Graduation Day

I left the Navy in August of 1974, and was fortunate to get a nearly three month “early out” to start school at the University of California in the fall. I had submitted all of my enrollment papers and been accepted months earlier, but the whole concept of transitioning so quickly from sailor to student left me with an empty feeling in my stomach. I wasn’t so much anxious about succeeding, because I had already attended school there for one quarter back in the fall of 1969, and knew that I could get good grades if I worked hard enough. I had already had my “Welcome to college – you aren’t in high school anymore, kid” note, with accompanying grade of F, on my history paper, and knew what the professors expected of undergraduates. Nor was I anxious about money; the U.S. Treasury would be paying me a comfortable sum each month per the G.I. Bill. It was me that I was worried about.

It was because I had changed. I was no longer the innocent, optimistic youth, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, breezing through life. I had been in a war, and my soul was tarnished. I had killed for my country, and no matter how I tried to rationalize it, I had helped forge the deaths of other people. I had real questions without answers, and doubts about myself, that I didn’t think Physics and Mathematics could help me with.

I had always wanted to learn to read and speak Russian. In fact, when I entered the Navy that was what I was supposed to train for, but the Navy convinced me that I had a higher aptitude for Electronics, and threatened to keep me in “boot-camp” for several more months if I wanted to get into a Language school. I knew next to nothing about electronics, and wasn’t interested in it at all. But I went to the Class “A” school at Mare Island, near San Francisco, and was able to learn the basics before entering the fleet. So naturally I signed up for a Russian class at UCI.

That’s when I met Professor Helen Weil. Helen was somewhat of a floosy, I guess. She was slender, in her forties, with reddish hair that had been dyed blond, and she and I hit it off immediately. She had been born in the Soviet Ukraine, Helen Harmash in 1933 and after the war had emigrated to the United States, where she was able to continue her education. I don’t know how she acquired the last name Weil, but she had two grown boys and never mentioned a first husband. She had only been teaching Russian at UCI for a year when I first met her, but she was already a driving force within the department. Her unique style included serenading the entire class with a battery of Russian folk tunes, which she would sing and beat out on her guitar.

Like most women on campus, Helen was caught up in the women’s movement of the 70’s, and I think she saw me as a challenge. I was older than her other students by four years, and one day when I held the door for her as she was leaving class she gave me a funny look. The very next day I collided with her at the Registrar’s Office. She was just coming out of the building, and seeing me struggling with a stack of books as I came up the steps, she waited and held the door for me. “Well, the shoe’s on the other foot, now isn’t it?” she said. “Thank you,” I replied, “you’re a life-saver” and I think it must have pissed her off a little bit to find out that not all men felt threatened by strong, independent women. To be honest, those were the only kind of women I had ever really known or cared about.

Over the next four years we became great friends, and I found myself signing up for every class that Helen taught. I continued to study Math and Physics, but in the third year I signed up for a required course called Mathematical Methods of Physics and found myself playing a mad game of catch-up to learn several subjects that I had somehow missed or overlooked – Linear Algebra, and Vector Analysis. At the same time, I found that these were much needed in my other Physics course, Classical Mechanics, and I began struggling there too.

It is customary for those who find themselves inside a burning aircraft, to seriously consider the possiblility of bailing out, and that’s what I did. I began to examine procedures for bailing out of school. I was closest to having a Bachelor’s Degree in Russian Studies, so I dropped everything else and began to work on completing the few requirements that I needed for my degree. Russian itself, had been an easy “A” for me, so the following year I signed up for Fourth Year Russian, and several other Upper Division courses in Russian Civilization and Russian Literature. Meanwhile, I visited the Student Health Services and they prescribed me some mild tranquilizers to get me through the Russian Literature part.

I made it through year four with minimal damage. My grade point average was a respectable 3.67, despite my having had to drop several courses. Additionally, I had been accepted to Graduate School at UC Davis, up north and shortly thereafter was hired by a certain agency in Washington D.C. When I told Helen that I had decided to take the job, she was very upset. It was then that she told me she had hoped I would stay on at UCI – unbeknownst to me she had already arranged to take me into her Graduate Program in Administration, and even gotten a job for me teaching Russian part-time for one of the schools in the Huntington Beach School District.

Of course the job in Washington didn’t work out. My anxiety attacks were getting worse, but I still wanted the degree in Physics and felt that I could do it, so I enrolled for another year at UCI. I dropped everything else and began to devote myself to Mechanics and Mathematical Physics, which was where I had left off. I studied, and studied and thought I had finally caught up by the mid-term exam. When I got my test back with a “B,” I was elated.

Several days later I was sitting outside, waiting for one of my classes and I knew I didn’t feel right. I got up, and somehow managed to walk over to the Student Health Center on the other side of the campus. When I got there I started to explain to the nurse how I was feeling, and the next thing I knew I was laying on a bed and she was shooting me in the arm with a hypodermic needle. I asked her what it was, and she replied, “Librium.” I lay there for what must have been hours, and my whole life swirled around me like a tornado.

When I got home, my mother told me that my Bachelor’s Degree had come in the mail.

~ by dobee on February 14, 2007.