I've been doing this college instructor thing for three years now, and I've seen a lot of students come and go. Outwardly I can put on my tough guy facade on graduation day and wish them a polite good luck sending them out to slay dragons. But totally leaving school for the first time is something you don't get over. And if you're going to be doing what I'm doing I think at least a little empathy is appropriate. I've got just one more final exam to administer, so I've shaken a lot of hands and gotten in some hugs, and now I just want to crawl into my little corner and cry.
Like many of these students I was leaving academia without a clear path. It was the Vietnam Era, so there was always that possibility, although (this is true) my draft board had been shut down for a year for exceeding its quota. I'd wanted to get into radio, but didn't really know how to get there. I had a touch of altruism in my soul, so I thought about it, and then opted for the Peace Corps. The Corps was in its infancy so they made a few mistakes. One of them was picking me for an agricultural mission to Colombia because I'd said I'd ridden on a combine once. Training was in Nebraska which included physical conditioning from the Big Red coaching staff, and a guy nicknamed "Deadly Dudley," who helped lead the "bay of pigs" invasion. Well for some reasons I don't even want to get into here, it didn't work out.
So I went to work in a warehouse for General Mills, putting in an average of 55 hours a week tossing hundred pound flour sacks. Then it came, my draft notice. I showed up for my physical at this big facility in downtown L.A., and then stripped to my skivies as ordered. It was clear I wasn't fully prepared for this because most of the guys around me showed up with these inch thick stacks of papers. I later learned these were letters from their doctors declaring them unfit for military duty because their right leg was 1/100th of an inch shorter than the left. That could be critical in a fire fight.
It elevated my spirits a bit to watch those doctors notes get tossed into some very large trash receptacles. We were asked to sit there in our underwear, about a hundred of us, and answer a questionaire. One of the questions was, and its frozen in my brain, " are you, or have you ever been excessively worried or depressed?" I looked around me, saw 100 whining teenagers standing there in theirunderwear, begging for mercy, and this shouldn't surprise you. I wrote not "yes," but "hell yes."
Let me tell you now in case they ever bring back the draft, this works much better than a stack of papers from your doctor.
"What's this all about son?"
"Oh, I don't know I just left Peace Corp Training, I'm tossing flour sacks around all day, and now I face the possibility of having to spend four years of my life with these guys."
"You're going to have to see our psychiatrist."
I can tell you without reservation that the stereotypical image of the intense, beady eyed, detached, probing, laboratory pshychaitrist was sitting in front of me. He was slightly balding, about 5'5" in stature, probably 135 pounds. His glasses were close to a half inch thick. He looked me up and down and then straight in the eye, and I swear to God this was his first question. "How do you feel about your mother?" I don't know whether he bought it or not, but my reply was, "She's okay."
There were three or four more probing questions like that, he jots something on a piece of paper and I'm directed to a line that sends me out the door. I'd been temporarily rejected. And you know I didn't mind. It was the nicest rejection I'd ever encountered. Well during this reprieve I go to graduate school and get my teaching credential. The culmination of said academic pursuit was of course a student teaching assignment. Near the end of that assignment the Principal comes in and offers me a job.
"Well, that would be great sir, but my temporary military rejection is up, and I'm prime beef for the draft."
"Oh, let us worry about that," he says.
"Then I'm all yours."
Well I didn't get it at first. The military never did come a-knockin. A year latter I find out that three members of the school board just happened to be three members of the local draft board? " Hmm?"
In the movie, The Graduate, friends of Dustin Hoffman's family keep whispering "Plastics" to him at his graduation party. Plastics in that fictional world was the hot career path. The equivalent today might be "Micro Chips."
God, Allah, Buddha and all devine spirits, bless my parents. They didn't pick a career for me. It led to a lot of stumbling and fumbling, but in the end I pretty much did everything I set out to do. To those of you about to graduate, feeling the pressure to save the world now, take a deep breath.Nothing is going to go like it was planned for while. That just doesn't happen. That's why I want to go off into a corner and cry. I know what you graduates are feeling. Relax. You've got a long way to go.
Let's face it, you can challenge my credibility as a role model. But what about Dustin Hoffman? He didn't go into Plastics. He lies around in a pool day dreaming, jumps in the sack with Mrs. Robinson, runs off in a defiant fit. And look where he is today?
There is hope, and there is also time to mope. Here's to you Mrs. Robinson.
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