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<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\nAfter that, Sul Ross Jr. High<\/a> (yes, children, that’s what it was called in those days). It was a good enough school, I guess. My memories of it are hazy, my brain awash with a tsunami of hormones. Adolescence was not an easy time for me. I owe a great deal of thanks to all the teachers and staff at Sul Ross back then, for allowing me to continue living.<\/p>\n High school was Oliver Wendell Holmes<\/a>. It’s the round one<\/a>. Obviously built in the 60s, “the round one<\/a>” is how everybody identified it. It was (and I’ll bet still is) a school joke to tell freshmen to go to the end of the hall and turn right. See, round school\u2026halls don’t have an end\u2026uh, okay, moving on\u2026<\/p>\n My spotty college career started right after high school at Angelo State University<\/a>, studying Theatre<\/a>. After a year there, my parents decided to move back to Mobile, so I transferred to the University of South Alabama<\/a>, where I took every Theatre<\/a> course they offered, then dropped out. That was College, Part 1.<\/p>\n Years passed. I moved back to San Antonio, went to work and eventually got married. My well-employed new husband asked if I wanted to finish my degree. I got copies of all my transcripts, took them around to all the colleges and universities in San Antonio (there are a bunch), saying, “Here’s what I’ve got. I don’t care what I major in. How fast can I graduate?”<\/p>\n So College, Part 2, began at\u00a0Our Lady of the Lake<\/a> (where an admissions officer casually mentioned that my ACT scores would have gotten me a full scholarship if I had gone there after high school\u2014as I entered the last few years of paying off my student loans). I quit my job and enrolled. Rich got laid off three weeks later. But, since he had seen the handwriting on the wall, he had already applied at Southwest Research Institute<\/a>, and started work three weeks after I started class. Yeah, sometimes things work out.<\/p>\n BTW, going back to school made me want to kick myself for the way I did things in Part 1. I discovered that ninety percent of making good grades\u2014possibly more than that, really\u2014is showing up and following the instructions. And, also, no matter how I tried, I simply couldn’t make my school work take up eight hours a day, every day. I’d read and re-read and take notes and do assignments and RE-read\u2026and five hours would have passed. It might have been different if I had been studying medicine or nuclear physics or something, but the fact is that going to school (just<\/i><\/b> going to school, to be clear, I was NOT working at the same time) is not the same as a full time job.<\/p>\n<\/a>In 1966, after I finished 4th grade, my family moved to San Antonio, and I finished elementary school at Thunderbird Hills Elementary<\/a>. I walked there, most days. According to Google Maps, it’s only a mile. It felt longer. (My favorite teacher there\u2014possibly my favorite teacher of all\u2014was Mrs. Slovacek<\/a> in the 5th grade.)<\/p>\n<\/a><\/div>\n