Why are more women going to and getting through college? I don't know. All I can do is turn the question around and ask why few young guys care about college.
It's interesting to try to remember what I felt during the summer after high school. I didn't apply to college my senior year. I put that off. There was an intense pressure to go find a job, which I resented since I thought I deserved a vacation and some kind of reward for getting through a place I mostly hated. I got two weeks. Then the litany started. Get a job, get a job, get a job.
So I found a job through parents of friends, as a relief driver for lunch wagons, catering trucks. The hours were killer. I got up at three in the morning, drove the lunch truck to a big food distribution center about half an hour away out in Burbank. I cleaned up the truck, bought food, loaded up, got gas and headed for the route out in the far eastern end of the Valley for my first stop, breakfast snacks and coffee for early shift office crowd around 7:00a, then construction crews between 7-8a, then the shoppers and store fronts opening around 9, then office breaks at 10 through 11, then noon lunch breaks, and on and on, until 5p. Then driving home in rush hour to get back at about 6p. At home I spread out the money, sorted it, bundled it, stack the coins, rolled them. Write up accounts, went over the truck for inventory and made a grocery list for the next morning. I ate dinner while I was working. I averaged somewhere between 90-120/per day.
My stepfather was jealous and used to bother me, and run a strange kind of interference thing, which I didn't understand. I think he didn't like the idea that I could run a business at eighteen and make what seemed like a small fortune to me at the time.
Well, I hated this job. I knew I was over charging people a lot. The mark ups were huge, but that's were my money was coming, screwing others. That's the system, screw'm till it hurts, then screw'm just a bit more. I didn't know about communism yet, but I was sure ready to learn something else to do with my life. Anything but business was fine by me.
Trouble was there wasn't anything else to do, except go to college. So I drove out to Pierce, a half hour drive in the other direction, paid ten bucks and filled out a bunch of stupid forms. I liked drawing, so I figured art major, that should be easy enough to get through. The tough English asshole had to be gotten through and some foreign language. I'd been through Spanish in high school, so I picked French. I was dreading that one. I was blown away. The guy teaching French was just great. A real character, straight out of a play. He loved France, everything French. He announced he would spend most of the time speaking French, so we'd have to get used to it. I couldn't believe how much fun that class was, and how much I wanted to give to this guy, perform for him.
The Physical Ed requirement actually turned out to interesting because it was lectures on health, nutrition, sexuality, family, etc. It was kind of social studies class for young adults. I really enjoyed the human development and human biology behind it. We learned about diet, carbs, fats, proteins, minerals, etc.
Art class turned out to suck. There was no studio space, so we had to use tables, and there was no model. It was just kind of empty. My occasional girlfriend was going to Northridge and she used to show me what she was learning over there in the art dept. It looked a lot more interesting and fun, so I went over to CSUN and applied, transcripts, etc. I got in! I thought my high school grades were too low, so I was surprised.
Since I was a transfer and an art major, and I had a good guy as an adviser, I could put off English, foreign language and all the hard stuff, and just pick around in the general ed requirements. While I scored good on the French final, I didn't pass the second semester entrance exam. So I had Psychology, Art History, Poli Sci, studio courses, and some PE requirement, Badminton, I think. Drawing, Psych, Poli Sci were all good teachers, drawing as a great teacher.
School suddenly and completely out of the blue became fun, even exciting. Never been more surprised in my life. I was actually learning shit, getting better at shit, doing stuff I liked. I was happy! My adviser had signed me up for his life drawing class. This guy was one of best teachers I've ever had. He was just beautiful the way he introduced the human form in space. Man that was good shit. He just opened the big door that sits between most people and art. Wide open. Here it is kids, come on in, every fabulous thing in the world is here for the taking. Learn how to make this stuff, and its yours.
Everything was suddenly right about my world. In my travels, to go find drawing supplies I drove by a book store. Lewis Books. I can't remember what happened in that store. Old man Lewis, came out to help me find something. It was not the first time I had bought a book, but that the first time I remember. I was looking for something French, because of my teacher and because I had scored big on a final. Maybe it was the cover design, maybe Lewis picked it for me. I got The Red and the Black by Stendhal. I couldn't believe what I was reading. How could the French write great stuff like that, while the Americans had Hawthorne to show? Where were we going wrong? Man I hated Hawthorne.
I told this story to illustrate something that I think has to happen for young guys to get interested in college. There is really nothing about college that is interesting, if you think about it. It's some magic light that has to be turned on. The teacher is at the center of this puzzle. I had two great ones in a row. Go to French class? Who would ever expect to find a giant teacher there? This guy was a part time theater actor and could ham it up in royal fashion. Some times he would write up short skits, and pick various students out to act the parts. This was a beautiful way to get students over their embarrassment of asking questions and speaking in front of class. Just be a fool and relax about it. He had dozens of lessons like that. This guy was like a fountain. I still don't really know how he did it, but he opened the door on literature, period. I went inside whole hog.
I had discovered what good teachers were like. After that year, I went after good teachers, scouring around student friends, the rumor mill.
I remember pretty clearly that most of my experience in school before that was just an ego buster. It seemed to be nothing but torture, with exercises in humiliation and defeat. The basic message I got was, `you are stupid'. This message gets to be a real drag after awhile. If you don't think you're good at school, and you just got out of high school, why on earth would you want more of that shit. I hated doing business so much, I decided I had to go back to school and swallow shit for the next four years, full load shit, full time shit, with more hours of homework shit, performing in shit, and getting graded in shit.
So, that's what college looked like to me that September going back to the same old grind of shit, I just got out of. Only now, the shit was going to be even harder. Oh, joy to the world.
CG