike donated the two-story tractor and 30-foot trailer used to haul the float.

Making bird seed is a chore done all year on the Dussel farm.

Next fall, Mike hopes to move off the farm and into the fraternity house. "I just want to live on campus so I can encounter the total college experience," he says.

Rolling out of bed at 8:50 a.m. for a 9:15 a.m. class isn't so bad because Mike is used to getting up at the break of dawn. He says he usually makes the commute just in time for class, thanks to the pay lots.

"It's crazy," Mike says. "Going to college has allowed me to sleep in for the first time."