He decided to stay close to home for college, attending the University of Maine, and was an active member of the school community. He became part of the student government as a member of the School Senate and wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper during his junior and senior years. King graduated in 1970 with a B.A. in English and was qualified to teach at the high school level. However, he was unable to find a job right away, so he worked odd jobs while writing in his free time in the evenings and on weekends until the fall of 1971 when he was offered a job as an English teacher at Hampden Academy.
King displayed an early interest in reading and writing even before college, and notes that he was inspired by EC’s horror comics he grew up with. But it was H.P. Lovecraft’s collection of short stories, titled The Lurker in the Shadows, that sparked King’s interest and passion for writing horror fiction novels, saying "I knew that I'd found home when I read that book” in a 2009 interview. King sold his first short story, titled “The Glass Floor”, to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967, and continued to sell his stories to magazines in the years