Harvard is on the east coast, and was of course out of
the question. But asking around I
learned that Stanford University was considered to be in the same league as
Harvard. That was the beginning of my
thought process regarding life after junior college. I was getting all ‘A’s, so naturally wondered
if I had what it would take to transfer into Stanford as a junior. If I recall correctly, approximately one in
five students applying for transfer in as juniors were being accepted, while
one in nine were applying successfully as freshmen straight out of high
school. The numbers might be nine and
fifteen, but I think it was five and nine, the point being that in any case it
was a lot easier to transfer in as a junior than as a freshman.
Wait: I just read in the July/August 2013 issue of the
Stanford Magazine that the university received almost 39,000 applications for
admission and were able to admit only 2,210.
That’s about 1 in 17, so maybe it was 1 in 9 and 1 in 15, respectively,
back in the day. The Nov/Dec 2013 issue states that it took about 30 years for
the number of Stanford applications to double, from 10,000 in the mid-1970s to
20,000 in 2005; and only 7 years for the number of applicants to nearly double
again. One of the theories as to why
applications have grown so much is “…a belief …that success is measured by
entry to one of a handful of elite schools…” and that the rising cost of
college is causing families to “…gravitate toward well-known schools with
strong reputations.” The article mentions
that over 35,000 students applied to Harvard, vying for 1,664 spots, and that
Princeton handled 26,498 applications to fill a class of 1,291. Parents these days attach a stigma to junior
college and are so concerned about which four-year college their children
graduate from. I can tell you that my
degree from Stanford University carried no asterisk regarding where I completed
my freshman and sophomore work, and it made absolutely no difference to hiring
managers.
But to continue: I had one other teacher write a
recommendation for me. He taught a human
relations class that I did well in. I
don’t remember much else about the application process. I don’t think it was as rigorous as they are
today. Perhaps the competition was much
less in those days. As I may have
referred to elsewhere, California’s public education system in the 1960s and
‘70s was terrific for those who were ready, willing and able to get ahead in
life. Over the years, the demand has far
outstripped the state’s resources. It is
a lot more expensive to get an education these days: There are many more people who are “ready,
willing and able;” it is hard to get into a school; and it is taking at least five to six years
to get a four-year degree. In 1969,
according to the Internet, there were less than 20 million people in
California, and there were over 38 million in 2012. The public education system has simply been
unable to keep up.
I use “ready, willing and able” rather literally. To take proper advantage of an opportunity, a
person needs to be ready. I guess after
loading airplanes for Pan Am for eight years, dabbling with the real estate
course, being married and knowing that we would be starting a family soon, I
was “ready” to elevate my sights.
Another factor was socializing with Sandy’s friends and former class
mates, who were all in college or had recently graduated. I had never associated with college
people. Just as I only saw myself in the
caddy class, and not the country club member class, so too I felt that I was
not the type who went to college and had a career. But as I got to know Sandy’s friends, I
started to realize that they were not special or different from me. In fact some were sillier or more awkward
with people than I was. I began to
realize that it would make a lot of sense for me to at least try some college
courses and see what happened.
The willing part includes the activities I had to give up
on a consistent, long-term basis in order to stay focused on work and
school. During junior college I did not
have enough seniority at Pan Am to get weekends off. We bid for shifts and days off every eight
weeks, and I could always get the swing or graveyard shift and avoid the day
shift, but I could not get weekends off.
Consequently, I had work or school or both seven days a week for about
two years. I remember trying to stay
awake in class after getting off work at 6:00 in the morning. The first class wasn’t too bad, because it hadn’t
caught up with me yet, but the second class was pretty bad. I had pumped coffee on the way to school, and
I hit the 10-cent coffee machines between classes, but I had a heck of a time
staying awake during that second period.
It got so bad that I felt obliged to explain to the teachers, so that
they didn’t think I was not interested or found them boring. They all said, in effect, that I still
participated fairly well in class (when my eyes were open), and that it was the
quality of my homework and tests that would prove my interest.
The rule of thumb was that a student should spend two
homework hours outside of class for every hour in class. Most classes met for three hours per week,
and five classes constituted a full load = 15 hours in class plus 30 hours
outside of class. This is why most
teachers and administrators had low expectations for anyone working full time
while carrying a full load. That would
be 80+ hours per week. I was very
fortunate to have a job with some down time.
Each workday I would punch in, review the arrival and departure
schedule, and plan my study time accordingly.
At one point near the end, I estimated that I averaged 1 ½ to 2 hours of
study time per shift, which helped tremendously. (At the risk of sounding like
the grandparent who says he used to walk three miles to and from school in the
snow, uphill both ways, a lot of my “on the clock” study time was spent sitting
on a cement floor in poor lighting. And,
yes, I got hemorrhoids.)
I got the biggest chunks of study time on the days that I
had either no work or no school.
Eventually I started getting either Friday/Saturday off or Sunday/Monday
off and got in the rhythm of having both work and school four days per
week. This prepared me for the time when
I would start getting Saturday/Sunday off.
Early on I had thought I would not be able to handle such a schedule,
but I eased into it nicely. I remember
commuting from San Carlos, passed the San Francisco Airport to Berkeley in
morning traffic five days per week, getting out of class by 3:00 pm and stopping
off at the airport to put in my eight hours on my way home. Sandy and the kids would already be asleep,
of course. When I left in the morning I
would tell Sandy, “Feel you later,” instead of “See you later,” because that
was really more accurate as I crawled into bed in the dark. I remember telling her that some day we would
look back and ask ourselves, “How the heck did we ever do that?” and we do. Youth is a wonderful thing that way but also,
when you have your whole life ahead of you, certain sacrifices seem well worth
it. Later in life I could never handle
that kind of schedule, but I also wouldn’t be all that motivated. There just isn’t that much at stake anymore.
During my last year at Berkeley, and as the time for me
to leave Pan Am drew closer, I became increasingly impatient to be done. I mainly focused on my thesis and just went
through the motions in class and on the job.
There was a sea change coming, as I looked forward to the end of my
clock-punching, coveralls-wearing, union wage job and the start of my
professional career in the world of public accounting. The wait was agonizing, but exciting. A surprisingly strong feeling had to do with
getting out of those coveralls. They
increasingly became a stigma to me. I
felt like passengers and others were looking down their noses at me in my
coveralls; that the coveralls put me in a category to which I no longer
belonged. I couldn’t wait to be free of
them and wear a suit to work each day.
Funny that I didn’t feel that way until the last few months of those six
years. Nothing had changed except me.
When I visit Long Island these days, I am still struck by
the culture and attitudes that Donald and I came out of. One of our male cousins expressed it best in
describing the positives about a new job he had just managed to get: “Yuh ain’t
gotta do nothin’, and they can’t fire yuh.” That was his idea of success. I saw that at Pan Am. A guy would be too hung over to get to work
on time, so would get someone else to punch in for him (major violation if you
get caught), and slip in later, make an appearance in his coveralls, maybe hide
out for the rest of the day, punch out and go home. Success was getting paid for doing
nothing. Come to think of it, I at least
once came to work straight from a party, punched in, made an appearance, then
slipped my coveralls off and wandered the central terminal, hitting the various
bars until time to punch out. Oddly
enough, however, I was not proud of that at all. I felt remorse and self-loathing for being
such a low-classed bum.
In total it was eight and a half years at Pan Am, the
last six of which were devoted to full-time college and full-time work. When one of the guys asked me how I could
even consider leaving Pan Am after 8 ½ years, I told him that the thought of
loading airplanes for another 8 ½ years was reason enough. Pan Am eventually went out of business, so I
would have ended up working for some other airline, maybe starting all over at
the bottom of their seniority list or something. The flight benefits were pretty good, however. Sandy and I spent our honeymoon in Hawaii
(1966) and went to Tahiti before we had children (1967 or 8). We also went to Switzerland in 1973 just
prior to my leaving the airlines.
Michelle was 3 ½ years old and stayed with Sandy’s old high school chum,
Barbara; Bobby was 1 year old and stayed with Nana (Sandy’s Mom). Possibly Amy was conceived in
Switzerland. I don’t think we ever did
the math and knew one way or the other.
She speaks only English, and has no Swiss bank accounts, so probably
not.
Let me divert for a minute and reminisce about our
honeymoon. We flew first into Waikiki
for a couple of days, and then hopped over to the island of Kauai, where we
spent about a week on Poipu Beach. It
was very quiet there, which was fine with us.
I recall going to a nice dinner and entertainment place, where we
enjoyed the Hawaiian music and hospitality.
Sandy had made a mu-mu for herself and a matching Hawaiian shirt for
me. The MC asked if there were any
newlyweds in the audience, and we were not going to raise our hands, but people
near us perhaps heard us talking, or saw how young and in love we seemed, or
maybe saw the matching outfits and put two and two together. In any case, they had us stand up and give
our first names, where we were from and how long we had been married. Fast forwarding, after we past our 46th
anniversary we got the idea of going back to Kauai for our 50th
anniversary, and this time volunteering to be fussed over. Maybe we can find some old photographs from
our honeymoon to share with people there.
We initially thought to arrange for Michelle and family
and Amy and Brianna to join us there, but the reality is that, with all the
different schedules and commitments, some of them would for sure not be able to
make it. Also, the grandchildren would
all be teenagers, and Kauai would probably be much too tame and quiet for
them. It just occurred to me that our
oldest, Ryan, will be 18 in 2016, which is not that much older than Sandy was
at age 21 when we were on our honeymoon!
Anyway, if we go it will be by ourselves, but I am hopeful that the kids
will throw some kind of family celebration for us for our 50th
wedding anniversary. If you are reading
this, and it is not October 9, 2016 yet, please take note!
Rewinding back to October 1966, I remember that we took a
boat ride that took us to a water fall where someone played the ukulele and
sang the Hawaiian Wedding Song. That was
our theme song for our wedding. I worked
with a group of guys from Tonga who had formed a singing group and performed at
the Tonga Room in San Francisco. Two of
the guys came and sang at the wedding.
Now for our 50th I want to have them play Kenny Rogers’
“Through the Years.” The words to both
songs have incredible meaning to me, and I think rather exquisitely express how
we felt when we got married and how we feel today. I wish more people could be so lucky and
blessed. It’s a good thing we don’t
believe in omens. During our wedding
vows, Sandy repeated after the minister, but instead of “…for richer or poorer;
for better or worse…” she said, “…for richer or poorer; for poorer or worse”!
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