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Academic Studies at Pacific High School |
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On the face of it, one might think that a community would support a high
school mainly for the sake of the academic studies it offers. Or maybe
I’m just hopelessly naïf. All sorts of other accretions
seem, half a century ago as now, to have taken over the central
rôles.
Me, I always did very well, academically. For a number of reasons I think
I understand, and probably for others I don’t.
- My parents were very much academically-oriented, far more so
than those of my average classmate. As a college teacher
with a postgraduate degree,
Pappy was right
at the top of the local intelligentsia. In our
Third Ward
congregation, I got
the impression that he was probably the only member with a
four-year college degree
(Mammy would
complete hers only when I was in high school).
- Other kids liked a lot of things that I didn’t: sports,
dancing, general social hanging-around. Lacking such
competing interests, I had no trouble keeping up with my
studies. Don’t recall ever taking homework home:
always had enough solitary time at school to get it done,
and was always motivated to do it right.
- The Lord has blessed me from the start with a number of
aptitudes and penchants that tend to conduce to success in
formal schoolwork.
- And then we mustn’t forget that the times, they were
ripe to encourage a studious kid with an interest in math and
science. Remember the date of October 4, 1957? I do:
that’s the day the Soviets sent up their Sputnik.
And I’d just started my senior year at Pacific High.
