Made it through a school with a 2/3 washout rate, then paid my way through engineering school on a seven year plan while parking cars for a living, and worked on design of transportation projects, railroads, and dams. If you live in the Northeastern US you may have at some point trusted your life to my competence as an engineer by driving on my projects. I eventually learned to fly to get around to my work. I am near retirement age now, and I still judge some of my teachers back then as mentally unstable. I do remember some fondly as good educators, but others were whack jobs. One principal distributed John Birch Society flyers about the satanic origin of the peace sign. One Spanish teacher was a screamer who would get so red in the face I thought she might have a stroke, she left for a sabbatical and never returned and ended up as a bank teller. She probably screamed at rolls of quarters. As a child I was terrified of her, and I cringe to think of her being armed and walking around a school.
One OUTSTANDING teacher knew that computers would be important and created a computer science program from nothing, with scavenged teleprinters and a primitive modem from Bell Labs, where he had once worked. He did this in 1970!
I intend to spend my retirement working on creating clean water supplies in third world countries. I probably have a few good years when I will be physically and mentally able to do so. I have raised a good son who will enter graduate school soon, and have a long marriage to his mother, the best woman imaginable.
So call me a POS if you will. Your opinion doesn’t count.
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