Blonde in the house had quite a time getting her degree. It was mostly my fault that this occurred. When she graduated from high school she went to work as a secretary (which is what they called them in those days) at the American Institute of Research in Pittsburgh. Once she started there she liked what they were doing and decided to go to night school at the University of Pittsburgh and work toward a degree in psychology. The degree problem started when I showed up at the same night school.
I was there due to the fact that the Wharton Graduate School required some under graduate courses that I had not taken at mighty Thiel College. Therefore, I went to the above mentioned school to take them. While there, a friend and I decided that we would go to a Pitt night school dance. We did and I spotted the Blonde in the house (she wasn’t in the house then) across a crowded room. The rest is family history and we were married ten months later.
Since I had a profession which caused me to move a lot, The Blonde in the house was not in a position to start working toward her degree what with three kids, one of whom was handicapped. However, eventually things slowed down and while we were in Minnesota, she attended what is now Century College and obtained an associate degree. Then, we moved to New Jersey where she attended Montclair State and worked toward a degree in psychology. She gathered some good credits but ….
Yep, we moved again! This time to south Florida where she entered Florida Atlantic University. They were fussy and disallowed some of her hard earned credits, but with a vengeance she went back to the psychology grind and earned many more credits. However, I took my last position in the Florida panhandle and she enrolled at the University of West Florida. Since it was a state university like FAU, she thought she was safe and would not need many credits for a degree.
Life is never easy, and UWF informed her that they had a completely different psychology curriculum there, and if she wanted to get her degree any time soon, she should switch to sociology. With much regret The Blonde acquiesced and plunged forward in that area. One of her sociology professors had the belief that neighborhood bars were a great place to find information about human society and community life. Therefore, he gave the class an assignment to go to at least two bars and report their findings.
The problem was that the Blonde did not want to go to one bar let alone two even though I would be going with her. We looked at possible bars and finally found one that was really a neighborhood bar. Everything else around it was single family homes. This one looked like a house, but it had been grandfathered in and was a working bar. After we visited that, we were stymied in finding another “acceptable” bar. Eventually we went to Applebee’s – which had a bar. I never did know what the professor thought of that choice, but she passed the course with flying colors and was awarded her degree soon after.
By that time both of our boys had their degrees, so when graduation day arrived they showed up along with some grandkids. This was a big event I tell you! So big that when the graduates filed into the Pensacola Civic Center, there was big boom and all the lights went out. It is a pretty dark in a civic center without any lights. They did fix them, and my good wife received her degree in sociology.
I might mention my own experience with a sociology course as I took one as an elective in undergraduate school. We had our first test and I received a 92 percent and a B+ was marked beside it. I did not think too much about that until I looked at the girl in front of me and she had 88% and it was marked as A-. Quite naturally I inquired as why this was the case, The teacher’s reply was that she had looked at our college entrance exams, and for me a 92 was a B+ and for her a 88 was an A-. First time I had ever been penalized for a good grade.
This same teacher became irate with me a few weeks later. She wanted to know if anyone remembered their sixth birthday. I was the only one who put up a hand. She screamed that I was lying. I wasn’t and the reason I remembered was that my mother had a birthday party for me. She made lemonade and put green food coloring in the ice cubes. None of the kids would drink the lemonade because they were afraid of the green ice cubes. In any case all of the above convinced me not to take any more sociology courses.
I didn’t, but now I am married to a sociologist!
Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com