My Degree

MY DEGREE

One of my proudest accomplishments was to obtain a Bachelor’s Degree in 1999.  I like to say it only took me Thirty Years to get it.  While is some ways that is true that is, like many stories, not the only story.  While it is a personal story, I do not think it is unique and that is why I am telling it.  I also would like to put it down somewhere, and because it is my website, I decided it qualified to the standards for my site.

 

My public schools

 

My first 4 years of school at McKenzie School in Finn Rock, Oregon.  It was a school that had Grades 1-12 at one facility.  It still does.  When I attended school there, it was at the height of the baby boom era.  At the same time, they were doing a major dam construction, with the associated influx of workers and their families.  Because of this, the school was bursting at its seams.  There were two whole classrooms per grade.  Get the picture?

Then, we moved to beautiful not so downtown Klamath, California.  You can find it on the map but that is not the town I remember.  That town disappeared in flooding during the Christmas season in 1964.  Once again, as I always was, the baby boom era expanded the schools facilities.  Thus, two classrooms per grade.  Small town once again.  It was so small that it did not have a high school.  That was provided 20+ miles away in Crescent City, California.  So, you went to grade school in Klamath and high school in Crescent City.  Part of the problem with that was that, unlike the majority of students everywhere, we were in a grade school environment in the 7^th and 8^th grade.

Boom!  We then landed in Fort Bragg, California.  It was a town of about 4500 at the time.  That was a misnomer because it served a much larger community because of the lumber mill and fishing community.  Even at that though, it was maybe 10-12,000 people at most.  I finished my public school years there, graduating in a class of 181, which, at the time, was the largest class in the school’s history.  Bigger than before, but still pretty darned small.

 

Where I Was

 

I have explained the basic facts about my public schooling but that is just that, the basic facts.  That in no way explained where I was in my education.  While I had my basic education and graduated at an acceptable level, I was an underachiever, to the nth degree.  In order to explain this, I am going to provide information that I generally do not give out.  Not that I am ashamed of it, just that it never seemed that bragging out one’s intelligence was either necessary or productive.  Generally speaking, the people who make a habit of telling you how smart they are, aren’t.

To look at my high school transcript, you would find that I am just above average.  I graduated 69^th in a class of 161.  That is top half but nothing to brag about.  Here, as Paul Harvey would say, is the rest of the story.  My college entrance exams, ACT and SAT, put me in the top 2% and 7% respectively.  Not too shabby.  My scores were comparable to the two classmates that got full rides to UC Berkeley.  Several years earlier, in Klamath, California I had a couple of IQ tests.  One showed that I had an IQ of 136; the other was 138.  In short, I was an underachiever but I was not unintelligent.  Oh, and by the way, I participated in college-sponsored math competitions while at Klamath and college-sponsored accounting competitions while at Fort Bragg, winning the competition while at Fort Bragg.

I was ignorant.  That is for damned sure.  I knew nothing about college.  I knew nothing about how to qualify for college.  College was not even a reality in my world.  I was the first person on my father’s side to ever graduate from High School for Heaven’s Sake.  My mother graduated from High School, as did her mother, but college was not in the cards for any of us, especially me.  It was only in the last year or two of my high school years that I even entertained that idea.  Even then, not too strongly.

To digress a little about why was I an underachiever.  In all honesty: no challenge.  It is not ego; it is reality.  I always felt that I was mentally superior to my teachers and to the people around me.  Part of this was a feeling was attributed to what I have self-diagnosed as Asperger’s (self-diagnosed but it fits) and part of it can be attributed to some of my teachers not being able to handle students like me.  After all, teachers teach to the mean.  Students at the bottom and students at the top fall off.  In small schools, they just fall off.  Some can blame the quality of the teaching.  That may be part of it, but that is not all.  When I had to correct my teacher on how to calculate percentages in the seventh grade, I lost any use for him as an example.

To be perfectly honest, I was about as lazy as I could be.  School was not a challenge.  I was much more interested in doing the least amount necessary and bury myself in a book.  I wore out more than my share of library cards (plural).  I was just marking time in school until I had to make a living.  It was just that simple.  It never seemed like I was learning a great deal that I could not, or did not, learn on my own.

I just did not know a darned thing about how to prepare for college.  I had no direction on how to do so.  My parent were no help.  They could not provide any practical advice.  They were providing for five children, with me being the oldest, on a commercial fisherman’s income, so they could not provide any financial support; nor was I expecting any support.

I never really seriously thought about college at that point.  That was for rich kids.  This was the days before grants and readily available scholarships.  Student loans were around but they did not add up to much.  In fact, I availed myself of them (see below) but they did not amount to much.  My only passing idea was to go to the California Maritime Academy, which was tuition-free.  I got the idea because of working for the Coast Guard during the summer of my junior year of high school.  With the recommendations from the various Coast Guardsmen, I thought I had a chance.  Problem was, I could not qualify because I had hereditary diabetes on both sides of my family.

I was so ignorant that I did not even know that my college entrance examinations would have got me a place in a whole lot of schools in those days (1969) with financial support.  I knew nothing about it and was so ignorant that I did not know I was ignorant, if that makes any sense.  I generally blame no one because I can never blame someone for my ignorance.  In fact, my life is not about blaming anyone for my life’s choices.  There is one exception to this.  That is the school counselor for Fort Bragg High School.  He met with me for a hot 15 minutes and did not provide me with any advice that I can remember other than possible looking into junior college.  Why do I blame him?  He obviously did not even look at my transcript enough to look at my SAT and ACT test scores to see that he need to spend a couple of more seconds advising an ignorant student.  Nevertheless, as they say; water under the bridge.  I do not live in the past.

 

My First College Forays

 

Central Oregon Community College

 

I started my college career at Central Oregon Community College, a junior college in Bend, Oregon.  Why?  Odd you should ask.  To start out, I had family that lived in the area, specifically my mother’s parents and my grandmother’s first cousin.  Somewhere in my senior year of high school, my grandmother’s cousin found out that I wanted to go to college.  Now he was an old man, 79 years old I believe, living comfortably on a pension.  For some reason, he thought highly of Central Oregon Community College.  To this day, I do not know why.  Thus, out of the blue, he contacted me and made me an offer that I would be foolish to refuse.  He told me that if I would go two years to COCC, he would pay all my expenses – room, board, books, tuition – for not only the two years of COCC but for my whole college education.  I, my mother, and my grandmother made sure he understood what he was offering.  He was clear that he understood.  He was also financially able to fulfill this offer without endangering his retirement, so YIPEE.  I was ignorant, as I described above.  I also had no reason to relieve my ignorance, now did it?

Now anther “The Rest of the Story”.  A few weeks before school is supposed to start, my grandmother’s cousin and I meet and we lay out the expenses for the first quarter.  He expresses surprise at the cost, even though we had laid it out before.  He said he could not afford it and wrote me a check for $50.  Once again; I do not live in the past.

Through my parents sacrificing as much as they could and a student loan, I was able to get two quarters at COCC.  I will not say I was a stellar student because I was not.  The first time away from home, my dream of college being tempered by a time bomb ticking away, and the classes being too easy.  I skated with a high C average.

When I started at COCC, I tried to lower my expectations to try for a profession that would get me using my brain instead of my brawn with the least amount of education I could.  At the time, according to the counselor at COCC, I hit upon accounting.  With two years of bookkeeping, I could get a job as a bookkeeper, and then work towards a CPA. I was good at accounting and everything else that I wanted to do was going to take at least a four-year degree.  That, my friends, was not going to happen.

Do you want to know the funny thing?  Well, I am going to tell you anyway.  The Vietnam War, specifically the draft thereof, was responsible for my ultimate career.  Here is how it started.  I signed up for my first quarter’s classes.  One of my classes included a recommended Algebra/Trigonometry class.  When I got my textbook from the bookstore, it turned out to be the same textbook I used in my junior year of high school.  After discussing it with my counselor, I dropped the class.  The problem was then that I had too few credits, by one credit, to obtain a student deferment (a deferment that I did not apply for ironically).  Therefore, in order to insure that I had sufficient credits, I looked around for a class that had open slots that I was interested in as there were no open mathematics classes.

I settled on the “Introduction to Business Computers” class simply because I had never seen a computer except in an office window before.  When I went into the classroom, it was a strange setup.  It contained about 40-50 students.  Half of the students were in the “Introduction to Business Computers” class, which was supposedly oriented to expose business and accounting students to computers.  The other half of the students were in the “Computer Science Basic Programming” class, which was supposedly oriented to preparing the students to their first programming class on their way to their way to learning additional programming and computer training.

The reasoning behind this setup was that both sets of students needed to learn basic programming.  Just the goals were different, obviously.  As the training need not differ, by grading the two groups on their own curve they could be trained together.  In reality, it makes a lot of sense.  It even allowed for some synergy between the two groups that may not have been there in other environments.  (To editorialize: the biggest problem with programmers is that they do not know enough about the business issues they are supposed to be solving).  I enjoyed the class a lot.  It seemed like I had an infinity for the stuff.  It was strange.  I was writing the code for the program before the instructor was finished with the description.  I could not get the program coded fast enough before I ready for the next one.  Extra credit: no problem.  How fast did you want it done?

But I did not have any allusions to doing anything with this.  For the very reason that I had chosen accounting.  I needed to get a damned job out of my schooling.  It was not about what I wanted but what I could make a living.  Then out of the blue, I got a note saying that I needed to meet with the instructor.  As he was also the instructor of my accounting class and I was not, shall we say, a regular attendee despite doing all of the work at an A/B level, I thought I was in trouble.

To my surprise, as I sat down my instructor asked if I had ever considered Computer Programming as a profession.  My answer was a short version of the above, which was no because I needed to get a profession with the minimum amount of education.  Then the instructor told me that I could get a job programming with two years of training just as well as I could get an accounting job and the pay would be as good or better.  Then he told me the reason he was asking me the question.  He said that I was at the top of the class for programming.  Not just the business side, but both sides.  In fact, I was so far ahead of both classes that even though there were two weeks before the end of quarter, he was going to have to take me off the curve in order to grade everyone else.  If that was not enough of an ego boost, he went further and said he had never encountered anyone who was so intuitive a programmer.

His recommendation was for me to change my major to computer science and they would switch me to the other side of the class.  I jumped at the opportunity.

Unfortunately, I was only able to get one more quarter of classes at COCC before I ran out of money and went to work, mostly in the lumber mill in Fort Bragg, to save my money to go back to college.  I did, however take additional classes toward my Computer Programming education, including another programming language.

 

Heald College of Business – San Francisco

 

First off, I had been advised by my instructor at COCC, who had had a highly successful career as an executive for IBM that the real need for programmers was in the area of Business Programming.  Sure, there was a need for Computer Science programmers, but there was a dearth of programmers in the business world that really understood business.  This was being resolved by resolved at that time by trying to interface the business world with the computer world by cross training.

It may seem foolish now, but regular colleges and universities were a little late to the party in getting the message on this.  It was not until the early to middle 1970’s before they started to address this by offering business computer degrees.

Private “business colleges” like Heald College of Business were already addressing this.  Their existence was to provide concentrated, focused, training for such business trades as secretarial, bookkeeping, office work, and programming.

I found that Heald offered a Business Programming program that provided training at an associate degree level when there was nothing available of that nature anywhere else.  Although expensive, I obtained training from them over a two-year period, working in a lumber mill in between to pay for it.  Kind of as a side note, I was now an indifferent student.  With the lumber mill as a driving force, this was my life and I worked hard and my grades reflected it.

 

 

After College

 

An Overview

 

I am not going to get into specifics about my working career here.  After all, this is about my degree, not a biography as such.

After I completed my computer training, not everything worked out as I wanted it to.  I did not get a job programming my heart away.  I went back to working in the lumber mill for a year or so.  Then I worked as a computer operator for Coco-Cola in San Francisco, eventually becoming operations manager.  Following that, I went to work for Warn Industries in Milwaukie, Oregon; starting out as a computer operator and eventually becoming an Applications Architect (combination programmer, systems analyst, programmer analyst, etc.).  Essentially, I held every position in the department at one time or another.  Eventually, I retired from the company after 34 years.

Quite frankly, all of these accomplishments were based upon the training I got from COCC and Heald College, OTJ training, and hard work.

 

My Last College Forays

 

City University of Seattle (Part 1)

 

After I had been at Warn Industries for a few years, they started offering tuition reimbursement so I decided I would take advantage of it.  I had always wanted to get my degree; for personal achievement, career advancement, and, of course, to learn.

Because most of my prior schooling was via a business college, I had to find an institution that would take the time (and effort) to apply those classes as credits towards my degree.  Most schools would not.  City University would only apply them for lower division credits but they did accept enough to give me a full 90 lower division credits.  That and the fact that they had night classes made it was a great fit.

Therefore, I decided to pursue a degree in Business Management.  I took 25 credits towards the degree right away.  Then, I was promoted into a management position and was getting married, all at the same time.  Schooling took a back seat.  It was supposed to be temporary but it was quite a while.  In fact, given where my career and personal life was at that point, I did not realistically have any plans to go back to school.

 

City University of Seattle (Part 2)

 

Roll forward a few years.  We are in the 1990’s and a new era has dawned.  Specifically, the Personnel Department has become Human Resources.  That, of itself, is not an issue.  The issue is that, people with little or no knowledge or experience in the business world now are being empowered to control the people within the company.  I promise not to get on a harangue, but they were given inordinate control over the personnel of the company.  In our company, the number of people quadrupled and most of them came from academia and everything they knew came from textbooks.

In my case, even though I had over 15 years’ experience with my job I was unqualified because I did not have a 4-year degree.  The fact that there was no degree program at the time I was getting my training had no bearing in their decision.  I was put on probation.  The only way I could keep my job was to pursue my degree by taking at least one class a year.

Thus, I took a couple of classes over the next few years, for 10 credits.  At the same time, I fought the good fight regarding separate certification.  Seemingly successful at time; you cannot fight stupidity; you can only misdirect it for a while.

 

City University of Seattle (Final Chapter)

 

Finally, in the late 1990’s, with the support of my wife, I decided to go for it.  Not only to get rid of the issue at work, but to accomplish a life-long dream and finish my degree.  I had 45 credits to go.  As the requirements for the majors had changed, I had to go for a General Studies Degree but no big deal.  Taking 10 credits a quarter, which would mean about 30 hours a week, and my 50-60 hours a week at work it was not going to be fun for over a year but it would be done.

This I did.  Thus, in June of 1999 I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree, 30 years after I graduated from high school, with a 3.9485 GPA.  Not too bad, if I say so myself.  And I do.

 

Conclusion

 

I am very proud of obtaining my degree.  I only wish that I had obtained it when it meant something to my career or, for that matter, my actual education.  Quite frankly, it was a matter of going through the motions.  As the first one my family to graduate from high school and then the first to graduate from college makes it very sweet.  That I have family members follow (not enough) is also sweet.

That I could not go to college, that I could not get my degree, right out of high school, in this country is a damned travesty.  I made a good life.  I do not have any regrets, I am not bitter.  But, why?