Episode 102: Failing the Grades

Choosing the proper schooling for one's future success is quite a feat. Somehow, I managed multiple colleges and some very "sobering" testing performances. Blame and embarrassment... well, you'll just have to listen.

Thanks for listening the the podcast and be sure to subscribe to my thrice weekly column, The Goldman State, by visiting the WEBSITE HERE.  Thanks for listening.

Transcript

00:00 - Ed Goldman (Host)
Hi, this is Ed Goldman with the Goldman State Podcast. Each year at this time, as college kids graduate, check out the job market or haul futons into their parents' basements and demand an improved Wi-Fi signal, I think about how much I might have missed by attending two state universities in Long Beach and Fullerton, instead of one of those covered with ivy, steeped in tradition and targeted by the White House. From friends and movies, I've learned that those schools' rich curriculum included Latin philosophy and the humanities, all of which made their alumni fuller, deeper and largely unemployable human beings. This year's graduating class, which I've dubbed Generation why Not? More likely filled their four years by taking courses such as the following All of these are real, by the way how to Watch Television, surviving the Zombie Apocalypse, the Art of Walking and the Science of Harry Potter. 

00:58
Others may have become engrossed in again, all real courses Tree Climbing, the Soci sociology of Miley Cyrus, arguing with Judd's Judy getting dressed and bowling lanes management. That last one actually seems practical, though it may not seem to be right up your uh, never mind. For some reason, auctioneering, bagpiping and puppetry all of which are genuine academic studies, are mocked at an online site called Weirdest College Majors. This seems counterintuitive, since all of these trades require skills and can become satisfying careers. I'll admit, they could also morph into seriously annoying careers if their practitioners are given to taking their work home with them. This is why it's often advisable to find a life partner in the same field as yours. After all, pillow talk is best when each party can lend a truly empathetic ear or, in the case of puppetry, available hands. 

01:54
Now, when I was in college, my peers joked about majoring in underwater basket weaving or interning as a lifeguard in a car wash. These weren't real options, at least not back then. Nor were some of the courses I proposed when I edited my community college newspaper. The Viking One was an intro course in pig Latin or, as I wrote in the fictitious course description, igpe Atenle. Another was intermediate lunar geology, which wasn't so far-fetched, considering I wrote that in 1968, and in 1969, america put our first man on the moon. So had my humor been prescient, precocious or simply prepubescent? When I attended Long Beach City College from 1968 to 70, smoking was permitted everywhere on campus. So my friends and I referred to the school's ambiance as high school with ashtrays. 

02:46
My next stop in academia was Long Beach State College, which rebranded itself as California State University Long Beach in 1972, a move that I'm sure had been intended to make it sound like it was part of the more lustrous University of California system. There was value for me because when I landed there in 1970, it was still a state college, but by the time I graduated it had become a state university. I sometimes wonder if I'd remained there another couple of years to work on my master's degree, would it have been renamed Harvard University West? Instead, I trundled off to Cal State Fullerton, which was how it was still known, and distinguished myself by getting the first D plus ever given in a graduate course in statistics. 

03:29
My excuse for performing so badly was layered. First, my dad was gravely ill and sometimes I visited with him and my mom at their home an hour away from campus. Second, I loathed, abhorred, feared and wanted to murder statistics, both as a course of study and for being a word that nobody with a lisp could pronounce without spraying innocent passers-by with saliva. Upset by my prestige-lowering grade, the head of the Communication Studies Department at Cal State Fullerton, where by now I was also a Pee Wee member of the adjunct faculty teaching an introductory reading and comprehension class, offered to raise the grade. If I was also a Pee Wee member of the adjunct faculty teaching an introductory reading and comprehension class offered to raise the grade. If I worked with a tutor for about a month but I had to decline his face-saving offer His face, not mine. 

04:14
Mine remained stonily indifferent to the grade. You don't understand. I said how hard it was for me to get this D+, or how much I learned about statistics from the nasty comments made in red on my papers. I was making it sound like a principled refusal, but in retrospect I suspect I was holding out for a little cash to sweeten the deal. Well, looking back, I suppose I learned a lot in college. I'm Ed Goldman. My column, the Goldman State, comes out every Monday, wednesday and Friday. You can subscribe for free at GoldmanStatecom. Thanks for listening.