Dkzody's Weblog

It’s been 57 years since I picked a college to attend. Actually, there wasn’t much from which to pick. I chose the state college (later to become a university) in my town. the other choices in my town were a Mennonite college, of which I knew very little, and the community college which sat on the grounds of what had been the now State College. It was the site where I took my SAT. (Remember the SAT? It’s still a “thing” that high school students take.)

Early in my high school career I had considered a California University for which the state is famous. However, I jinxed that in my junior year of high school by dropping my Spanish 3 class. The university system required three years of foreign language, the state colleges did not.

I also received a full-tuition scholarship to the state college. How do you turn down free money? And, I could live at home. My mother would take very good care of me for the next four years while all I did was go to school and get good grades. In my junior and senior years I did get a job, not so much for the cash but for the experience. I knew no one was going to hire me with just a college degree. I needed to prove I had something worthwhile to offer to a company.

Now, all these years later, our granddaughter is off looking at possible colleges in other places than her home town. Her home town happens to have some very topnotch schools, and who knows, she may end up at one of them, but her parents, her grandparents, and I think herself, wants to see what else the state has to offer. Unlike her parents, she wants to stay in California.

Our daughter, granddaughter, and a friend of the granddaughter, are out visiting southern California schools this week. Our daughter sent pictures of the schools they visited on Monday–Westmont and Cal Lutheran. At 16 I didn’t even know these schools existed, and if I had, it never would have occurred to me to go visit them. I was the first in my family to attend any kind of college, and it would actually stay that way for a few decades until our daughter left for college.

Have I ever mentioned that not only did I get a good education right here in town, but it’s also where I met Terry. We never had a class together, and he should have been graduated by the time I did meet him as he is four years older than me. He had taken time off for active military duty (it was during the Vietnam War) and he kept postponing filing for his diploma and was taking just one class the semester I met him. I was doing a research project for the college as to why students did NOT graduate in four years (I was an exception to that) and Terry’s name was on the list to interview.

It was all put together through a class I was taking on designing marketing surveys, getting information to help with marketing products and services to the TARGET market. I was (and still am) very good at designing survey questions. Which brings me to a current topic–our church is trying to figure out its next steps after our current pastor retires. So, they (and I have no idea who the “they” is) developed a survey. I won’t get into the details, but I would never have let my high school students go out with such a poorly designed survey.

So, what did you learn in college that you still use today? For me, it is a whole lot, and it is also about meeting the man to who I have devoted most of my life, all because I knew how to ask the right questions.