"I always knew I'd come back and finish up," Douglas said. "I just didn't know it would be that soon."
His adventure began in February 2000, when as a junior he took a part-time writing stint at Bluedog.com, a developer of Internet shopping tools near the Stanford campus. Before long, he was putting in 40 hours a week and growing resentful about having to go to class. So he dropped out in the spring.
"I got sucked in," Douglas said. "I became entirely obsessed with the success of the company and its product and totally immersed in the startup world." With a US$40,000 salary and a trove of stock options, he also took his girlfriend to fine restaurants, gave lavish wine parties and booked a two-week vacation to England.
Then, in August, Bluedog.com went under, and Douglas was suddenly just another unemployed dotcommer. "There was a great deal of grieving," he said. "It was really comforting to come back to school and throw myself into something more stable like write papers, study for tests, earn my degree. No one can take those things from me." After graduation, he chose one of the oldest professions around: acting.
Stanford's dean of students, Marc Wais, says the exodus of Net-giddy students reached such proportions two years ago that the school had a problem filling campus leadership positions.
But then they came back. Cavanaugh, who left Stanford in the spring of 2000 to start EmpowerD.com, returned to school last September after EmpowerD.com died. After graduating in June, he joined a software company, and he plans to apply to business school soon.
"I'm glad I went back to school," he said. "It was a loose end I had to tie."
Billotte, who dropped out of Arizona State in the fall of 1998 to join AtWeb.com, is now making plans to return to school either this spring or next fall to complete his senior year. In the meantime, he is working full time as a software engineer at AOL Netscape in Santa Cruz, California.
As for Pitts, the computer science major who went to work for Media3k last year, he will be returning to school this month as a senior with few regrets. "As for my US$70,000 in stock options, I could net about US$200 if I sold today," he said.
As the academic year opens, the flow of students back to campuses pretty much matches the outflow two years ago. "These students need support and stability now," said Anna Copeland Wheatley, the editor in chief of AlleyCat News, a New York trade publication that specializes in dot-coms.
The Stanford Daily, the campus newspaper, even ran a story last quarter welcoming back the dotcom refugees.
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