This article was written by Paula M. Story, and published in the Spring 1996 edition of UAA's True North magazine, volume two. It is partially reprinted here without permission.

GCI network technician Leif Sawyer doubles as Shakespeare's King Ferdinand.
When Leif Sawyer began working as a student consultant in the University of Alaska Anchorage's computer labs eight years ago, he never dreamed it would lead to a full-time job with a major corporation. Just out of high school, his calling was to the arts - music and theatre - and "playing" was his main objective.

Today at 27, Sawyer has all the trappings of an eager, young company employee. As a full-time employee of GCI, he's tethered by a cellular phone, two pagers (one for on-call and one for general) and an electronic scheduler. Can't locate him in person? He has his own home page on the Internet. With a phone call, beep or flash of a screen, he might be on his way to Prudhoe Bay to troubleshoot some communication problem or train employees on a new network system.

Sawyer is a network technician, one of three GCI employees charged with keeping British Petroleum's communications running between Houston (Texas), Prudhoe Bay, and Anchorage.

His friends tease him. "`You've gone corporate,' I think is the new slogan," he says, unconsciously straightening his tie.

Well, kind of corporate. Upon closer inspection, the tie bears a beaming Mickey Mouse that rivals Sawyer's wide grin. Although he wears his longish, blond hair slicked back for the 9-to-5 thing, it breaks loose and flops over one eye as he speaks during lunch - hands punctuating his theatrical voice. In just a few hours, he'll rush from work to the UAA theatre department for a 3 or 4-hour rehearsal as the lead in Shakespeare's "Love's Labours Lost."

But Sawyer didn't follow the typical degree-based route to employment.

He's yet to earn his degree and boasts that he's taken Anthropology 250 twice, "and I still have to take it again!" He claims only and handful of core courses in his transcript and continues his pursuit of basic knowledge of other languages - with Russian, Arabic, and American Sign Language already conquered.

And graduation? "It's taken eight years to get where I am now," he says. "Why spoil it?"

But simply earning a degree isn't his main goal in attending UAA. "I go to college to learn. Why should people stop going to college just because they are supposedly learned?"