Preparing for College

My daughter was preparing applications for many colleges she is applying to in California, Oregon and Washington yesterday and started asking me about all the colleges I had attended. I had to think about it some because this is now 2014 and I started attending my first college in 1966 so this is a ways back now. She asked how many colleges and I started to count them in my head one by one. I realized there were at least 6 or 7 total and one University between 1966 and the mid 2000s.

I thought back to growing up in Glendale, California from age 8 to 21 and going to Glendale College and studying about computers. How to program them. How to operate them etc. my major was computer data processing which was what they called it at Glendale College then. So, I was very surprised after just taking one course that I got hired part time by the City of Glendale part time as a computer operator processing mark sense IQ tests and other tests done at Glendale College and grade schools and High Schools throughout the area. Though I had already learned to operate punch card equipment (which was how everything was done then in 1966) like punch card machines and IBM reproducers and sorters and Accounting machines, working there allowed me to learn more about wiring up the circuit boards for Accounting machines and to operate the IBM 1620 Mainframe at that time which the Glendale School District used then. After that job I worked for McKesson  helping automate one of their warehouses in North Hollywood and then I worked for Reynolds and Reynolds that did automated accounting for car dealerships throughout the state of California. However, by that time I realized where I wanted to go with all this didn't exist yet and I got discouraged and left the field and it became more of a hobby after that when I bought a TRS-80 (my first home computer 4k) that ran on the Basic programming language from Radio Shack in 1978 for $600 I think it was.

I kept taking courses at Glendale College until I moved to San Diego where I began to study more again for 2 years from 1971 to 1973 there at Palomar College in San Marcos and I also went some to San Diego State University. However, I had changed a lot from 1966 to 1971 and was more interested in different things at that point like "Personal unfoldment" and  Philosophy and Psychology and even Anthropology. In other words I was trying to stay alive and not self destruct and die like many people under 25 did then from the Viet Nam WAr, Risk taking physical or drugs etc. then. So, I was trying to stay alive during very tumultuous times here in the U.S. It hadn't been this crazy since World War II and the Great Depression. Things started to settle down a little by the late 1970s and early 1980s to some place people could stay sane in even though unemployment reached 10% in the early 1980s I and my then 2nd wife and our 3 kids we were raising together from her first marriage and my first marriage together then. So, because of the 10% unemployment we pooled our savings, bought land and I built an A Frame house to live in through the worst of the 10% unemployment times nationwide. While most people were suffering a lot then we lived and ideal Mt. Shasta Wilderness family life 10 miles from the nearest small town. The only drawback is we could get 7 feet of snow there at one time. So, we always had to be aware of the conditions of snow because if it got too deep we might have to move somewhere else because I didn't want to buy a snowplow for my International harvester 1974 Scout II. So, even though I could push more snow (2 or 3 feet) with that vehicle there was a limitation on just how much snow I could push through without getting stuck for several months in that remote place. However, it was an amazing time of wild creatures like porcupines gnawing on one of my sheds at night and keeping us up nights because it like the glue in the plywood sheeting. Eventually, my neighbor a few miles away shot the porcupine for doing this to his shed too. I and my kids felt a little sad about this because it had sort of become a pet except for when it almost killed our dog when the dog chased it and I had to hog tie her with my family holding her down and pull all the quills out of her face and mouth before they went up into her brain and she died.

That was the 1980s  (1980 to 1985). Eventually, we moved to Hawaii and lived there for awhile and when we came back I returned to Cabrillo College, and College of the Siskiyous and eventually UCSC in 1989 when I was around 40. However, because of raising a family even though I went to to college about 8 years total from 1966 to the 1990s in a serious way I never was able to get my degree which was very disheartening at the time. I have considered finishing my degree now but I'm retired now and I like to travel a lot so whenever I get serious about this I want to go somewhere in the world and I have to drop my class(es) to go there. So, a college degree has always been  "A Bridge too far" for me in my life even though I learned amazing things about programming computers, Personal Growth and development, Welding, Engineering, Anthropology, Making documentaries, Philosophy, Psychology etc. So, college has been very good to me in making me someone who understands almost everything about life. And meeting people around the world that I find interesting has only broadened my knowledge of everything. Now, when I describe my life I see myself as a business owner and a father and husband. This is kind of what I say to people. However, college has made my life really interesting. It taught me (along with my father) critical thinking and making useful decisions to surive literally everything so far in my life.

If you don't learn anything else from college learn critical thinking. It will keep you alive to a very old age (if you want to).

Note: Critical thinking is not being critical towards people. It is about learning how to figure out what is going on in any situation so you can survive it.