The Education of a Lifetime

• What inspired you to earn your degree?

• What challenges have you had to overcome to earn your degree?

  Why would you recommend Colorado Technical University Online to your friends
  and relatives?

  How has the Services Department assisted you?

  What was your most memorable experience?

Report from the Middle: the Education of Pat Darnell

At an early age I decided to reverse engineer my education.
As I wandered around campus in 1973, I found every one of the gaps that students and teachers have fallen through. The major driver of my odd fashion in 1973 was the Vietnam Conflict. It had come to a head that year.

It was the pimple in US history, seething blister on top of the boil started with an ingrown hair of reluctant authoritarians. LBJ, the teacher, took over for the patriot, JFK, and found Command distasteful, and illogical. Consequently, he quit and turned it all over to Nixon. True to his word Nixon ended the draft and the conflict, the year I turned eighteen. It is also the year I entered college for the first time. I went three years to Trinity University in San Antonio.

There was a fellow who started at the same time as I whom will not be named here. He limped. He was about my age and had returned from Vietnam as an invalid; but refused to take it easy on his stiffened right leg. He also had a drug addiction from using pain-killers. He was naturally trying to re-enter life and go to college. He didn’t say much, but to me his body language spoke volumes. He disappeared before I could make friends. He was one of the living veterans who had returned. I hope he has received the help he needed.

Later in junior English Writing class was a retired Colonel who was also taking advantage of GI funds for continuing education. Army Officers receive stipends for lifetime to attend any college anywhere in the nation. I thought that was outstanding. His name I will reveal; Colonel William Due, I think he was in his seventies. Trinity University is located near Ft. Sam Houston where many military personnel are stationed for medical training. Col. Due was the oldest soldier in my classes.

In context of returning Vietnam veterans in those early years, I felt I was living in a duel world. I could not escape my personal embarrassment that I did not enlist, after Nixon got rid of the draft. I had been preparing to go since Boy Scouts. My dad is retired Navy Lt. WWII, and given that the Vietnam draft was broader meaning to young men and women turning eighteen, we all prepared to see it through. Also, Dad did not recommend going to war, he said go to college first.

Secondly, procrastinating military was okay as I was doing well in college, and for my parents that was good enough reason to not go with the military.

Texas as one of the top twenty economies in the world has a boom bust cycle that causes major dysfunctional banking in the state economy. Starting in 1974, the thrifts all bottomed out; the reader might remember the fiasco of Savings and Loans? It was in that era many who were of real estate families experienced the worst financial difficulties as the bottom fell out. By 1976 fear and regrets left many students without enough cash to continue; me.

So I went to full-time work and part-time college at University of Houston. Unfortunately, my transfer of credits did not go in my favor back then. I could manage U of H up till 1978. Then came the Carter years and double digit inflation, stagnation, fuel lines and whatever else can go wrong; hostages. By now we were growing our family; our last is born in 1996.

In 2006 I decided it was time to return. Wow, that is too long of a time. Well, is it? If not for the Internet I could never attend classes easily, even though I live less than two miles from Texas A & M. I talked with the professors that live in our neighborhood, and they said the best route is through online university. It is difficult to manage going to classes if you are atypical to the general population of students. I think my acquaintance with the young disabled veteran from Vietnam Conflict over thirty years earlier, has a great deal to do with my decision to return to complete unfinished business. Likewise, Colonel Due proved one is never too old.

It made perfect sense. I looked into it and found my regional representing college to be CTU Online. I called and worked through the process of getting it all set up. It was not what I was expecting, and that is a good thing. I got up to speed about the second session. I finished the senior year, as I had many hours that CTU honored and transferred upfront, in my favor. Then I completed the degree plan they outlined in eighteen months.

We kept track of the work: I have estimated that I spent about 2800 hours online, and wrote over 500,000 words. My final GPA is 3.81, which makes Dean’s and Chancellor’s Lists. I am graduating about the same time my oldest daughter is finishing her Masters at DePaul, and number three son is graduating Western Illinois with his bachelors in BA. I owe my education to working up through the trades, and to my children for giving me reason to be in continual educational upgrade for thirty years. As the children have grown so has my will to improve myself. Each child is born to his or her time, and that means I must have upgrades in my own thinking. How else could we parents remain their best friends?

I owe my freedom to pursue perchance dreams and achievements of education, family and career to those who have been to war and back, and those who never made it back. That list includes my Pappy, Col. Bill Due and the mysterious young veteran who I cannot forget how he walked, as he always stubbornly left his crutches at home. >>pd