365 True Things: 135/School

I wasn't an especially good student in high school. I wasn't bad, but I wasn't part of the AP crowd—the brainiacs—either. I'm not sure if the fact that I missed the first year of high school (back in those days, it was three years: 10th, 11th, and 12th grades) because I was in Germany made a difference. And in Germany, my grades weren't the greatest: it was all in German, after all. Physics? I didn't have a clue about that in English, much less in German, and the teacher was very, very kind in giving me a grade of 4 (out of 6), which is barely—barely—passing, as I succeeded in convincing my counselor back in Santa Monica.

So my GPA when it came to applying to colleges was nowhere near a 4.0—or, as things go nowadays, a 4.5-plus. Nor did I have any extracurricular or community-service activities to sparkle up my résumé. I was just your average, moderately bright, relatively shy high school student.

UCLA's Royce Hall

Still, I only applied to one college: UCLA. It didn't occur to me that I might not get in. And of course I did.

If it were today, I'd be slogging through prerequisites at the local college, hoping against hope that I might be able to complete my last two years at a real university. And I'd be taking out loans to do so.

I still remember what it cost per quarter at UCLA: $212.50. That's $637.50 a year, or $2,550 for the whole four years.

Today, a year at UCLA costs $13,251. Add to that room and board in a dorm, at $14,904, and you're looking at almost $30,000 a year. Oh lordy. (Me, I lived at home, and either rode my bike to school or carpooled with a friend, so there was that expense avoided as well.)

Granted, everything has gone up since the early 1970s, including incomes. But I don't believe they've risen at the same rate as tuitions, not by a long shot. No wonder so many kids are now saddled with student debt. It's a crime.

Bucky Badger

I ended up doing very well at UCLA: I hadn't been super motivated to get good grades in high school because I was saving myself for college. That's what I told myself. With a summa cum laude BA in geography in hand, getting into the graduate school of my choice, and being awarded some generous grants, wasn't a problem. University of Wisconsin–Madison for my MS in cartography, then back to UCLA for my PhD, again in geography. And I capped those off fifteen years later with an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University–Los Angeles—just for fun.

I like school. And it liked me.