At the age of 75, I look back at my younger self and see little glamor, less glory, and a lot of garbage.
For me, the good life didn’t start until after graduation from high school when I enlisted with the Navy. Though I disliked sacrificing four years of my young life for military service, the results were worth it. I got four years of the GI Bill which paid for most of my education, culminating in a degree in education, and a job as a teacher.
HIGH SCHOOL
So much wasteful silliness and youthful ignorance about the real world of jobs, marriages, families, children, and the maturity involved in them is neglected, especially with meeting obligations and responsibilities after the façade of high school life.
I remember the few self-centered beauty queens and their adoring cliques, plus their corresponding ‘hunks,’ who all seemed to think that they were God’s gifts to each other. It’s as if they actually thought that facial diamonds are forever. Mirrors would soon shatter that thinking when nice, ripe plums become prunes and luscious grapes turn into raisins.
Then there’s the pussy factor. The guys hunting for their first pussy encounter—including me—that might alleviate their wet dreams and frequent masturbations, especially the ‘studs,’ the ‘hunks’ with a better chance with their ‘pussy’ hunt. But besides all the braggart hyperbole very few fingers reached the goal and rarely did a penis get slick with virginal wetness.
Then, of course, there’s always the tough guys desperately trying to prove their superior masculinity, as if they weren’t sure about it themselves—I am guilty, too, but with regret. After high school, blood and scars on the knuckles is no longer a symbol of masculinity. It often becomes the sign or an irresponsible, roguish, troublemaker.
I also wonder about the gifted, privileged few who breezed through their studies. Being smart in high school could be a definite disadvantage when the rough and temperamental poor achievers become aware of them. I hope most of the high achievers are using their intelligence for positive purposes. Being teased for being smart in high school is ridiculous. Look at the ones doing the serious teasing and may be able to see the envy and jealously behind the disguise of bluster. But that’s part of the silliness of immature brains, that have no idea what they’ll do or be after high school. I was always silent about my grades. Never really put my full effort into any subject except, perhaps, geometry. I got a thrill out of the angles and rules, and Pythagoras. I may have put extra effort into that class because I got the top grade of all that year’s geometry students. I didn’t say anything, didn’t call attention to myself, kept a low profile, basically cultivating an anonymous student because I thought the chances of me going to college were slim. I stayed in the middle of the academic pack and still was in the top third of my graduating class. During that year I discovered the military GI Bill and finally saw that I had a chance to get a college education. I went from doubtful to hopeful. All I had to do was sacrifice four years of my life to the military. In my thoughts it seemed easy, in real life it wasn’t, but I persisted and got where I wanted to go. It amounts to, what are you willing to give up attaining a highly valued goal, and what would you do to attain that goal? It seemed to boil down to determination, frustration, and pain.
I’ve seen and heard of so many sad, pitiable students who once thought there was no end to their superior academic intelligence, or physical sports skill or other ego trip categories.
Life is a mountain cliff, sometimes. The mountain peak is blissfully sought, while the unknown cliffs can cause ruination. The twists and turns are hard to navigate and can crumble as quickly as a graham cracker frisbee.
After I had taught for several years, I became aware of a very bright student who lived in my community. He was so bright that he was the Valedictorian of his graduation class. He was accepted to every school he applied to, including Harvard. This was his glorious climax to a star-studded high school experience. He departed for the University and I didn’t hear about him for a year. It turns out that he was not self-motivated. He needed external motivation from parents and teachers. At his university he was just one of many high intelligence students who was expected to excel on their own. Imbibing in too many distractions brought poor grades the first semester, and failing grades the second semester, plus partying combined with little self-motivations and he was asked to leave the university. His university experiences didn’t have parents and teachers pushing him to excel. He had never had to push himself. He returned home humiliated. He turned to drugs and I heard no more about him. Sad.
Then there was the average student who had to work hard just to be average. That student wanted to be a teacher. But to get accepted to college she needed to go to a two-year community school and receive decent grades. She did it but told me of her struggles. She said she was a ‘C’ student in college, but was driven, and self-motivated. She came as a student teacher to my classroom. I read her record and immediately thought poorly of her. I had a prejudiced opinion of her before she even arrived at my classroom. She was shy, reticent, and introverted, thus she started off the year slowly. She eventually got comfortable with our routine, then became self-assured. She became the best student teacher I had ever seen. When she graduated from college, I gave her a glowing recommendation. She got a job and I never saw her again. However, her out-of- state principle called me, one afternoon, after she had completed her first year of teaching. He said she might have gone unnoticed without the excellent recommendation. He praised her, as I had—Note: she was a better teacher than I was. She had unbounded energy and ideas, plus she loved working with kids. She must be about retirement age now.
There are many factors that influence success, but the individual is in charge of many of them. How badly does someone want to be successful? They probably determine their own future success and don’t realize it. They won’t be taught to realize it in high school. Post high school life will hit many of them like a sledgehammer hitting a balloon.
Like my student teacher, her success involved plenty of self-motivation, persistence, determination, and an indomitable spirit leading to her ravenous need to succeed.
Navy
Who would give up four years of their young life after high school, which would most likely involve partying, drinking, sex, cars, and mischief? I would. I did.
I lacked self-motivation in high school. I did enough to get by, to be unnoticed, as I wanted to be, and I knew I’d only get to college if I enlisted in the Navy for four years. Why four years? Because the GI Bill, at that time, gave financial assistance for each year that a person was in the military. Thus, it was a trade; my four years in the Navy got me four years of college.
I didn’t like the Military’s strict, straight-jacket rules and the unofficial and unmentioned rule of not thinking too much, not questioning things, the demands for respect without earning it. It was a robot-like life where someone else decided your life for you: what clothes to wear, what silly names to call parts of the ship—the toilet was called the ‘head,’ the walls were called ‘bulkheads, floors were ‘deck,’ left was called ‘port,’ right was called ‘starboard,’ etc. However, the anticipated reward of a college education made it worth it, though I doubted my decision to join the Navy quite often. But, yes, it was worth it.
The two years between my Navy discharge and my entrance into college was spent with one year working for IBM (computer Co.) and one year isolated at a TB hospital for a military related disease.
I was going to say that college was the seminal point of my young life, but the Navy gave me the opportunity to afford college, so now I have to say the Navy was the seminal point for my good life of experiences mostly the peaks of life, and only a few valleys—luckily, there were no cliffs.
Going to college not only got me to my goal of becoming a teacher, but everything else that I valued: marriage, a daughter, teacher, magician, martial arts, and writing followed from going to college.
College
B.A. Psychology (Cum Laude)
B.S. Education (Magna Cum Laude)
M.S. Educational Theory
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