Eighty Memories for Eighty Years: #20 The University of Alberta (Calgary Branch)

We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before.

This is a letter written to me by my paternal grandmother.
She only went to Grade VI.
My mother went to Normal School.
I went to the University of Alberta.
My daughters have been advantaged by all of their grandmothers.

We  stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before.

Going to university was an easy transition for me.

An undergraduate degree was an expectation in our family. 

It is just what people were to do.

And in the case of our family, all of my siblings did graduate from university.  Eight of us.

I have no idea how my folks made that happen.

Perhaps there were elements of good luck and chance involved.

In my case, I went to my first year of university in the same building where I went to school from Grade I to Grade IX.  So I walked through the same rolling foothills, watching the grasshoppers pop out of the same dry prairie grass as I did when I was six years old.

Now I was allowed in the parts of the building that were off limits to me when I was younger.

The space was now called the University of Alberta (Calgary Branch).

There were odd social fads in those days, -- to see how many students could get into a Volkswagon, for example. I was part of the experiment to see how many university students could fit into a telephone booth. I have no idea why I joined that venture.  I think someone just grabbed me as I was walking down the hall and shoved me into that telephone booth with 20 other people.  I had never been that close to so many people my age before.

The next year I had to go to Edmonton for the final two years of my courses.

To back up a bit, I had wanted to be a doctor. My dad told me there was no way he would allow me to go into medicine. I had no idea of defying him. That just isn’t what I did. I thought being a lawyer was my second choice. In high school one of the projects was to investigate a profession that we would like to enter, and true to form, I went down to the court house to see what lawyers did and reported back to my class. Doral told me no to that as well. Not a job for women, he said.

I told him that my third choice was to be a nurse. He said that was not a good idea as either, since nursing was a hard life. I think this was a harder sell for him, for he brought over my cousin who had graduated in psychiatry to back him up.  No, not a good choice, they agree with each other.

By that time I had given up on finding something my father and I agreed on.  I  asked my dad what I should do. He said since I had so much music performance experience, I should do something with that, so off I went to get a Bachelor of Arts in Music History.  And that is how I ended up having split years.  One in Calgary and then I had to finish off in Edmonton.

I had no idea how I was going to pay for this adventure.  The fact that I had to pay didn't even cross my mind.  Doral told me he would buy my books and pay my tuition.  And of course, I lived at home.

The next summer I had worked at Zellers and saved enough money to pay for housing so off to Edmonton I went.   Doral continued to pay for my books and tuition.

The two years in Edmonton were my first years away from home. Those are years that I value for the social connections I made at church and for the intellectual journeys that the university courses allowed me to take. There was some spill out to my family as well. I took a course called "The English Novel". Wyona told me that she read every one of those books when I would bring them home. It is a mystery as to what younger siblings do while watching older ones.

In the years between that first degree and now, I have done another Bachelor’s Degree while working at the university. I just sort of squeezed the courses into my life, between working at the library and taking care of my family.  Just another way of going to school.

But the pleasure of those earlier years (1958 to 1962) can’t be matched, either for the freedom that they gave me, nor for the chance to have my mind on nothing but studying and doing well.

A joy, those first years at university.

And I enjoyed the other years, too.

Arta