I graduated high school in 1970. I spent the summer working in the grocery store, seeing my boyfriend and hanging out with my friends. It was all very pleasant, safe and familiar. Then I went to college.
There needs to be some serious background information on this one. First off, little did I know it, I was ordained to go to college since I was 2 1/2. I found this out my senior year of High School. Also, where I lived everyone who was anyone went to college. Especially anyone who was Jewish. And also unknown to me was that going to college meant going away to college.
I was a good student. I wasn't a great student, but I was ok. I was smart, but not a brain. In my high school there were alot of kids much naturally smarter than me. I was ok. I graduated with a 84 average. To me that it ok. I didn't study hard, but always did ok.
I excelled in Math. I was for some reason just good at it. I got straight A's through high school calculus. Remember my father grew up very poor, a child of Jewish immigrants in the tenements of NYC? Well, he was VERY impressed with my mathematical abilities. He decided I should be an accountant because I was so good with numbers. He had me take 1 1/2 years of college accounting in high school. Of course I got straight A's in that too. I was so good at it, that my accounting teacher bet the other accounting teacher a steak and lobster dinner, that I would get the highest score on the New York State Regents exam. He won.
Needless to say, I had no interest in being an accountant or a mathematician. In fact, I was just a young, spoiled, suburban kid, with no idea of life, past our safe house, my friends, and school. I was as young and naive as you can get. Plus I was young for my grade. I was born in the fall, so I was one of the youngest kids in my grade.
Anyway, everyone was getting ready to go to college, so of course I was too. I didn't even quite get what that meant. My parents gave me a copy of Barrons, which is a huge fat guide to all colleges in America, and told me to look through it and see what I liked. I had no idea what I was supposed to be looking for. I suggested a New York State School, my two best friends were going to, but my dad said no, it had to be a private college, so I would meet a rich husband. Anyway I came up with Syracuse University in upstate New York, my mother had one she liked in Washington D.C., my father had one he liked in New Jersey, and there was a few more. I think we picked 5 in all. Then we went to visit them.
I got to make the final decision and I picked Syracuse. They were fine with that.
Well, that isn't the whole story. The rest of the story is that I didn't really want to go to college. I was tired of school. I thought it was a waste of time. I had spent three years in a high school with half the teachers boring, and the other half rebelling against the system. If you had asked me what I wanted to do instead, I would have had no idea. Like I said, I was a naive as they came. I have just spent my whole life in that house, in that town, with my family, and I was content. I had no desire to go away to college and keep going to school. I had no big dream about being something. Really, I was just so much in my reality and liked it. Well to make a long story short, I mouthed off one day to my parents that I didn't want to go to college or leave home. That didn't go over very well. That is when I found out my father has been saving since I was 2 1/2 for me to go to college. They were very upset with me. I went to college.
copyright 2010 © Stacey Bander. Please contact for any reuse.
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