I Owe It All To Community College - Tom Hanks/NYT

[WillyT]

I Owe It All to Community College
Tom Hanks on His Two Years at Chabot College
By TOM HANKS - NYT
JAN. 14, 2015

<snip>

IN 1974, I graduated from Skyline High School in Oakland, Calif., an underachieving student with lousy SAT scores. Allowed to send my results to three colleges, I chose M.I.T. and Villanova, knowing such fine schools would never accept a student like me but hoping they’d toss some car stickers my way for taking a shot. I couldn’t afford tuition for college anyway. I sent my final set of stats to Chabot, a community college in nearby Hayward, Calif., which, because it accepted everyone and was free, would be my alma mater.

For thousands of commuting students, Chabot was our Columbia, Annapolis, even our Sorbonne, offering courses in physics, stenography, auto mechanics, certified public accounting, foreign languages, journalism — name the art or science, the subject or trade, and it was probably in the catalog. The college had a nursing program that churned out graduates, sports teams that funneled athletes to big-time programs, and parking for a few thousand cars — all free but for the effort and the cost of used textbooks.

Classmates included veterans back from Vietnam, women of every marital and maternal status returning to school, middle-aged men wanting to improve their employment prospects and paychecks. We could get our general education requirements out of the way at Chabot — credits we could transfer to a university — which made those two years an invaluable head start. I was able to go on to the State University in Sacramento (at $95 a semester, just barely affordable) and study no other subject but my major, theater arts. (After a year there I moved on, enrolling in a little thing called the School of Hard Knocks, a.k.a. Life.)

By some fluke of the punch-card computer era, I made Chabot’s dean’s list taking classes I loved (oral interpretation), classes I loathed (health, a requirement), classes I aced (film as art — like Jean Renoir’s “Golden Coach” and Luis Buñuel’s “Simon of the Desert”), and classes I dropped after the first hour (astronomy, because it was all math). I nearly failed zoology, killing my fruit flies by neglect, but got lucky in an English course, “The College Reading Experience.” The books of Carlos Castaneda were incomprehensible to me (and still are), but my assigned presentation on the analytic process called structural dynamics was hailed as clear and concise, though I did nothing more than embellish the definition I had looked up in the dictionary.

A public speaking class was unforgettable for a couple of reasons. First...

<snip>

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/opinion/tom-hanks-on-his-two-years-at-chabot-college.html

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Because of community college, I went from a high school drop out to a Master's Degree.

Our local college was not free, but it was very cheap.
I was a divorced mom of 2 small kids and went to CC to get my GED.
It was 1970, the whole world was rapidly changing, and lots of barriers to education for women were falling.
That is all I had in mind..needing the diploma for job seeking.
Then I took "just one" class in Psychology, and found out I had a very good brain.
Next thing I knew, I had gained an AA Degree in Social Work, from the first CC to offer that 2 year course.
With encouragement from staff, and a killer GPA, I got grants and scholarships, eventually ending up with a Master's Degree.
I was the only person in my family, to date, to go to college.

Never would have happened without our local Community College.

[progressoid]

2. Iowans can thank Democrats for starting Community Colleges here.

[nolabear]

3. I went to a community college for my first two years while raising two kids and working.

No, not alone. I don't know HOW those women and men do that. But I got a good running start on an education that had gotten interrupted, learned how to be a student and how to let the teachers know I was also their employer and if I didn't get something we were going to work TOGETHER to fix that, and met a wonderful range of people from all walks.

And, FREE? Holy smokes, what that could do for kids like I was, whose family didn't prepare them for college at ALL, didn't expect them to do anything much with their lives. It's not just money. It could be the difference between realizing a dream and not. Having a life with pride and meaning and purpose or not.

I like to think I've done some good with my degrees, both in the literary world and in the therapy world. Heck, I'm STILL taking classes and learning, when I'm not teaching classes and helping clients.

Life is rich. Everyone deserves that.

[stuffmatters]

4. I believe Eliz Warren started at a cc in OK; my Dad went from cc to Ivy League department chair

Community colleges have been an essential "stepping stone" for the working class for generations. I've noticed in
the last 20 years it's been increasingly harder for students to get into classes there. I hope there's a vast expansion of community college faculties & classes in this program, because at the moment it's very difficult for students to get the education in the catalogues.