PSU Magazine Spring 1993

0 • rivate unno hy does a person who has a successful-mostly– career, two children, and a fly fishing dependency problem return to school? Well, partying was ruled out as a reason immediately. I figured I had already had my first beer at the University of Minnesota in 1978; also I've been constitutionally unable to stay awake past 10:30 p.m. since my kids were born. I also eliminated the reason of joining a fraternity, since I didn't want to take beer intravenously and network with people who were born after Nixon resigned. I considered the possibility of going out for football as a kind of older wide receiver who would ask to be placed on the bench permanently, for actuarial reasons. I also considered the theory that I wanted to affiliate with a school with the cool team name of the Vikings, instead of the Golden Gophers. Ultimately, I enrolled at PSU for the computer discount. 14 PSU Okay, I didn't really. I enrolled for the intellectual stimulation of attempt– ing to remember just how to write a thesis statement and for the aerobic benefits of lugging a book bag around. One of my main concerns was how to fit in amongst the general student population. What are young people wearing anyway? So, I went down to The Gap and spent about 500 bucks on denim shirts. My first day of classes, I realized I was the only person wearing a denim shirt in the room and that the average age of the students on the park blocks appeared to be about 42, so polyester was okay. I also spent an inordinate amount of time testing and selecting highlighting pens. I like the Orange Sanford Major Accent Quick Reference Marker. I made the decision to approach school like a work project instead of the way I approached college in Minnesota-going to classes but not inhaling. So I made a rule: notes that look like a court transcript and no little caricatures of the President on the margins. (Actually, when I was in high school and college, I would say my notes were about roughly half little Nationally syndicated editorial cartoonist Jack Ohman writes about his experiences as a student in the PSU Honors Program. By Jack Ohman Nixon, Ford and Carter caricatures and half indecipherable jottings about what was being said by the teacher. This attention to caricature-and not clean note taking-ultimately paid off, but I felt that now it would be counter– productive.) I also vowed that I would make no smart-assed remarks in class. This lasted one class session. In fact, in one class, I was actually subtly reprimanded for drawing an analogy between the Medea by Euripides and the movie Thelma and Louise. About the third week of class, I began to develop unexplained stomach pains and found myself awakening at 3:35 a.m. dreaming about being naked in my class and trying to explain Plato's Symposium. I became grouchy and found myself muttering about Aeschylus. In short, I rekindled ancient school anxieties that I had repressed for years. About the sixth week of class, my wife began complaining that the names of Michael Reardon and Lawrence Wheeler, the Honors Department honchos, were entering the conversa– tion too much. It became a joke. Just to