On Darwin and insecurity

It's no secret that I never went past the 12th grade. Indeed I only really finished the 11th grade. Early in the 12th grade I had cut school so often that the administration got fed up and made it clear to my folks that I was about to be booted out.

So we cut a deal.

I would attend carpentry class three hours a day for the rest of the year and if I didn't "ditch" any days I would graduate. That's it. Three hours a day pounding nails while trying to avoid all the other misfits in the class. Well I did it... probably my greatest academic achievement. I think I graduated with my class. I was pretty drunk but do remember swaying while standing on the risers waiting for my name to be called. I woke up the next morning with my hair encrusted with blood where I'd cut it on Mike Schepper's dad's Cadillac headliner when we hit a flood control ditch at high speed going from one party to another.

The point of this? Ever since high school I have had a passion for learning. Once I realized how important a good education could be in terms of income, social interaction and the general quality of life, it was too late. I was married with kids and needed to focus on making a living. I carried a feeling of inferiority with me most of my life because I hadn't gone to college. I was aware of it daily. It provided the drive that stoked a competitiveness in me to do better than those with college degrees I competed with. Even when I got to the point where I was the boss ... the guy who hired and fired staff with PhDs and Masters Degrees there was always that feeling that something was missing at the core of my existence.

No matter how many books I read it was never enough to fill the void.

Now that I'm older and more at peace with myself I take a more relaxed view of learning. Now I learn for the pure joy of discovering something new. I must admit, however, that I occasionally wonder if I could have succeeded in college. Sure it's the same old insecurity, if in another form, but it is something I've always wondered about ... until now! Recently I discovered the most incredible website www.academicearth.com. This site allows one to audit courses free of charge at Berkeley, Columbia, Harvard, Michigan, MIT, NYU, Princeton, Stanford, UCLA and Yale.

The mix of courses is truly incredible... history, physics, math, religion etc. I'm currently taking a 10 week course at Stanford about evolution and the effect Darwin has had on scientific thought. It is a celebration of Darwin's 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin Of Species.

The other night I audited a course at MIT on The Language of Computers. The cool thing about this is that I UNDERSTOOD what was taught. I knew the answers to most of the questions the students asked ... I could hold my own. What joy! It took 68 years but I can finally say... Away with you snivelling haunting insecuriity ghost. Darken my door no more!