More Recent Background

I began my professional career with a need to write about something. At first I had no specific goal as to what it might be, but I DID know it had to be something that had a basis in reality and that people needed to know about. I began by writing constant letters to the editor, which, while in high school, I thought was me being well on my way, what a farce that was. I found that I needed to have a reason for my opinions, even if they would not appreciably change, which I must say they really haven't. Education, I knew, was the way to go.

As an aside I also need to let you know that, because I was such an incurable know-it-all in high school, I failed the eleventh grade and in turn had to graduate a semester behind my class. (Look closely and you will see that I failed and ENTIRE year, plus half of tenth grade, but only had to do one extra semester to catch up, this will be important later.)

My first thought was to get into juvenile probation because I had been put on this ridiculous thing at the age of sixteen for cutting fucking school. That had to have been the most asinine things I had ever had happen to me. Anyway, I figured I could help those having problems. I took about a year's worth of classes and then decided I would MUCH rather get to the kids BEFORE they needed incarceration or probation. The idea to go into education had been born. As you may have already seen this was natural since it IS what I had done when younger, but my "brilliant" ass didn't see it until I had wasted a year or so in another field. That's what I get, I guess.

I decided to go to a local college because I could not really afford to go away, AND I really didn't want to leave my friends. That was quite the misnomer as I was to find out, because I left them anyway in theory. They thought I had changed because I often talked of my schooling and I thought they had changed because that's all they ever wanted to talk to me about. We were both right.

Lake Erie College in Painesville, Ohio had just opened its doors to men in the previous couple of years and was actively recruiting. I happened to have the correct credentials and happily enrolled in the social sciences program headed toward a degree with a minor in secondary education. I was going to become a junior high or high school social studies teacher. (At least that's what I thought.) I started in August of 1988 and graduated in December of 1990. Again, look at the time frame. Even if we use all the credits I got while in Community College, I still blew off about a year of my regularly four-year degree, but most of those Lakeland credit did NOT transfer. I also took about 1 year off between high school and Lakeland, then another year between Lakeland and Lake Erie. Both intervening years were spent traveling to different parts of the United States in order to see what things were like out of my so call comfort zone. Strangely, except for the temperature and in some cases the terrain, things were not that odd. The ethnic make-up in Bakersfield, CA; San Diego, CA; West Palm Beach, FL, and other places was different than good old Cleveland, but I could find enclaves of most enthnicities if I looked hard enough. The big difference is that everyone was more homogeneously mixed in West Palm and San Diego, most certainly not in Bakersfieled though. I stopped in various places along the way, like Denver, Oklahoma City, Detroit, Fort Lauderdale, El Paso, even up to Niagra Falls and Toronto. Again, I have a reason for telling you this. I want you to know that I am not talking from a tunnel vision type of perspective. I love to learn about people and culture and have done so through travel throughout various portions of my life, which, I believe, gives me a right to speak on what I have observed.