Skool Daze

 You know what's interesting? No? Neither do I but I try to write something every day anyway. I'd be better at this if had taken more than that Technical Writing I class in the first year of community college I waded through. Maybe Creative Writing. That was a tough year... I actually attended a couple of classes regularly.

 San Diego City College wasn't exactly an ivy league school. It was more like your weeds sticking up from the cracks in the concrete school. Its language department was headed by the guy running the ESL classes. And it seemed  the students most in need of those classes were actually born in California but were missing from those classrooms.

 My then-wife (She Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken Without Spitting Twice) took classes in Women's Liberation. Scared the Hell out of me. She'd be in the kitchen fondling the knives when I got home, giggling, and studying the material. I tried to enroll in one of those classes one semester, they refused me on the grounds I would intimidate the women. Ha! Half of them could break my neck with one hand tied behind their backs.

 I majored in GI Bill. This was a standard scam by those of us who were in the military during that great adventure called the Vietnam War. If you were a full time student and you had a dependent or two, you could get $125 a month or so to defray costs. Since City College was the closest thing to free to be found, and wasn't choosy about about your prior academic record, it was full of vets who just wanted some extra cash. I met most of them on the walkway behind the college library where we would swap stories while sharing a joint. The rest I met at the bar across the street. I never saw any in class. That is, when I went to class.

 I did attend a few classes that interested me. Political Science, Art Appreciation,  and a couple of others that I no longer recall.

 It wasn't just fun and games, though. Wait a minute... yes, mostly it was.

I did very little, academically speaking. Some of that had to do with the atmosphere of the school (mostly hazy with a burning Popsicle stick odor), it being the early Seventies and all. None of the instructors (I hate to call them professors since they really weren't) seemed intent on instilling a desire for knowledge in his students. Most seemed to be there for the paycheck.

 Some students wanted to move on to a four year school but did not have the grades to enter event the lax (at that time) California state college system. But most were there to pick up just enough schooling to impress a potential employer, collect GI Bill benefits, appease a parent or two, or take advantage of various "retraining" programs for which the state taxpayers foot the bill.

 There were no rich kids there. No `up and comers.' No fraternities.

I dropped out after my third semester. I had moved up the "food chain" at my job and no longer needed the extra money.

Come to think of it, do you know any really successful people who got their advanced educational start at a community college? Or Devry?

Yeah, neither do I.

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