What an interesting thread. I was looking for something else Kingfish might have said. Is it just me, or does everyone expect he'll have the best one?
“Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dropout of college? You mean like my teachers at the Don Bosco Technical Institute? The State of California didn't used to require a private school teacher to be a college graduate, neither did Bosco Tech. Nor did they require math or english teachers to speak english.
So in the first grade, the student newspaper published an article I wrote, much to the shock of the rest of the school who didn't expect any member of my family to read and write at any age. My drug addict Mother was constantly telling me I had nothing but water in my head and that I'd be a ditch digger when I grew up, even though I kept bringing home aptitude test scores in the 99 percentile, a la doing better than 99 percent of those who took the test. (Yeah, Ma, I'm an anacept. Beautiful theory.)
The nuns, who had some extreme grudges against my 7 older brothers and sisters as well as my mother, used those test scores as an excuse for their verbal abuse because my report cards were merely average. (Anyone need an explanation why?) My mother pretended they were worse than they really were as she regularly kept me from doing my homework, hoping to get my grades down to where she wanted them. (If you understand 'Dual disordered/self medicating,' yeah, that's Ma.) So after a day at school with classmates whose older brothers and sisters had feared my older brothers and sisters and they figured they'd better fear me too, I went home to deal with those older brothers and sisters at their varying levels of substance abuse; they just never seemed to grow up and move out. And slowly I won over a neighborhood full of parents who had never let their children have anything to do with my older brothers and sisters; often I was asked 'How come you're so nice, coming from that family?'
In the 5th grade I won the statewide reading contest at the Boys Club, by 6th the magazine for high school kids that had included two previous articles from me called the house for some bio information to go with the 3rd. When they found out I wasn't a teenager yet, that was the end of that. It wasn't that I didn't want to go to school, I was just looking forward to escaping CATHOLIC school. Or at least THAT Catholic school. Things would be better in high school, right? There's the old saying, 'Out of the frying pan, into the fire.' Bosco Tech was hell on earth and that about covers it.
Oh, weren't they proud of themselves when they got me up in front of that assembly to make an example of me. I was thrilled, I thought they were kicking me out. Instead they wanted to pat themselves on the back because I had won some award from yet another aptitude test, don't remember why that one was a big deal after having grand slammed so many before. It was the end of junior year before I finally forced their hand and they removed it from Dad's pocket. I never dropped out, I had escaped hell and was on the way to heaven: Public school, qualified teachers, a 3.6gpa and a journalism award, all to go with my tshirt that said "Go to HELL, world; I'm a SENIOR." Basically the things I could have been doing all along, if only. Would have been the greatest year of my life, except early on, Dad let me in on a secret I wasn't to tell the others: He'd had cancer surgery several years earlier, but the ongoing chemotherapy had failed. He was terminally ill.
So now I was trying to go to the cheap California Community College system because that was all I could afford. All the money I'd made growing up with the $3 lawnmower I'd fixed and mowed lawns with, the custom slot car parts I sold with classified ads in the magazines, the newspaper route, the rebuilding old bikes to consign at the bike shops, Mom pitched fits that I wasn't making more when she took it for the older ones. I worked after school, then came home to the flop house full of the older brothers who were out of work, the divorced older sisters and their kids, all of whom complained at the noise Dad made while I was up half the night helping him with his attacks. In the morning he went to work, I went to school. On time. Yeah, I guess it would have been easier to drop out.
Hard to believe Dad was associated with the rest of the family. Picture a Phi Beta Kappa Fred Flinstone studying PhD Physics at UCLA. Highest security clearance a civilian can have in the military industrial complex. If 'The Six Million Dollar Man' had existed, Dad would have met him on one of his trips to Area 51. Seriously. He worked, he paid for everything, he kept going even though his family really didn't deserve it all. Even when he reached the point he could barely walk. And I finally got to understanding why it so amused him to call me 'Dauntless.' Oh, wait a minute, could you repeat for me what it was you were finding so hard?
So I couldn't drop out while Dad was alive and I couldn't drop out after he died. I never told the family members what he had to say about them in the end as he was trying to ready me to shoulder them in his place. Mom went home to Texas, so I got custody of the older and the younger brothers and sisters. (HUGE family.) One by one they would follow Mom: in the meantime, guess who had to support them. Luckily the Cal State University and College system was highly discounted, but it would cost a lot more than community college. Work, student loans, I don't know HOW I pulled this off. No, I didn't drop out.
Even after I graduated. Only the 2nd of Dad's children to earn a BA, the only to do it in 4 years. The following fall I was still in school.
It was a rickety education I put together the first time around. K12 had nothing college prep about it, in spite of all of Dad's money Mom spent on it. I struggled to stay around a 3.0gpa as a working fulltime student who should have at least cut down to parttime. College radio station, sports TV production crew, why would I study broadcasting and not do those things? Someone mentioned the quote about getting more hours for the day by taking them from the night: Guess which part of the night they came from?
"My candle burns at both ends It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -
It gives a lovely light."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Didn't learn near what I could have. Again, anyone needing an explanation on that? Oh, but I was already working in film and television by the time I graduated. It wasn't long before Mom had them all out there fighting under HER roof again, for the first time in my life I came home to a peaceful place. (Breathtaking) And I just kept going to school. Oh, the collection of degrees, certificates, even the schools themselves. How fun to tell people I went to UCLA just like my Father, who had also gone to the University of Texas at Austin. I didn't have the money for the full Masters program, but they gave me a graduate certificate. All the AA degrees, the vocational school certificates. I guess if TV was a fulltime career I wouldn't have had the time. But I sure have had to juggle the schedule, you never know which direction I'll have to drive off to that day. Then I have to make it back to go to class, in California traffic that's no small feat. But I finally got my gold key, again just like my Father. If you know the TV commercials where the guy keeps calling his insurance after another accident, that particular actor used to say that I did things "In the fullness of time." Yeah, I think so.
Drop out? Would I have such an education if I did? Whatsoever would I do with myself if I didn't go to school? I mean, I'd TAKE that fulltime job if I could get my hands on it. I'd have taken more classes during the current work slowdown if I could get my hands on THEM, all the budget cuts have turned the 2 year community college AA into a 5-6 year degree. I'd already be at Cal Poly Technic Pomona in a graduate program for Mechanical Engineering if the schools weren't such a mess right now. Maybe I don't get to take up a sideline of doing FEA and CFD as a consultant afterall. But drop out because it's hard? If I didn't drop out through all of THAT, I mean, what's easy about being a quitter. . . ?
Graduate Certificate, Film/TV UCLA
BA English, Minor Theatre Arts CSUFullerton
AA degrees in Broadcasting, Administration of Justice, Social Work, Education (Plus still in progress Mathematics, Physics)
Community College Certificates; Business Administration, Industrial Design, Inspection and Testing, Composite Fabrication, oh, 5 more and leave it at that.
ROP Vocational Certificate Criminal Justice, Computer Animation, Welding, Machining, Motorcycle Repair
"We do these things not because they are easy, but because THEY ARE HARD!"
-John F. Kennedy, announcing the Moon Mission
... but time passed and things got better. That's how life goes for most of us.. some hard times and some not so hard times but you just have to stick with it and do the best you can do.
