Category Archives: Responsibility

Frosh Freedom Freakout

Drinking (and to a lesser extent drug use) to excess is a legendary, mythologized aspect of college life. As the Whiffenpoofs song says, “Let us drink a toast to all we love the best”. I had my own encounter with this “self-hazing” cultural tradition when I went off to my first year of college after graduating from high school in 1972.

During my senior year of high school, I followed the conventional programmed path, applied and was accepted to two colleges – the University of Michigan in my hometown of Ann Arbor and Western Michigan University, 100 miles west in Kalamazoo. Since I was interested in theater at the time (see “JLO”) I decided to go to Western, because I heard that they had a better theater department. Since my mom was a single parent with a limited income (basically child support paid by my dad), I managed to get a financial need grant and a little bit of a scholarship as well, which paid for a large part of the cost. Continue reading →

Staying Home

Tappan Middle School in Ann Arbor
Tappan Middle School in Ann Arbor
During my last two years of Junior High (Eighth and ninth grade) I was absent from school as much as a third of the time. Looking back I see it as a coping strategy for a school experience I was not comfortable with. In general I was just not comfortable in my skin at all, lacking self esteem, and my school experience did little to help me with that.

I had been mostly okay with my last couple years of elementary school, though I got through it by being more of a trained seal than a real learner. I particularly remember working my way through the color-coded SRA reading program, reading there level-rated prose pieces and taking the comprehension test after, before moving on the next piece and eventually up to the next color level. What I was reading was not particularly interesting to me, the whole point was to try to “level up” which had some self-esteem boost for me. Continue reading →