Thank you Don. I found my element with another political talker who somehow opened all kinds of weird wormd in the political spectrum.I've always been a Democrat and he's a Republican which makrs it extra interesting
It wasn’t entirely that I was “unable” to attend, because I did, but more that I was unable to finish all the way through in my desired field. I wanted to be an attorney, specifically for the prosecution. Law school was out of reach for me because of the order in which I made my life’s decisions. First of all, I went straight from high school into an enlistment into the Marine Corps. Then, after the first of three tours of duty, I got married and started a family. It was only after I was a husband and father that my ex-stepfather asked me why I had not gone to college right after high school and then joined the Marines as an officer, or why I had not gone directly into the officer program instead of enlisting. I told him that I thought we were too poor for college. He floored me by saying that if I had asked him, he would have paid my tuition. I was surprised, I had thought that because he was already divorced from my mother (had been since I was 14), that he wasn’t an option for paying for college.
When I left military service almost a decade later, I had the GI Bill to help pay for college, but the reality is that it doesn’t land you in Princeton, Harvard, Yale or Stanford. The financial benefits of the GI Bill wouldn’t last eight years unless I took a bi-monthly course in basket-weaving that required no books and no lab work. Balancing college, starting over in a new profession, raising a family all became so much of a juggling act that I soon realized that I’d have a degree, but I wouldn’t be able to continue to the four years of law school after that.
I’m not just saying that I couldn’t attend the particular institutions that I named, which I probably could have, but it wouldn’t have been completely covered by the GI Bill alone for the entire eight years needed for law school. That is especially true when weighed against the other priorities in my life. (I thought I made that clear in my response . . . )
I had a family to support, and I’ve never had any interest in accruing lifelong student debt.
That was the problem, the hhhhesitation. I couldn't decide between basket-making and bomb-making. Family and friends tried to talk me out of the latter - they're no longer with us of course.
Map-reading. I had a college place assigned and my parents had bought me all the required text books. When they found out, the local authority insisted I attend or give my tuition grant back. They wrote me several stern letters, but it made no difference, I just couldn't find the damned place.
B.H.Wilson 