8 years of College between 1966 and 1992

So, in 1966 in the fall I just had graduated High school at a private church high school in Santa Fe, New Mexico. However, from grade school through my junior year of high school I had gone to public schools in El Cajon, Tujunga, and Glendale and through my junior year in High School. Glendale was a very superior public school system then so my cousin who also lived there was able to get a scholarship to USC and a Scholarship to NYU Law School and only recently retired from his own law business this year at age 82 and left his daughter who is also a lawyer in charge of his business.

I was texting and old female friend from the 1970s mostly who I liked but never dated mostly because her husband when I met her had the same name as I did, Fred. So, the next time I saw her she was divorced with 2 kids in my late 20s and early thirties and by then I had one son and two step kids and was married already twice and had custody of my son from my first marriage which was from 1974 to 1977 even though we lived together from 1973 on. Interestingly enough I'm still good friends with my first wife and she and I are both very close with our son who is now 51 years old.

So, I started college in Glendale that fall after returning from Graduating High school in 1966 in May of that year in Santa Fe, New Mexico at my parents' church school in their religion and studied at first computer data Processing then mostly on IBM equipment which is what everyone was using pretty much then with punch cards to enter in programs and data into various mainframe computers like the IBM 1620 and IBM 360 series of mainframe computers. Since  microchips were ONLY at NASA then and didn't make their way into the regular world until the late 1970s at all and didn't even change the world through Apple and Microsoft until the early 1980s through STeve Jobs and Bill Gates. Then also IBM built the first Microsoft based PC and then the world copied this model in many clones built in Taiwan and China and places like this. So, by 1987 I could buy my first IBM clone from Silicon Valley near where I live for around 2500 dollars which included an Epsom Color printerr at that time. So, I bought an AT computer because Pentiums hadn't started to be built yet.

So, anyway I studied Cobol and Fortran so I could program computers and learned all the elements of hardware and software that I was interested in especially in IBM computers and peripherals which were all based upon punch cards and magnetic Tapes for programs and outputs to either magnetic tape or printouts or both.

So, by the time I was 20 years old I was making a lot of money as a programmer computer operator for companies in Los Angeles county and I was making enough to buy myself a new 1968 Camaro at age 20 which was pretty cool (as long as I lived at home and didn't pay any rent I could afford this then) :)

Then at age 21 I had to leave my parents religion and this sort of messed up my life for several years in various ways because it took away many friends and several girlfriends I was interested in marrying one of them. So, I was quite despondent. 

However, I returned to college in San Diego County by eventually moving in with my parents so I could return to college. I had realized I couldn't do what I wanted to in the computer field because that wouldn't be possible for another 50 to 70 years. So, I got disappointed by this and went in other directions and eventually started buying businesses. However, I kept going to college in my spare time from 1966 until 1992. I went back to UCSC in 1990 to try to get a degree in Anthropology because I was interested in studying and writing about Tibetan Culture because I felt it had a lot to teach the world about spiritual and physical survival in a non-violent way.

My 2nd wife was interested doing this too regarding Tibetan Culture. However, then she had a baby and we had teenagers at the time and this didn't really work out of us or our teenagers and two of them left at around 17 or 18 as they reached that age because they couldn't deal with having another baby child in the house. They both love her now but then the needs of a 17 year old are not the needs of a new baby. So, this is something to think about for everyone contemplating having a late in life baby.

So, anyway in 1994 my 2nd wife and I divorced and then I was battling for custody of our baby daughter because i realized she wasn't safe with my wife then and I eventually got joint legal custody of my daughter which helped a lot in having her grow up right.

So, I went to around 8 years of college between 1966 and 1992 but I didn't get any degrees mostly because I was running businesses and raising kids (especially teenagers) and trying to get them into college. However, they are all married now except for my youngest daughter who is 29 years old and living in Texas with her boyfriend now.

So, they all seem to be doing well with a partner and my son and one daughter have children of their own now too.

So, in the process of my life I have studied computer programming, computer operations, Philosophy, Psychology, and Cultural Anthropology. So, even though I don't have a degree to show for it I have learned really amazing things in several different directions and that seems to have made me pretty wise in many different ways.

It also has allowed my present wife and I to mentor people along the way to help them in their lives in various ways too. It's always nice to try to give back to life for all the blessings and adventures you had in your own life.

By God's Grace