Not many people know that in addition to my engineering
degree I have a minor in English. By
understanding this you may come to realize why my writings are the way they
are.
English was never my strongest subject. Mostly because my spelling is very creative,
not that is wrong it just doesn’t conform to the way the rest of the world
thinks it should be. It started in
jounior high school. I was your basic
straight “A” student that coasted thru school well ecept for this one course in
English. Acutally the spelling thing
started back in gramer school. I just
hated to memorize anything so my best spelling test were in the 80’s. (That is test score not years.) By the time I got to junior high this English
thing was a pure bore. I hated it! I would love to blame it on the teacher but
it really isn’t his fault. He was also
way my math teacher and I just loved math, algebra, geometry, it just made
perfect sense. I just couldn’t figure
out why this English stuff was so important.
On to high school and another great teacher who I dearly
loved and still think the world of today.
Even though he tried very hard to pour the information into my head it
just seem to run off or flow through from in one ear and out the other. He even tried beating it into with the “board
of education”. Of course I had a limited
attention span that pretty much didn’t go past the girl with the big boobs that
sat near me. She was a hell of a lot
more intresting than the teacher. Probably
the best think he did was let us choose the books we wanted to do book reports
on that year. I picked “Munity on the
Bounty” and was totally hooked on sailing for the rest of my life. The romance of the see, tropical islands,
large ships under sail and RUM!
One of the true benefits of going to engineering school was
you didn’t have to take as much math as the other students and no foreign
language was required. Well that was
only true if you did good on placement test.
Well I didn’t do good on any of the placement test. So I had to take remedial engish. I don’t
think the U of A does that anymore.
If you can pass the placement test they just tell you to go somewhere
else. So I was doomed to take an extra
course in English. So instead of two 3
hour courses and one 5 hour course. I was
up to three, 3 hour courses. Well at
least I didn’t have to take a foreign language.
Although it could be argued that English was a true foreign language for
a boy from Sycamore.
Actually English wasn’t the only remedial class I had to
take, I had about 12 hours of remedial work before I could officially start in
my classes. The classes include a couple
of math classes and physics. Maybe Winterboro
wasn’t the best college prep high school in the nation. Out of a class of fifty only about eight of
us went on to college and I know of only one other person to graduate from
college out of that class.
If I struggled in high school, I was totally lost in
college. Actually I even struggled in
math classes. This was a totally new
experience for me. No one to tell me
when to go to bed, tell me when to get up or tell me I need to take a
bath. Did you know our dorm had a pool
hall in it! That was just too cool. They also had all the donuts you could eat
every Sunday morning if you got up before noon.
I am going to shorten this story a little but at the end my
first sesmester in college which was summer school I had a rip roaring 0.8
GPA. “F” in English, two “D’s in Math
and the only “C” was in a drafting class.
Two semesters of that and you were off Viet Nam. Well the fall semester rolled around and
incase you haven’t heard the University of Alabama has a football team. Football season at the University is a
special time. You are supposed to be
able to go to football games and have plenty of time left over to go to classes. Well at the end of that semester I had things
completely under control, knew how to do this college thing. At least I was consistence with another
0.8. If I hadn’t started in Summer
school I would have been out on the street and in the line at the draft
center.
I had to get my act together! So in the spring I didn’t take English which
guarnetted I wouldn’t make at least one “F”.
I had to learn how to study, change my life style and get new
friends. It worked! Spring semester saw a 2.5 out of 3.0 GPA and I
was off probation and the draft board was just a distant memory for at least a
few years. (By the way, none of those friends
lasted thru to the next fall.)
Well I finally got my life together, took english over and
over until I got my “D” and was so damn proud of that grade. I actually was finally able to make a “C” in
my last English class. In the end thanks
to W2 Wilson I was able to make it in to graduate school. (That is another story for another time.)
Graduate school was a dream except for one thing, I had to
write a thesis. It wasn’t easy and took
two years to get it approved. They kept
finding misspelled words and I would have to do it over.
I am so thankful that we have word processors and spelling
checkers. Word processors, very good administrative
assistance, and a wonderful wife has let me survive in this world. I have been able to have several technical
papers published and have author parts of many documents that are in print
today.
I have purposely not run a spelling check on this document
although many of the words were auto corrected.
I didn’t get Carole to edit this for me so you could get a snapshot of
the true me.
I don’t know if there is a moral to this story. If there is, it would probably be keep trying
until technology catches up, have some good help and a wonderful spouse along
the way.
