There were two other defining situations in college that help contribute to my academic demise. The first happened when I took Political Science 101 as an elective. I was very eager to take the class as someone I grew up had been a Music major until he took Poli-Sci 101 class and became so inspired that he changed his major to pre-law and eventually graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law School. I was hoping for the same inspiration. Instead, my Poli-Sci teacher was a visiting Professor from the Philippines who despised America, referred to President Nixon as Tricky Dicky, and acted highly inappropriate with female students that would have had him fired in today’s #MeToo environment. As half of our grade, we had to write a book report from a list of anti-American literature and instead of writing the report, I wrote a paper titled “America. Love it or Leave It”. I wrote on how wrong it was for a visiting Professor to teach such rhetoric to freshman students and I received an “F” for my final grade.
The second situation that also defined my college experience was when I took Basic computer programing. On the very first day of class, the Professor came in to the classroom and slammed his briefcase on the desk. He then went on a tirade about being a Mathematics Professor and wanted nothing to do with teaching Basic or anything else related to computing. He made it clear that he would not make time for students and if we struggled in his class, that would be our problem. I dropped the class the next day and dropped out of college at the end of the semester.
During my enlistment on the Carl Vinson, I had extensive computer training that included Basic and was learning about other programing on-the-job. When I got off Active Duty, I registered for classes at Northeastern Illinois University with a focus in computer programing. When I met with an Academic Advisor, I was told that I would have to take two years of ‘dead’ computer programing (COBAL and Pascal) before I would be able to take classes in programing that I had already familiar with in the Navy. Needless to say, I dropped out of college again and had no desire to ever finish. I just wanted to work.