Chris Wenger, Indiana, Bloomington '25, has always been a car guy, and his dream car was a late-1970s Lincoln. This summer, he worked a full-time finance internship in his hometown of Noblesville, and during the first week he told his brother he wanted a classic car he could maintain himself. At the earliest, he figured, that might happen senior year. Maybe not until after college. But Chris kept coming back to what life would look like after graduation, with student loans, a full-time job, and possibly a move. "When am I going to have time to do that then?" he said.

Chris joined Delta Sig in the spring of his freshman year, and says the brothers helped him go from shy to someone who can talk to anybody.

The obstacles were real. Classic cars cost more than he had saved, he had nowhere to store one, and he had no mechanical experience. If he was going to own a nearly 50-year-old car, he wanted to be able to work on it himself instead of paying someone else to. So before he went looking for a car, Chris went looking for a teacher.

His first try was a no. He applied to IU's fleet services as a part-time mechanic with no experience, and they passed. But Chris had been telling his internship boss about his plan during weekly check-ins, and his boss, an IU alum, connected him with a friend who runs a mobile mechanic business. The mechanic took a chance on a student who could not change his own oil, and he paid Chris to shadow him.

After finishing his internship for the day, Chris would head to the mechanic's job sites, handing over wrenches and holding the flashlight. He averaged about 10 hours a week all summer, and he went home when the job was done, which often meant working until 11 pm.  He never canceled on him. "If I canceled, I could be missing out on something I'm learning right now," he said.

Chris worked a full-time internship by day and spent his evenings on job sites, often coming home with his hands black from brake dust. It was his dad who pointed out what that added up to. After the apprenticeship wrapped up, he told Chris that he had done that work the entire summer and never complained at all. Chris says he had not noticed it himself. He was just showing up, learning something, and getting paid for his time. 

Chris spent his downtime at work scanning listings. Dealerships were out of his budget, but Facebook Marketplace turned up real options, and he eventually found a 1979 Lincoln Continental Mark V in Marietta, Ohio, five hours from home. With only two weeks of summer left, he had one shot at it. He talked the seller down on price, made an offer on the spot after a short test drive, and drove it home.

Looking back, Chris says the summer showed him what he is capable of. He made progress a little at a time and did not step back to look at the big picture until it was done. His advice to a brother with a big goal that never seems to fit is simple: work on it day by day. It also does not have to be a straight line. "Who says a direct path to buying a car is getting a job as a mechanic?" he said.

These days, Chris drives the Lincoln to class on nice days and is working on the antenna and a detail job to protect the paint. What he is proudest of is simple. "That's my car that I bought with my own money, that I took to the DMV and put in my name," he said.

The apprenticeship was about more than getting the car. Chris says it was part of a personal value of being well-rounded. "Yeah, I'm a finance college student, but I also did an apprenticeship in the Indiana summer working on cars because I wanted that alternate experience," he said. It was learning that happened well outside a classroom, built on asking for help, finding people willing to teach him, and doing the work until he could do it on his own, a good example of Pursue Education beyond coursework.