I was just an average student in grade school (k-12) and had no real aspiration of going to college. I had some strange ideas about college graduates, PHds in particular. Afterall, what was the use of college unless you went all the way. Professors, and other PHds should all speak multiple languages and should be well versed in mathematics as well as the classics. The idea of a Renaissance Man still existed in my imagination. I was not one of them. 

In High School, we had career planning throughout most of the three years. I had been a Boy Scout all my youth and grew up devouring science fiction, particularly the kind with space ships. I would join the Navy. They had those neat ships full of neat equipment and they had the coolest uniforms. I would not need to learn another language either. I took two years of Spanish but retained little more than reporting that Pablo esta bien pero Louisa tiene cataro and how to order chicken and rice.

I moved from the Sea Scouts to the Sea Cadets, where I would get credit for a future in the Navy. My High School did not have an ROTC so I figured on a career as a non-com. The Sea Cadets met every Monday night at the Naval Reserve Center in North Hollywood. We would study all the manuals and practice close order drill. I actually enjoyed close order drill. It was much like dance. One thing I didn't do was pay much attention to world affairs.

Every couple of months, or so, we would spend the weekend on some Navy ship docked in Long Beach and every summer (I did two) we went to an abbreviated boot camp for two weeks. The first I went to was at Port Hueneme, the same place my Sea Scout group had a boat. There we had Sea Bees training us to use gas masks and fire hoses. The second year I went was at the San Diego Naval Training Center where a Marine sergeant trained us in how to run forever in formation and do pushups.

I was 17 at this time and starting to cop an attitude. This resulted in me having to do additional pushups. This didn't really sway me from planning a career with the Navy, however, as I figured that this was just boot camp and it's supposed to be obnoxious. I recently posted a photograph of my graduating group on Facebook. My attitude is rather apparent and many of the others were not hesitant in telling me so, indicating that I had ruined the photograph for them.

Not long after boot camp, my Sea Cadet group took part in a parade along Wilshire Blvd. It was for VIVA (Victory in Viet Nam Assoc). This was 1968 and the parade drew a large number of protestors. As I said earlier, I had not been particularly concerned with world affairs. I was aware that there was fighting in Viet Nam because my father always watched the evening news. But this shocked me and I came away with the feeling that I was being used for political purposes and that someone was lying. 

I guess somewhere between then and my high school graduation I gave up on the idea of joining the Navy. I had no desire to travel to a foreign country in order to kill people I didn't know, regardless of what the US Government wanted me to do. At eighteen I had to register for the draft and that was a bit scary, but I enrolled in classes at Pierce College. Anyone could get in there. Ready or not I was in college. This was fine until they did away with student deferments. 

The upshot of all this is that I left High School unprepared for either any kind of career or for college. I had been a Liberal Arts Science student (I took biology, chemistry, and physics) but I suffer from a form of arithmetic dyslexia. 

Perhaps I will continue with this, perhaps not...