February 27, 2009
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What is your favorite memory from school?
College counts as “school”, doesn’t it? I have many traumatic or merely unpleasant memories from elementary school, and very few even mildly pleasant memories of high school before I dropped out. One of the best things that ever happened to me in a school building was when I went into one to take the test for my GED.
My best school memory was at Lane Community College, Eugene, OR, in 1968. A visiting professor was giving a lecture. I had never heard of him, but he was an anthropologist (and an ecologist and psychologist, but I didn’t know that then) and I had a double major in anthropology and math. I had a free hour, so I went to the lecture.
The lecturer was Gregory Bateson. The subject of his lecture was the dawning of the cybernetic age. He was enthusiastic and I was enthralled and impressed. Nothing, at that time in my life, could equal the importance for me of sex, drugs and rock and roll, but a couple of years later when I ended up in prison, I took a course in computer programming.The language then was Fortran, and the medium was punch cards. I aced the course, but never used that knowledge in a job. A decade or so after I took the course I went “back to the land” and off the grid, so I didn’t get back into the cybernetic age until the turn of the millennium.
I don’t recall any specific quotes from that lecture, but I subsequently read just about everything Gregory Bateson had in print. His viewpoints and observations have influenced my thinking profoundly.
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Comments (9)
My high school counselor tried to get me to commit to going to college for data processing / computer science because of my math and science aptitude. She said the computer age was coming and people would actually have computers in their homes. I didn’t believe her because at that time, the only computers I’d seen were big tape data processing machines the size of a large several large refrigerators standing side by side in climate controlled rooms and couldn’t imagine anyone building a house around something like that. I should have listened to her.
I got my computer training on the job when I was temping for a local medical clinic in the accounting dept. They fired the gal running the data processing dept and had seen that I had data entry experience, so they sent me to several training courses and I became the head of the dept. 60 degree temp and a huge Honeywell main frame that liked to go down just because it could. I thought it to be energetic influences and I became the mystery gal after putting a pyramid on top of the main frame and the problems stopped.
I’ll be looking up Mr. Bateson. Thanks Kathy. Have a great weekend.
@Jaynebug - Marvelous story, Mystery Gal. Thanks for sharing. I don’t know precisely why, but that, “liked to go down just because it could,” line made me laugh and still has me chuckling. Knowing how you appreciate warmth, I can see you cuddling up to the computer for comfort.
@SuSu - You should have seen me on hot summer days in SLO. 90 degrees out and I’m wearing a thick jacket with gloves. They teased me all the time. I reread that line and just went with it. I chuckled too. All computers are men anyway right? hehehehe
pre college memories are almost short enough for comments…man this is hard. okay, since highschool is largely snippits here and there it gets booted in favor of junior high. inside school, the single shortest memory that isn’t a picture or two in my mind is walking in on a poor unfortunate and pretty girl using an either or restroom. I didn’t see anything…curse being blind….but I didn’t brag of the victory either….odd everything is either victory or defeat in junior high and your life is on the line. but it was a bubble burster to have the illusion that nudity in real life was special…the moments are, but otherwise its just occasionally embarrasing…I guess I knew then I’m not a nudist…booo.
I have a number of very funny memories surrounding my sixth grade teacher and my best friend and I. They’re probably not funny to anyone else.
One of his favorite things to make us do was write sentances for punishment. Like “I will not say shut up.” Okay, I must have written that 50000x and it never did any good. But when I’d write them, I’d write things like… I will not say shut up. I will not shut up. I will say shut up.
Yeah. highly effective.
About twenty years ago, my boss at the time programmed in fortran. I watched him so much that I was able to read it.
i enjoyed reading this post. what did you go to prison for? if you don’t mind me asking…
@janicelittle - …and if I do, what then?