Viking_Yearbook_71

Senior I went into the service two days after graduating from high school. I was college material, but I didn't feel I was ready to submit to four more years of school. I saw combat in Vietnam . I came out of the service in 1966 and enrolled at Portland Community College within a week after I arrived in Portland. I stayed there two years. Needless to say, I was disillusioned both with the role of the community college in regard to the community itself and with its use to me. I transferred to Portland State and expected to find a little more of the serious academic approach to social problems, to the things that I thought I would be concerned with after graduation. I've been here nearly two years, off and on . I'm not attending this term . I'm not certain I want to complete my degree requirements. I haven't asked for a graduation check. I'm not really very concerned about it. I don't see a bachelor's degree as the sort of utopian foundation for a successful life that I once thought. I went on strike last spring and stayed away from all my classes for the duration of the strike. I came back very disappointed with the reaction of the administration and most of the faculty to the strike, to the problems brought forward by the strike . Not just the Kent State thing, the Jackson killings, the invasion of Cambodia, but that the administration ignored the protests that were being voiced-that colleges served the business community and not the students. I am disgusted by the statement that students are a national resource . I've been active in instrumental music since I was eight years old. I've worked professionally since I was 13. I plan to attempt to survive by playing music. I don't expect to survive, but I intend to attempt it without relying on college credentials. Operation Plus Student I quit school when I was 17 and went into the service. When I got out I kicked around labor jobs for two or three years– welding, sandblasting, boxing. I finally decided I wanted to come to college and write. I found out about Operation Plus through a multi-service center in Albina. They recommended that I come to PSU and see if I was eligible for Operation Plus, because my grades wouldn't have normally gotten me into college. I was given an 1.0. test, reading, math and spelling tests, and by the grades I got on those I was selected for the program. Operation Plus got each of its students a $1,000 government loan and matching grant. They helped us fill out our registration packets. And they offered counseling and tutoring. The idea behind Operation Plus is to help students get study skills so after two years of support the students can go on by themselves. I had a tutor in English composition the first term because I wasn't familiar with how you set up introductions and write papers. Right now I'm taking a speed reading and study skills course. I'm also taking Survey of English Literature, history, P.E., and Students in Urban Society, which is a class through Operation Plus. In the class we work with minorities' problems. I'm doing a paper on Skid Row. I've interviewed a couple living on Burnside. Hopefully, by showing the problems of those on Skid Row students within the program will get an idea of what problems other minority groups are facing. I live in the King George which is housing for Operation Plus students. (What Operation Plus can't fill they rent to other students.) It costs $80 a month for my four-room apartment. Tuition and rent are automatically taken out of your loan. You get so much money a month and you work out your budget from that. This month I've got $54. My skiing class is about $10 a week. And food is expensive. I'm going to have to apply for food stamps. Toward the end of the month we usually end up having communal eat-ins. The guys across the hall and a few others in the apartment bring food and we cook dinner together. I don't have a job. I've been sticking to studying. I'm going to have to get one though to make ends meet, or at least to live comfortably. College is a fast pace but it's good to be here. I think people in college sometimes are worrying about knowing so damn much that they forget about important things like feelings, sensitivity. Professors are very busy people. I'm sorry they don't have more time to deal with students individually. Anyway, if you want to accomplish things, college is good because it teaches you how to do things. It has given me the opportunity to write different things and publish some of my stuff. I'm the editor of The Hi Riser, a paper mainly for Operation Plus students. Hopefully, college is giving me the skills to write better, to take some of the sentimentality out of writing and make it more effective. This is the first poem I've written: 55