Double Major? 19.
Mom, Dad and Chris went on vacation for a week or so late in June, while I stayed home, eating mostly out of cans. I knew Mom was extremely worried about me being alone that long but Dad said I was eighteen, so it was my decision. I’d intended to do something meaningful with my summer. Until recently, Chris Keppler and I had been entertaining plans to visit Nashville, but money hadn’t materialized. I’d applied for jobs at a couple of newspapers and submitted some articles, but to no effect. I’d turned down a magnanimous offer from C.S.B. to employ me for 62.5 cents per hour and had answered an ad (inclusive of blind applicants,) from the Phone Company, but was rejected when I mentioned I only wanted work for the summer. It looked like I was in for another summer of reading and writing, but that was okay. Fall term at Texas Tech. started in late August. Soon enough, I’d have plenty of meaningful stuff to do, and possibly a job on campus. Meanwhile, my social life was picking up some.
As a Junior I’d noticed it was easier to get dates with Sophomore girls. As a Senior I also accumulated a certain following of girls two years younger than me, who liked to be seen with an older boy. I didn’t think it was appropriate to date 15-year-olds when I was myself 17, but when Vicky and Zoye and Laurie were almost Juniors and I just out of high school, the difference didn’t seem so great. I was being invited over to girls’ houses a fair amount and dating rather often.
In addition to the younger women who’d newly come into my life, there was also Claudia, whom I’d met early in our Senior year. Claudia was as fashionable a leftist as most of the others in Writing Lab, but she seemed, for some reason, to like me. She even apologized for a crack she made about right wingers, when I identified myself with same. Claudia and I joked with each other quite a bit and our puns were about on a par. Norene Smith said Claudia and I should be cell mates.
Claudia left Queen Anne after Fall Semester, having graduated early and being accepted to Antioch University in Ohio. In a few weeks she was back, showing up one afternoon in Mrs. Steinhauser’s portable, announcing she’d driven straight through from Antioch, to this very spot, without touching home. It seemed Antioch was a big sensitivity session and she had no time for that. Claudia was a very bright, 4.0 student, and a finalist in the National Merit test. She was also complex.
Claudia hung around the portable quite a bit after that, talking, reading, and occasionally strumming her guitar. Writing Lab classes for us advanced types, often dismissed early and the two of us were often alone together in the classroom. We made small talk, exchanged confidences and just kept company. I let her in on my cross dressing secret, which I expected would be a bombshell, but Claudia acted as if it were hardly worth mentioning. Then she told me she was gay.
I’d had a bit of a crush on Claudia and told her, perhaps rather stupidly, that I was glad she’d told me about herself, since I might otherwise have kissed her good-bye when the school year ended. She said, “What would’ve been the problem with that? I’ve been kissed by men before.” My experience with Pam Kenny had indicated that all affectionate contact from males was disconcerting and possibly disgusting, but it seemed, I still had things to learn.
Now in my solo leisure time at home I had further opportunity to deepen my acquaintance with Claudia and other new friends. Now it developed that Claudia had left Antioch because a sister of a former lover had threatened to report Claudia as a practicing Lesbian if she didn’t leave. One could still get in a lot of trouble over that sort of thing back then. Not just social pressure or snubbing, but real legal problems. I believe Claudia sang at her former girlfriend’s wedding when Sue got married, and she went on searching for her true love. I don’t know if she ever found it. Claudia became quite ill sometime in my Sophomore college year. At about the same time, like so many of the radical gay folks, she disappeared into the homosexual subculture, eschewing most or all straight acquaintances. For now however, we had many stimulating conversations, not talking about sex particularly, but about relationships, college, careers, poetry. Claudia would enroll at The University of Washington that Fall.
Around this time I also received a somewhat strange phone call from a guy named Rod who’d been a driver with Community Services for the Blind. Rod had a live-in girlfriend but the relationship didn’t seem to be all that close. They both appeared to be card-carrying hippies and very much in the Do-Your-Own-Thing ethic. Rod and I had been exchanging phone calls a bit lately. He was going to help me buy a little .22 pistol for when I might be travelling at night or in dangerous areas.
One morning during my vacation time alone, Rod called me up to tell me he’d gone to a party the previous evening. I asked if he’d gotten smashed. He said no, but there’d been a homosexual at the party. Well good! It seemed everybody was meeting homosexuals these days.
It turned out the party had been a sort of foursome, two BI women, the gay man and Rod. The three-gay/BI folks had talked Rod into allowing the other man to perform oral sex on him. This had evidently gone on nearly all night and was one of the most exciting experiences Rod ever had. Rod and the two women had taken turns masturbating the gay man with Vaseline and that had been exciting too. Rod kept talking about the experience for a long time and saying that he hoped he could trust me. I kept telling him I didn’t want his money and had no reason to hurt him. I don’t think I’d ever had another male admit to me so graphically and frankly an experience with a same-sex partner, at least since I was a preteen kid, when things were still pretty experimental. I don’t think we ever discussed his experience after that. In fact, I’m not sure we did that much talking at all after that. We didn’t stop being friends exactly. It seemed though that Rod moved soon thereafter.
I recall noting in my journal that I appeared to be suffering from Transience Shock. The book which had most recently been influencing my writing and technological speculations was Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock. This treatise warned that the rapidity and magnitude of change in modern society was apt to be harmful to individuals and institutions. To me and at the time, Transience Shock referred specifically to the amount to which I was being exposed to persons and lifestyles that I’d been raised to consider weird and perverse. I didn’t disvalue my new friends and their perceived eccentricities, but was not prepared to accept them as natural either. I concluded that I needed to get to work on a rocket problem. Toffler advised that one needed to take vacations away from modernity, whether camping in the wilderness or riding in a Rodeo in Upstate New York. For me, the way to depressurize from things trendy and unsettling, was to lock myself away with some astronautical speculation, whether my biodyne rocket, the asteroid starship, a concept for driving a car with the fermenting action of sugar solution truing into alcohol or generating hydrogen by putting scrap metal into water and acid.
My interest in energy-generating life support systems had led me into several rather abstruse areas of biology. Biological fuel cells could generate electricity from all sorts of organic waste. Sugar, Starch, even cellulose could be fermented to yield alcohol and several other sorts of fuel. Green leaves were self-growing solar cells, producing plant matter instead of electricity. Perhaps the process could be short-circuited somehow and we could plug directly into a tree to draw off electrical current or a stream of energetic chemicals.
Ecologists were singing the praises of naturally-occurring biological processes and it occurred to me that a branch of engineering which encompassed systems with biological components would be a fascinating field in which to work. I thought perhaps I’d take my doctorate in biophysics rather than one of the more traditional fields such as nuclear, solid state, plasma or astro physics. It seemed that to start with, ways might be found to maximize the production of biomass-derived fuels. While this wasn’t biophysics exactly, physics could probably aid in the development or more efficient means for storing and converting photosynthetic energy. Perhaps a space craft could carry a balanced ecological system, including it’s crews life support processes, which could capture solar energy with fair efficiency and provide power for the system itself as well as the propulsion. The idea was a bit impractical, at least as a means of powering deep-space ion thrusters and it would be a while before I knew enough to start analyzing the system efficiencies of what we would call Biomass energy projects, but this became another lifelong interest for me.
By the summer of ’72 I had conceived the greater part of my long-term interests. I’d also realized that these interests pretty well ran the gamut from Physics to Sociology. I’d begun to seriously wonder if even a double major could possibly allow me sufficient scope to span the number of areas in which I had significant interest and investment. I decided I needed a system not only for categorizing information but also for thinking about learning generally.
Within a fairly short time I developed the idea of The Data Matrix, which tried to be an expansible book which might someday turn into what we would now call a database, in which to record and categorize items on virtually any topic, for later retrieval.
I reasoned that things could be categorized in terms of complexity. By my definition, this meant the number of different kinds of members belonging to a category of study or science. Mathematics and Physics deal with equation forms, particles, waves, and forces. The models, which describe these things, may be very complex but the things being studied are much simpler than say a living cell or a human society. I said therefore that Math-Physics is a relatively noncomplex science. Particles joined and interacting in a variety of ways, became atoms and molecules, the province of chemistry. A subbranch of chemistry, where it met with Physics is Physical Chemistry.
Very complex chemical systems become capable of very complex functions, including the ability to reproduce themselves, I.E. are alive. Biology is therefore the next step along the complexity continuum, with subcategories in Biochemistry and biophysics. The most complex biological system known is the human brain, so the study of the brain, Psychology, constitutes the next rung, with branchings to psychophysics, psycho-chemistry and Psychobiology.
Psychological organisms living together become a society or the province of sociology. I classified Art as well as technology as social functions, so the category was very large. It had branches to socio-physics, the quantitative treatment of social phenomena, socio-chemistry, the flow of chemicals through society, sociobiology and social psychology.
In addition to the categorization within the data matrix, I set down entry with calendar dates as in any journal and whenever possible, provided page notations of most recent related entry and next related entry, before and after an entry respectively. Working in Braille, I used a loose-leaf notebook, leaving space after each entry in order to introduce forwarding notations later. I added a section for Personal Contacts, in which I made notes about events, people I met, letters, books I’d enjoyed, dates and appointments.
I did a good job of keeping up the data matrix for about fifteen months, after which time I guess I’d decided my thoughts didn’t need to be categorized so rigorously and I went back to a conventional day-to-day journal format. Still I tend to see the world pretty much in terms of the matrix. My ideas on complexity influence my thinking about life, mind, spirit, perhaps the destiny of ourselves and our universe. Since I see technology as essentially a social function, albeit with support from Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Psychology, I not only think that a sociologist should know something about technology, but that an engineer should know something of social science as well as some biology. Obviously we can’t become experts in everything, but by the time I went to college I decided I wanted to have significant grounding in physics, chemistry, life science and social sciences; toward the end of dealing with complex technological problems.
One morning I made an entry in my Data Matrix, I believe it was in Category Sociology, subcategory topic Religion, that I’d had a revelation. I wasn’t a dream or a vision, merely the intrusion of a powerful and seemingly significant conviction. I wish I recalled more of what I wrote at the time, but the gist was that I had an extremely broad perspective on things and would likely continue to broaden. I had talents in technological as well as in writing and humanistic areas. I’d been raised in a working class family but had a lot of experience with both poor and quite wealthy people. I’d lived in a boarding school. I’d had many strange experiences, many of them due to my interaction with Paul. Though I was white, I was a member of a minority group, being blind. As I had transvestite tendencies I thought of myself as being not entirely masculine and had some chance of understanding a feminine viewpoint. I had friends who were homosexual or who had gay experiences, so I had some notion of how they perceived things. I was raised Lutheran but had some religious ideas which bordered more on Hindu thought. There was probably more but I concluded that I had a unique perspective from which to view the world and life itself, a perspective that might have spiritual significance.
This all probably sounds a bit grandiose, still the notion of myself as a person not necessarily smarter than everyone else, yet having cross-sectional learning and a set of experiences difficult to duplicate, has persisted and been of some value to me.
I thought that in a few weeks, my data matrix and I would be journeying to Lubbock. I’d gotten my date to report and my dorm application. I hadn’t received any of the scholarships I’d applied for, but the money I could expect from State Services for the Blind should pay the bulk of what I needed. Texas Tech. offered few freshman scholarships, and what there was, were specifically for women or minorities. There was a scholarship for a blind student but it was for an upper classman. For the Sophomore year though, things looked more promising and by then I’d be a Texas resident.
I’d talked to Mr. Smart of States Services For The Blind during the past school year, as well as to his assistant, Mrs. Williams and had been assured that I was eligible for help with college, but there’d been no follow-up. About July, Mom decided she’d better call the agency. She was told that they hadn’t been aware I wanted to go to college, since I hadn’t participated in their summer program. Mom said she’d been given to understand there was no participation requirement for students to be eligible for college assistance. She was told this was true, most students did participate.
Later that day Mom and I were in Mr. Smart’s office, discussing my college goals and available resources. It was clear that I was qualified to go to university and was eligible for assistance. It also was clear that Mr. Conroy had overstated the amount of funds State Services was willing to commit to a college plan. The agency would pay the amount necessary to fulfill tuition requirements at the university of Washington, which was quite low at $188 per quarter, plus $150 per year for books and $600 per year for reader expenses. That wasn’t too bad except I’d need to pay my board and room somehow.
Mr. Smart suggested I apply to Aid To The Blind, a sort of welfare program specifically for blind people’s living expenses. He also suggested that if I simply showed up in Texas, the Agency for the blind in that state would be in the position of providing services for me. Mr. Smart stressed that the situation was not at all hopeless.
The situation was however a bit too complex for Mom. She hadn’t heard that I could get to college one way or the other, had thought she’d been told I might lose out entirely. On returning home, she went to bed with a sick headache.
Dad, rather inebriated that evening, said he could get a loan and asked how much I’d need. Mom quarreled with my numbers, but I‘d always been good at budgeting and saving money, so I figured I could save a lot on readers and sharing books and the like.
Lois came over a couple of days later and we began drafting a letter to Texas Services For The Blind, asking if I cold receive financial aid from that state, as I intended to move there and set up residency.
About a week later Uncle Frank died of a heart attack. Aunt Wilma said he’d admitted to having chest pains for three weeks before telling anybody. After that it’d been too late. Frank was the first of Mom’s siblings to go, except for Uncle Harry who’d died in World War II. It hit Mom pretty hard and the very reasonable plans we’d begun to try and salvage my plans to go to Texas, suddenly dropped into a black hole.
When we were leaving Frank’s Funeral, Down in White Salmon, Washington, somebody yelled at us, asking if I was going to Texas Tech. in a few weeks. Mom called back from the car “It’s going to be the University of Washington this year. Texas Tech. next year.” All this without consulting me first. The process felt a lot like being screwed. There was nothing wrong with the University of Washington, apart from being rather too large for well-supported undergraduate work, but there seemed to have been a plot to keep me from leaving home.
I’d applied to The University Of Washington, as well as to Seattle University, where the head of the Engineering department was the husband of my teacher, Dr. Majors. I was accepted to both schools and we arranged an emergency late enrollment at the U.W. I tried to find some kind of work on Campus, to allow me to get into a dorm or apartment, but jobs had already been committed. Len Ziska gave me about two lessons on campus before I started my freshman year. I learned just about enough to get into trouble.
I entered The University Of Washington as an engineering major, though my advisor, Don Mcnese, didn’t really want to admit me. We agreed that I was a little deficient in Math, not having finished Algebra Trig, so I’d take precalculus this quarter. I’d also have Chemistry and since I had an interest in journalism I’d take Communications 150, The Sociology Of The Media, which all comm. majors had to take.
I remember two rather poignant things about my first day on campus. The first was a mistake I made in memorizing my schedule and I showed up to Chemistry an hour early. A professor passing in the hall asked me where I was trying to go. I told him I was trying to get into Chemistry 140 in room 125 and the door was locked. He asked to see my schedule and noted that I was an hour early for class. I was certain that where ever professors got together to eat and hash over the things they’d encountered that day, would be abuzz with talk of that dumb blind kid who didn’t even know what time it was! I wondered how that might affect my subsequent college career. This goes to show how even my much-vaunted self-esteem could go so easily into the toilet!
The other big event of the day was my meeting with Rich Louis in Chemistry. Rich was a Sophomore, had already taken my Math course as well as Communications 150. He had all of the books I needed for the quarter and was also willing to read to me. He had a tape recorder at home and I could easily get tapes from State Services. Rich read for me off and on over the next couple of years. He lived in a Christian Men’s residence near campus and always appeared to be a very sincere person.
Early on I told Rich about my data matrix and how I was going to try to record all of the major events of my life. He said if I ever wrote my autobiography, he expected to be in it. Well here you are Rich. I’ve no idea what those intervening years have brought you, but I hope you’ve had much more good fortune than bad.
As with several autumns in my memory of that period, Fall of ’72 was comparatively balmy till about Halloween. I spent a lot of time hanging around outside Bagley Hall, The chem. building, as well as the Communications Building. I made many acquaintances and friends; some of them stuck all through my college years. There was Alie Duinna, a young woman from Austria. Gita Monfaridae, was from Iran, but still liked to call it Persia. Gita told me how nice it was to live in a country where a woman wasn’t constantly under some man’s thumb. Abdulah, was of a Moorish family from Southern France, was Islamic and had actually lived most of his life in Vietnam. He was also an engineering student and we studied together sometimes. His brother Gafour and cousin Latiffe would later join Abdulah at the U.W.
Michel, (Now Mike,) Tibet was from Lebanon. He was Catholic, spoke Arabic, liked to learn naughty words in English. Mike lived with his Aunt and uncle Mike’s aunt thought I sounded cute on the phone, so she baked me cookies. Mike went on to medical school after his initial four years in college.
I talked to everybody about their majors. What did they have to take in order to complete their intended degree? It was time well spent. I learned a great deal about putting together a degree program and I’m still fascinated by academic programs of all kinds.
Though I liked Chemistry and tolerated Math, it was my Communications class that captured my imagination at first. Dr. Merill Samuellson discussed how communication and the forms it took shaped society. The invention of writing made it possible for the first time for impressions to survive the observer/composer. Before writing anything not first-hand must be hearsay. The invention of papyrus, parchment, wax tablets made possible fairly efficient transport of complex information. Printing made possible not only the widespread distribution of affordable books but also mass education. Within a hundred years of movable type being introduced to England, the literacy rate went from clerics and a few others, to nearly 100%.
These ideas may seem obvious and even trivial, but I’d never really thought of communication as a social science before.
My first college paper was a response to Dr. Samuellson’s question, “How you, as a high government official, set about controlling the media, (TV, papers, Radio, books, etc.?)” I proposed a law that made quality information and entertainment the right of every citizen. In assuring such quality information to anyone unable to pay for it, by producing it itself, the government would merely be complying with its own directive. Government-generated TV/radio on programs, news stories, books, would employ writers and other artists at public expense and would make quality material available to stations and other publishers at low cost. I had a ten-step process outlined in which the government went from being generous and helpful, to crowding out competition. Dr. Samuellson gave me an A and wrote on my paper “Mr. Plassman, you’re a dangerous man.” He added to the class that there was only one problem with all of our essays. He’d been unable to discover anything which hadn’t been tried before in this country. By now I’d decided I wanted to do two different degrees, one in Engineering, the other in Communications with a Journalism emphasis.
For all the thinking I’d done about college, I’d really learned very little about Curricula before actually arriving on a campus. What I had seen were typical programs of study in a few fields, but not the various permutations through which each program might be put. At the University of Washington, course subjects tended to be categorized as Natural Science, Social Science or Humanities. Everyone was supposed to have some of each. Engineering tended to be something apart, so was business. Students were free to cross departmental and college boundaries to take classes of interest, providing there was space in the classroom and the Prof. didn’t object. We had a quarter system as opposed to a semester system, so Summer quarter counted as much as Fall, Winter or Spring. In general, one hour per week with your fanny in a chair counted as one Credit. You might get a little more, maybe a little less. If your class had a lab attached to it, you could spend 3-7 hours per week on your feet or on a teetery wooden stool, for one credit.
The college of Arts and Sciences, the largest of the seven colleges within The University, required everyone to take 20 credits of Humanities, twenty in social science and twenty in Natural Science. In addition a student would take 50 credits within the major Department, English or Psychology or History say. Some departments specified what some of the 20-20-20 classes must be. Mathematics for instance, required that 12 of the 20 credits taken in Natural Science must be in Physics. Physics of course, required Math in addition to other stuff. Chemistry required Physics and Math. Biology required Physics, Math and Chemistry. (Like the old Data Matrix.) Psychology required some Anthropology and some Biology. Whatever your department didn’t specify for you to take, could be seen as an elective.
To get a Bachelor’s degree at The University of Washington required 180 credits.
Engineering was quite a bit different from Arts and Sciences, since Engineers were seen as folks who would someday need to be licensed and satisfy County, State or National standards. College administrators did their best to make us work harder in the Engineering programs, both in terms of number of required courses taken and amount of gruntwork performed. (They succeeded. We had 21 credits of Math, preferably more, 21 credits of natural science, 12 or Functional Techniques, I.E. Graphics, Computer Programming, or communication-related courses. There were also 16 credits of Engineering Science which were usually physics or chemistry based and dealt with issues like structures, materials, energy in various forms, bodies in motion, or system science. We also took 30 credits in Humanities and Social Science, with no less than 10 credits in either branch. Finally there were sixty credits in one’s major area, usually at the Junior-Senior level, courses from ones’ own departmental program or courses from elsewhere which your advisor agreed were appropriate for inclusion in your individual academic plan.
The Department Of Communications believed in Social Science as a background for Journalists, Advertisers, broadcasters or other communication professionals. The Social Science credit requirement was inflated to 35, 20 of which must be upper division courses and at least 20 must be in a specific discipline, Psych, Soc., Anthro, Econ, Poli-Sci, psychiatry or Social Statistics. The 20 Humanity credits were supposed to include 10 in Literature. Dr. Samuellson told me that an Undergraduate degree in Communications could get me into a grad program in Psychology, Sociology, Political Science or History, or Communication itself, of course.
Though I didn’t really intend staying at The University Of Washington, it was difficult not to think in terms of curricula there. There was no degree in Engineering Physics; there was a program in Aeronautics and Astronautics. There was also a program called the B.S.E. Bachelor’s In Science and Engineering, which allowed a student to combine one or more areas or engineering and/or science. Since I wanted to emphasized biology in my program, I thought the Aero and Astro program might serve as the basis for a degree in bioengineering, in which I could study the physiological needs of the human body living in a closed or artificial environment, under weightlessness. Psychology courses which I’d be taking for my Communications degree anyway, would help me to understand, I hoped, the mental, emotional, cognitive and sensory factors relating to small groups living in strange environments for long periods of time. I’d end up with two degrees and qualified as both engineer and journalist.
My master plan for graduate studies was to go into biophysics, which one could do with a background in engineering. I’d take a Doctorate in that field as well as a Master’s or another doctorate in either history or Sociology. Using what I would learn in applying physics to Biology, I’d then develop techniques to apply quantitative methods to social science, becoming the first Sociophysicist. It was a fascinating, long-term plan, covering all of the major areas of interest to me.
A number of factors influence which degree a person selects and which courses are chosen to satisfy the requirements of that program. Some factors have to do with advising or lack of advice, support or lack of support from professors or advisors. Other factors have to do with how well one does in particular areas of study. Still others have to do with things like course availability and scheduling. At the end of Fall quarter it looked as if my plans might be derailed before they’d really started. I was doing well in Communications and okay in chemistry, though some things confused hell out of me. I’d dropped my Math course rather than flunk it. Later I realized that the material wasn’t really that hard, I just wasn’t getting it from course lectures.
Professor McNese said that preCalc was a problem for some guys and it was possible that engineering wasn’t for me, but before we decided that, I might sign up for calculus anyway and see how I did. I also took second quarter Chemistry, Psychology Of The Media and Engineering Career planning for Winter Quarter. I got a Math tutor and got an A in Calculus, which was probably, overgenerous of Professor Drake, from Cambridge University London. I got a second C. in Chemistry and a B. in Communications.
The career-planning course was one credit, two BITCH (Butt In The Chair Hours). It would allow us to tour or otherwise interact with all of the engineering departments on campus, as well as the interdisciplinary programs such as bio, environmental, Computer, ocean or nuclear engineering. The three programs which interested me the most at the time were Ceramic, Chemical and Aeronautics-astronautics.
Chemical engineering appeared to be a very wide and far-reaching field. Much of what America produced depended on the sophistication of our chemical industry. Chemical engineering was one aspect of rocket propulsion, certainly at the surface to orbit stage.
Ceramic engineering was a very old yet small and close-knit field. Most of the world turned out to be made out of ceramics. Dr. James Mueller, the Department Chair, harangued us into making a list of items composed of ceramics in our classroom. This included enamel paint, acoustic tile, blackboards and chalk, eyeglasses, window glass, memory chips in pocket calculators, concrete, even writing paper turns out to have some clay in it. Dr. Mueller showed us ceramic magnets, radiation-resistant lead glass, cloth made from carbon fibers, a length of tempered glass pipe which he used to drive a nail into wood, a block of foamy silicon fiber material under development for the Space Shuttle. A block of this Shuttle insulation, Mueller told us could be placed on the outside of a 3000 C furnace and three days later the three-inch block would still be cool enough to touch.
Dr. John Bollard, Chairman of the Aerospace Engineering program, gave us a pep talk on gas dynamics and applied mechanics before taking us on a tour of the wind tunnels and other high tech equipment associated with his department. Dr. Bollard described how in our Junior year we’d learn about mechanics, the way things move; acceleration, force, and energy. We’d progress to orbital mechanics, learning to calculate pathways through space, then go on to study the complex mathematics of vibrations and oscillating systems. Simultaneously we’d be studying about lightweight high strength structures as well as the flow of fluids, gases and the behavior of flows around a wing or through a nozzle. Senior courses would be more of the same with propulsion and other more specific subjects included, to which we could add, if we wished, courses in biology, astronomy, atmospheric science, even law.
Aeronautics wasn’t just about airplanes, Dr. Bollard said. Graduates from his program worked in naval architecture, automobile design, logged in remote areas with balloons, worked with solar and other sorts of energy, even participated in some aspects of medicine. When he learned I had an interest in biophysics, Bollard said the kinds of analytical methods I’d learn in A. and A. would be excellent preparation for that too.
Drs. Bollard and Mueller were both enthusiastic, dynamic men and both very good with the sales pitch. I’d spend a lot of time around both of them in the next few years and learn a lot of what their departments had to teach. It was by no means easy to choose a major. There was so much to learn and so many fascinating programs in which to learn it. There was also that nagging voice in the back of my head which kept saying that I’d claimed against all critics, since age eleven, that I would become a physicist. Was I now abandoning my dream? For a while I thought about taking a degree in technical writing, which I could finish in three years, counting summers. In the fourth year I might be able to complete another BS either in Physics or bioengineering. Eventually I’d settle on Aeronautics and Astronautics as being the most flexible of the standard engineering programs, though I intended, up through my Junior year to do an interdisciplinary degree.
In Spring Quarter, I had The History of the Media in Britain and America, Communications 414, taught by Bill Aimes, held by his colleagues to be the foremost expert in his chosen field of Journalism History. Bill was an Irishman from Minnesota, who happened to be a Unitarian. His personal interests were the civil War and The Union Movement. I gave a talk in class about the treatment of blind persons on TV. Years later, Bill recalled me making the statement “Blind guys get horny too.” This was doubtless a response to the oft-observed tendency to present blind persons as sexless and ineffectual.
Due to a computer glitch that dumped several students out of Humanities and Social Science 480, Science Fiction Literature for Engineers, I was able to enroll at the last minute in this course, usually reserved for seniors. Del Schiels, a Folklorist, who had taken his PH.D, taught this course. between English and Anthropology and had lived with the Nez Perce Tribe in Idaho, on whose myths and legends he had written his dissertation. We read ten books during the class, only two or three of them, to my surprise had I even heard of before, so I learned quite a lot. I wrote my optional term paper on my military historical wave theory.
I was in Chemistry and Calculus again this quarter and attended a very crowded lecture in Kane Hall, where I listened raptly to the then quite aged Dr. Werner Heisenberg, developer of The Uncertainty Principle, which had so fascinated me in high school
I received a $500 scholarship from the Department of Communications. This allowed me to go to summer school, where I took two Psyche courses and a course in the history of Ancient India, selected because it was the only thing I could find at 7:20 A.M. since I wanted to get home before the heat of the afternoon.
That summer I also had my first actual engineering class, Materials Science. Our Prof. was a metallurgist, Dr. Archbold. The course would be of interest only to engineers or juvenile delinquents, since it dealt primarily with how things bend or break. We had a Teaching assistant, Doug Pennetti, who’d originally been a Chemical engineer and had worked with Standard Oil. Doug had returned to college to complete Master’s Degrees in Metallurgy and Nuclear Engineering. He was evidently interested in materials problems associated with nuclear reactors. Doug was very clever at drawing graphs and diagrams for me with dress pattern markers, string and glue sticks. Doug told me about how, during the height of the anti-war protests in the late sixties, he’d been set upon by political science types, too stupid to know the difference between a nuclear reactor and an atomic bomb. Campus radicals assumed Doug was building bombs for the government in his dorm room. There was a tendency in some quarters to denigrate anything having to do with engineering. I responded to that tendency sometimes in fairly pointed ways. Doug’s stories had the effect upon myself and others, of strengthening our allegiance to the Engineering College, though we never beat up social science types that I remember!
I pulled an A in Materials and came away from summer quarter feeling I knew a bit about Psychology too. One day I had four hundred students rolling in the aisle. The Prof. was debunking beliefs about sexuality. “We know for example,” he said, “that masturbation doesn’t cause blindness.”
“Oh Yeah?” I asked. This was one of those God-given opportunities that one would be punished for not grabbing.
Summer Quarter ended about the middle of August, leaving us with five weeks till the onset of Fall Quarter. I read as many non-textbooks as I could in order to get something nontechnical into my brain. There was one on Charlemagne, a spy novel called The Tashkent Crisis and also a novel called Cyborg, by Martin Caidin, whose books I’d first met down at Vancouver. In this story, engineer-astronaut Steve Austin is gravely injured in the crash of a test vehicle and is restored to better than new by mechanical limbs. Not only did the story fascinate me, but reading about the physical prowess Steve Austin displayed even before the crash, determined me to test my own athletic ability.
I put myself through a set of floor drill exercises and found myself to be very much wanting. I added to the original fifteen push-ups I first accomplished, increasing by two or three each day, plus sit-ups, toe touches, and other muscle builders. Within a few months I was doing a hundred sit-ups day and night, with a similar amount of push-ups. For good measure I did ten move one-handed push-ups on each hand.
The other significant event associated with summer’s end that year, was the death of Bertha Magnus, mother of my child-hood best friend, Jim. As a token of grief, I shaved off my mustache, having little in the way of head-hair to offer in the manner of the ancient Greeks. I spent a fair amount of time at the funeral, talking with Melvin, Bertha’s husband and that must have been the last time I ever saw Jim. The last occasion had been during the summer of ’70, when I was working at C.S.B.
The last book I read before Sophomore year began, was Summer Of the Red Wolf, by Morris West, author of The Shoes Of The Fisherman. In Summer, an unnamed writer referred to as The Shanahee, visits the islands off Scotland and meets a beautiful woman Dr. and a shady but magnetic fisher-farmer-etc. Red Roorey The Mactira, Gaelic for Wolf. This is a book about love, conflict, adventure and murder and was the first book about Scotland I’d read in some time.
Fall quarter this year I had Calculus III, Physics I, Introduction to Advertising, Technical Writing and organic Chemistry, which I dropped, not being able to get a significant amount of the text read at the State recording service to enable my studying adequately. I was fortunate in having a Boeing engineer, Erwin Landisberg as my reader for Physics. Erve spoke with a heavy German accent, but was very methodical in reading onto my tapes. I would complete the year-long Physics sequence and even eventually take two Sophomore Physics courses, but it was becoming increasingly apparent that I was a C student where natural science courses were concerned. That wasn’t the end of the world. Many successful engineers had picked up a lot of C and low grades in math and science. My communications classes had been all at B-level and my Humanities classes continued to be A. I had yet to find out how I’d actually be doing in Engineering.
A problem I perceived regarding engineering studies at the U.W. was that most students in the college tended to wander around for the first two years in something called pre-engineering. Or General Engineering Studies. This gave them a lot of exposure to Math and Science, a lot of exposure to the campus generally, but fairly little familiarity or understanding of technology and virtually no insight into their own chosen fields of specialty.
I was still having trouble in making up my own mind choosing exactly which path I’d follow toward a degree, but I’d gotten the idea that designing a good engineering curriculum involved piling up a whole lot of science courses. Doing science is like doing engineering, but they have different emphases. Different skills are required for design than for research. I’ve come to believe that young engineers should begin with classes that emphasize very practical machine operation and repair issues, in which they learn how things fit together and about the sticky sorts of problems which hang things up. At the same time, Humanities courses could be taken to ground the student in the Larger Campus.
When some practical skills have been gained, Science courses could be added possibly at a higher level than Freshman attainment and theory can be built upon practice. Later still, engineering analysis and design skills can be further polished. If a student decided to leave college after a couple of years though, he or she would walk away with some practical skills and training. As things stand now, A Sophomore engineering student at a major university may know something of Math, Physics and Chemistry, perhaps how to draw or write computer code. That’s about it.
Since coming to Campus I’d met Melinda Mueller, from Spokane, a young woman about my age, with interests in Oceanography and Writing. She said she wanted to be the next Rachel Carson. Melinda and I were somewhat close for a while and had intended to date, but classes and tests kept getting in the way. Later I met Cindy Lemke, with whom I studied Chemistry. Cindy was from Kodiac, Alaska and was rather busy deciding that she would be a nurse and not a Dr. Val Paynton had come up from Queen Anne by Fall ’73 and we still dated. I also kept in touch with June Claflan, Sharie Davis and Cathy Zobel from High School
Now I met Laurie McGowan, also my age and an engineering major. Laurie and I were in Dr. Jim Souther’s Technical Report Writing class and got into the habit of walking together from this to the next class. I believe we were bound for the same building. Like me, Laurie was interested in Bioengineering, though more to do with medical research and development than with life-support like myself.
Dr. Souther was an English Prof. who talked like Jimmy Cagney and spent his time teaching us engineers to put words on paper. I already knew how to write, but probably learned more from Jim about writing an effective report, than from anyone else. In mulling over what to do for a term project, Laurie and I both hit on the idea of recruiting more women into the college of engineering. We were at #% female enrollment, which was twice national average for universities and there was some quota pressure to recruit more. We decided to collaborate on a single paper, which was something I think I’d never done before. Laurie was a member of The Society of Women Engineers and said I could go with her to a meeting. We would also interview Dr. Irene Pedden, professor of Electrical Engineering, Assistant Dean and sole female faculty member in our college.
At my first S.W.E. meeting (pronounced Swee,) I heard a woman from my own anticipated department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, making a bid for women students to consider that department for their major option. Then we heard in turn from three professional women, an electrical engineer from Bell Telephone, An Aeronautical Engineer from Boeing and a Ceramic engineering consultant who had a Ph.D. nine kids, and worked at home on several government research contracts.
Most of the women seemed a bit hard-boiled, had a fair amount to say about feminism and said it had been a struggle to be accepted as an engineer. The ceramist said she’d had as many opportunities as anyone could have, and she said “What about Men’s Lib?”
At the close of the meeting the student chapter president invited the two men present, (myself and a faculty advisor,) to stay and take refreshments with the group. “We won’t beat you up,” she laughed. Laurie had to get some where though, so I didn’t stay either. There would be other opportunities. One day I would be a member of this chapter.
In our paper Laurie and I explained that due to affirmative hiring regulations, there was a high demand for women employees with engineering degrees. Salaries were high, working conditions good, career opportunities wide open. Based on what Dean Pedden had told us, we said that if companies wanted to hire women engineers, they needed to provide scholarship money for women to study engineering. Also, women and girls needed to know that engineering was a valid career path for them. Most females didn’t seem to find out about engineering as a possible major until they reached college, sometimes not until they were already well launched upon a more liberal arts program.
In engineering one was expected to spend the first two years accumulating the math and basic science necessary to enter any of the engineering departments, where major classes typically began at the 300 level. If you chose engineering much beyond your first couple of quarters freshman year, you might not graduate in four years.
Literature on women in engineering needed to be sent to high school math and science teachers as well as to academic counselors. Female speakers, such as S.W.E. members, should be sent to high schools, junior highs, even to the Girl Scouts and Campfires. It was a pretty good paper, I think. Doc. Souther seemed to like it.
Another significant trend in my life began about this time. President Nixon gave his famous energy speech, sometime during the fall of ’73, promising research into new power sources, accelerated exploration for new oil deposits, increased use of nuclear energy. Gas had been about 35 cents per gallon and the attendant checked your oil and wiped your windows for you, not to mention pumping the gas. Now the price of gas had tripled almost overnight and attendants acted as if you were privileged to pay them, Forget the service!
Previously, nobody had worried much about the price of electricity, unless they manufactured aluminum or grew pot in a big way. It took quite a while before electrical costs rose sufficiently high to get people to install insulated windows, or in many cases even wall insulation. Energy prices had yet to rise as high as doomsayers predicted for the year 2000, but by the mid seventies, the nation was realizing that energy would be an important future issue.
I did not jump immediately upon the energy bandwagon however I was very interested in rocket propulsion, which required the use of vast amounts of energy. I was also interested in building self-sufficient habitats or dwellings on earth or elsewhere. Usually with such speculative projects, energy was a sticking point, since you’d need a fair amount of it to purify water, recycle sewage, reduce garbage, and even grow food. In science fiction stories, spacefarers or technohermits always had conveniently portable and affordable nuclear power plants or extensive solar collection and storage capability. Returning to the real world however, what did we actually have?
We’d been burning oil for a long time, coal for a very long time. Natural gas had been around quite a while too. Waterpower was finite, becoming overburdened. Wood stoves in cities were in ’73, rather uncommon. People suddenly started talking about the Renewable forms of energy, usually geothermal, wind and solar. Geothermal was pretty much localized to geological hot spots or boiling water springs. Wind and solar were sporadic. Both could produce electricity and solar was obviously a heat source, but in order to use solar energy on a cloudy day you’d need to draw upon stored heat in vast and generally expensive arrays of water tanks or rock bins.
Without yet many input numbers to offer, it looked like my idea of using green plants to produce fuel, would give fossil fuels their stiffest competition. Fuel cells could run on alcohol. So could internal combustion engines. We could use tanker trucks, gas stations, cars, pretty much like the ones we grew up with. Homes could burn alcohol in furnaces for heat or in banks of fuel cells for electricity. Meanwhile though, my primary focus was still on rocketry.
Here too, the closer I looked the more it seemed to be all about energy. This shouldn’t have been surprising, but rocketeers talk very little about energy. Most books and articles I’d read, including those by people I respected very much, waxed lyrical about high exhaust velocities. How fast a rocket can fly depends on how fast it can shoot matter out its rear nozzle and how much fuel it carries. The faster the jet can operate, (or higher the exhaust velocity,) the less fuel it must carry to perform a given mission. It’s not just a simple proportion either. Doubling the exhaust velocity reduces the propellant requirement by a factor of three or so. This mounts up quite a bit when exhaust velocity increases several fold.
The problem is, increasing the exhaust velocity represents A Big Increase in the amount of energy contained in the exhaust stream. Twice as much exhaust velocity requires four times as much energy for the same amount of propellant thrown aft. In chemical rockets, increasing exhaust velocity corresponds to greatly increased heat, which can progress only so far before all known materials fail. There are ways to increase the energy of the exhaust stream without adding appreciable amounts of heat, but the components necessary to do so, electrodes and large magnetics are quite heavy and thrust levels from such systems are characteristically quite low.
Nuclear rockets can use hydrogen, the lightest propellant available to generate very high exhaust velocities, but nuclear reactors are also quite heavy and it’s difficult to get high enough thrust levels to lift off the earth. Fusion rockets can theoretically take off from the ground with small amounts of propellant, compared to the weight of the craft, but fusion reactors promise to be fairly large and consequently fusion rockets will be liners, not skiffs. For the foreseeable future, the most efficient rockets will use comparatively low-velocity exhaust streams and will use a Lot of fuel, if expected to lift off this planet. I began to see that worrying about nuclear launch vehicles or high-density ion rockets was probably not a good use of my time. Once out in orbit, a variety of propulsion concepts offer themselves for fairly efficient interplanetary travel. From the surface up though, we’d be using conventional chemical rockets or something rather more extensive, called a Lofting System, which I’ll discuss in a later chapter.
Right about this time I had my second brush with death, at least the second of which I was aware. I mentioned in Chapter 2. about a disturbed young man who had planned to kill Jimmy Magnus, Mary and myself. This episode was traffic-related. I had to cross Sand Point Way from the bus Stop at 97th in order to go down the hill toward my house on 46th Northeast. Sand Point Way was a very fast two-lane highway. No light at the crossing just wait until you were sure you didn’t hear anything then don’t run, (quiet) but move with all deliberate haste toward the other side.
This time the car was moving so fast that I couldn’t have heard the engine as it hurtled into the Unsafe to cross-zone. The driver hit his brakes and skidded 200 feet beyond me, coming within 10 or 12 inches of where I stood out in the right hand lane. I think I stopped instinctively as I felt the rush of air and hear the screech of brakes applied and robber against asphalt. The man who was driving never stopped fully or came back, but kept driving. I’m sure he told his friends, if he ever mentioned the incident that goddamn blind kids had no business out wandering around. I was following every precaution I had.
“I think he was looped” Jo the Real Estate lady, whose office was on my side of the highway, was by my side, inquiring if I was okay. Yes, I was shook up a bit perhaps but I’d control that before I reached the house.
“Please don’t tell my mother about this,” I asked her earnestly. “I have to make this crossing every day in order to get back from the university and if she hears about this, she’ll die of nerves every time I leave the house.” Jo promised not to say anything and so far as I know, she never did.
Over Christmas Vacation I got a strong urge to write about something though I wasn’t sure what. I had a sort of sensory image in my mind of a beach and the sea breaking on it. I seemed to be seeing a sunny day. I composed a few paragraphs and shared them over the phone with Val Paynton who seemed to be at loose ends today as well. She liked what I had and encouraged me to go on, so I did, finding out as I went along what the story was about.
A house emerged, a field of sugar cane from which alcohol was made, a man and woman, their life together generally. It turned out that both residents of this high-tech, low-hassle house with is rooftop greenhouse, convenience kitchen and automated flag staff were freelance designers who developed prototype space equipment for the government and private industry.
Laurie’s sister was married to an astronaut, Joe’s best male friend, who had gone on an extended mission to establish a balloon-supported station in the upper atmosphere of Venus. The story concerned how the three of them learn telepathically how Craig had run into trouble and had in fact died, falling out of the Venusian sky. He’d come to speak with his three most beloved people before going on to roam the greater universe, “Push those vectors clear out to infinity!”
The Waves not only expressed my own dissatisfaction with city living and confinement to a campus but also my dream of someday living in a place where nature and sophisticated appropriate technology could meet. It was the first piece I’d written in which the major focus was on characters and the relationships between them. Previous stories I’d written had all to do with ideas or at least the results of some action taken in the story. It wasn’t a particularly good story but the best one I’d written so far. I sent The Waves to a number of publishers but none of them bit. Characters in the story would show up in later stories but none of them would ever be published. Still, I felt my writing was changing for the better.
Winter Quarter I had Math and Physics again, plus Fortran Programming, my first experience with computers, a Ceramic Engineering class and a 3-credit independent study course under Dr. Schiels. For this project I’d compare political ideologies of conservative and liberal science fiction writers. Reading I did for this course included Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and Farnham’s Freehold.
It would be a number of years yet before I’d feel comfortable working with computers. Procedures then were much different from now. Instead of typing a new program into a keyboard and hitting the Run key at any point, one must punch the program into cards, using a keypunch device, then carry the stack down to the mainframe computer, where the turn-around time, (the time required to run your program in sequence with everyone else’s and get it back again,) was between 8 and 24 hours. If you made a mistake on your second card, you came back, perhaps the day after submitting your deck, discovered the error, corrected it, (hopefully,) and resubmitted your program.
For me at least, ceramic materials were a bit more congenial. I’d been working with clay for a dozen years or more and have become quite interested in ceramics as engineering materials. I thought, somewhat erroneously as it turned out, that they would be easier to form than metals. While it was true that ceramics were heat and corrosion resistant as well as being very strong in certain applications, Nozzles nose cones, bulletproof vests of refractory tiles for the space shuttle; aren’t shaped from wet clay or poured from slip. Such items are generally pressed under tremendous pressure, in vacuum and often at high temperatures. The equipment necessary to accomplish these operations tend to be but expensive and complex. I began learning some of these things in Dr. Mueller’s Introduction to Ceramics class, along with the composition of common clays and the basics of how familiar products were brought from the ground to a finished state. Jim Mueller was a rather foul-mouthed, chain-smoking, hard drinking lower campus academic, who’d spent most of his career in the university system but was solidly on the side of Big Industry. He could be an effective mentor and a good friend. He could also be rather a bully and was highly judgmental. I’d see both sides of him over the next five years.
One of the most interesting subjects we discussed in Doc’s little intro class was space processing. Certain types or crystals, necessary for a myriad of industrial operations, were extremely expensive, since most of those grown industrially were subject to fatal flaws exerted by earth’s gravity. If these crystals could be grown in space, as much as $100,000 per pound in additional profits could be realized. The Space Shuttle, Doc said, could put material in orbit at a cost of $100 per pound. The Shuttle had not yet flown then and I believe the per pound cost of payload to orbit is more like $1,500 but in 1974 dollars Doc. was only off by a factor or three or four. The principle was sound.
There were five of us in our class. Our group included Dorothy, a black woman, about five years older than me. I’ve mentioned that I didn’t have many black friends and Dorothy was shy, being the only woman and the only black person in class. Dr. Mueller took me aside and told me “Dorothy’s a little colored gal.” He said she wanted to take a degree in engineering so she could go back to the ghetto and say, You can make a good life if you stop feeling sorry for yourself! Doc thought the two of us should team up in this class. Dorothy could read to me and I could help her with some problems she was having in Chemistry, which of course, would impact her understanding of ceramics.
I told Mom that I’d bust my butt for anyone who had such a positive attitude as that, and she said that Dorothy did sound like a motivated young woman. I don’t know if Dorothy actually ever uttered the lines ascribed to her by Mueller, but I was glad to know that I wasn’t entirely prejudiced. In all fairness though, Dorothy just was not cut out for engineering or Chemistry or Math. I made a device rather like a slide rule, to demonstrate the concept of positive and negative numbers and I don’t think that most basic of algebraic concepts ever got across. Within a quarter Dorothy had returned to the Drama Department, but we still greeted one another when we passed on campus.
I was in the papers again. On July 4, 1973, I wrote a short composition in which I analyzed each line of the Pledge of Allegiance and what it meant to me. It was intended as an inspirational piece. In that way one will slap a title on something almost as an afterthought, I called it Should Students Salute The Flag? I sent it to Joe Marshall who’d been instrumental in my getting the Civitans medal a couple of years previously. Joe brought the present essay to the attention of the awards committee of the Seattle Sons Of The American Revolution. It was decided to give me a silver citizenship medal at a monthly luncheon meeting which Dad and I attended. Somewhat later, I was awarded a Bronze medal from The Freedoms Foundation in Valley Forge Pennsylvania. This was more influence on Joe’s’ part, but the Foundation had several very prominent people on it, including Raymond Burr of Perry Mason and Ironsides fame. Mom and I attended the weekday presentation luncheon.
My medal was about three inches in diameter, resting in a wooden stand with a little flag fixed above the bronze. The medal depicted George Washington kneeling in prayer at Valley Forge. Several small neighborhood newspapers ran my essay. Nowhere was it mentioned that I was blind.
Something else was going on during the Winter of ’74. It wasn’t especially bad, especially at first. In fact it was rather fascinating, if disturbing. It didn’t seem to be drinking related exactly, though it began seemingly as a result of a particularly energetic drinking bout in which I participated. I’d been going to keggers for a while and tended to drink a fair amount, though didn’t set any records.
I’ve always had a problem with holding liquor on top of very spicy foods. It took me a couple bad experiences to realize this and here was one of them. I’d eaten several chile tamales for dinner then went to a party, pouring down beer and later whisky. In short I threw up.
At one point I recall Jesus people, one male, one female, praying over me, while I said “Oh, hell!” to which they responded,“Watch it, Brother.”
I of course woke up with a hangover Sunday morning. It was still with me Monday morning and seemingly evening too. Tuesday I went to Professor Aimes, self-confessed longtime friend of The John Barleycorn. He said he’d known hangovers to last as month as a week. “Don’t worry Plassman,” he comforted. “You’ll feel better within a month.”
Whatever it was dragged on for several weeks. I wasn’t sick in any conventional way. Not headachy or nauseous. There was just this sense of being somehow set apart from everything, as if I were inside a balloon. Certain things just seemed very significant to me, while evidently not being very significant to anyone else. Some of my thinking was quite grandiose.
I had a notion, based on nothing all that rigorous, that I might have an approach to developing antigravity. I’d worked with far out concepts most of my life, but had never shown much aptitude for advanced Physics or Math concepts. Still not every innovator in a given field necessarily had a conventionally significant background in that field. If I remember correctly, I reasoned like this. Kinetic Energy, the energy due to a body’s motion, is 1.2 or it’s mass, times it’s velocity squared. Einstein’s relativistic energy-mass equation said that the energy, into which a mass could theoretically be transformed, equaled its mass times the speed of light squared. Two energy equations, which I thought could be made identical if we assumed that for every Mass M, there was a pseudo or hypermass M-Prime, which was somehow bound up with the mass M. Mass M was composed of quarks, basic fundamental particles existing in this universe, while Mass M-Prime was composed of Tachyons or faster-than-light particles existing in the other universe, but congruent with the quark partners in this universe. When a particle of mass was converted into energy, a photon appeared in this universe while a tachying went whizzing off in the other universe. ½(2*m)*Csq. (since the velocity of the photon is the speed of light, would equal MCsq.
From here I tried to develop some rather abstruse mathematics to show that certain kinds of energy reactions could produce action without reaction, by producing motion in this universe by repelling tachyons in the parallel universe. Reactionless drive is one way of describing antigravity. I worked to exhaustion on this problem night after night, but never did produce any equations of mathematical algorithms to corroborate my flash of supposed insight.
Other things were also happening. I felt a considerable need to reach out to other people, to let them know I cared about them. Because of my relationship with Paul, my family, notably Mom and Lois had decided I got too involved with people emotionally. This litany had actually begun in connection with Jimmy, around my eighth year, but had increased greatly since I was thirteen. I’d cultivated a rather shell-like reserve, not letting people get very close to me. This included my family, (especially my family.) It was lonely and unsatisfying.
I had a revelation at this time, which seemed to be coming from God. It came in the form of a poem, dictated into a tape recorder, early one morning. In it I described myself as a female person. I wasn’t exactly clear why I was doing this, but it seemed to have to do with bridging gaps, gaps between people, gaps between the sexes. There needed to be greater understanding between men and women.
I must have said a lot of rather peculiar things at the time, though I seemed to maintain a low profile at home and nobody at school seemed to notice much of anything. I don’t remember when it was that this strange state of mind began to taper off. I think other events moved in to submerge it, but there would be other occurrences.
One day Mom heard on the radio that there’d been a riot at Chris’s school. Black students had evidently gone running through the halls and into classrooms, slapping teachers. The school was dismissed at noon. Troublemakers had been contained in the main hall and pushed out the front door by male teachers, standing shoulder to shoulder. This was Chris’s first year at Nathan Hale High and things were a lot more exciting at school than in 9th Grade. Chris, evidently imagining that the events at her school wouldn’t be noticed by the outside world, and instead of coming home, had gone riding with her friends. By the time I got home, around Four, Chris had yet to be heard from and of course, Mom was nearly frantic.
There had been no report of anyone being seriously hurt in the trouble and I said to Mom that the likelihood was Chris had just decided not to come home. We discussed calling the police, which I thought was the thing to do certainly if we thought there was any chance of Chris being injured. If she had just gone joyriding, it would probably be a good lesson for her to be brought home in a police car.
We were still discussing this at Six P.M. when Chris was let off in front of the house by a carful of kids. She came into the house, belligerent and obviously very drunk. Mom asked Chris if she’d been drinking and Chris told Mom to leave her alone. She kept repeating this every time Mom tried to ask her anything. Mom Freaked and started trying to hit Chris, who shoved mom back.
I intervened, sending both of them to their rooms. Mom lay on her bed sobbing, while I patted her shoulder, trying to comfort her. Chris passed out for the next 15 hours or so, save for a time when she got up to go to the bathroom and neglecting to raise the toilet lid, urinated all over the floor. Mom made her get up and mop the mess. Needless to say, the next morning was acrimonious.
I’d been coming home from parties, having done considerable drinking, but I was 19. Of course Chris, as always, saw no reason why she shouldn’t do anything I did. To Mom, her 15-year-old daughter coming home drunk was the ultimate betrayal, (or so the story went,) and the final straw added to Mom’s delicate constitution.
I was about to have my own crisis. It had to do with Physics, and had implications for the majority of my work at the University. I thought I’d done fairly well in Fall Quarter Physics, which was classical mechanics, bodies in motion, forces, energy, and stuff I could visualize. Winter quarter was Electricity and magnetism, not quite so intuitively accessible for me but I got through it. A lot of beginning or second year students seemed to use which Physics class seemed easiest or more interesting, as an indicator of which engineering branches to consider.
Spring Physics would be Wave Theory, a sort of combination of mechanics and electromagnetism. Our Prof. was Greg Dash, a solid state specialist, with a rather unique way of conducting class. He gave a 30-minute test every Friday and refused to give a Grade lower than C. He said if we didn’t feel we deserved a C, we should drop the class, but that was our responsibility, not his. I had taken most of my science tests orally from instructors. I was used to having at least extended time in which to take my tests since I must explain things aloud to the Prof. or assistant and that took time. I did calculations in Braille, which is generally more cumbersome than print for math and tends to be slower.
Dr. Dash diagnosed me early on, as having serious problems in his course and asked me to come in for a conference. He told me he just didn’t think I had what it took to do hard science and wanted to know why I was taking so many science courses. I told what I thought would be obvious, considering my major, that I wanted to be an engineer. He wanted to know why I wanted to be an engineer. It’s difficult to compress ten years or more of interest and aspiration into a succinct sentence or two for an audience that wishes only to refute. I gave one or two examples of innovative designs, which had saved vast amounts of money for NASA. He treated these as stray facts I’d picked up somewhere and decided on this slim basis to become an engineer.
Dash said that on the basis of the two tests he’d done with me, I had no ability in algebra, let alone Calculus and even criticized my arithmetic, which I knew was good. I’d been used to doing 3-place multiplication in my head. I told him I was double majoring in engineering and Journalism so if I found I couldn’t hack engineering, I had something to fall back on.
He said this made me too unfocused. I needed to pick my field and stick with it. “You can’t be the Renaissance man Plassman. The people in the Renaissance weren’t even Renaissance men!” He said he felt professors had over graded me because I was blind and I was too good a person to make my way through college on sympathy. This was actually difficult to counter. I’m sure that at least two of my Math grades had been inflated, but I felt other classes had been downgraded because the exams were sometimes unreasonably visual and professors, not knowing how to grade me, had said Average work. You get a C.
I thanked Dr. Dash, quite sincerely, for being honest with me. He wanted me to make a decision right there and then about what I was going to do with the rest of my college time and seemingly, with the rest of my life. I said I needed time to consider. I left Dash’s office telling him I didn’t feel too badly about what he’d said to me. I think my shock defenses had kicked in temporarily, but by the time I got home, I was devastated.
I called the Ceramic Engineering Department, trying to find either Dr. Mueller or Dr. Whitamore. They were unavailable, but Dr. Al Miller, whom I’d gotten to know fairly well, talked to me for quite a while. We talked quite frankly about what I’d done in college so far. Al said that during our conversations and watching me work in the lab, he’d gathered the impression that I had a pretty good grasp of technical matters. He said a lot of students had trouble in Math and Physics, but went on to be credible engineers. He knew Greg Dash and Dash tended to count himself as someone who could diagnose a person’s current and future potential on brief acquaintance. Al also told me there were certain technical types who might have less rigorous mathematical ability than some, but tended to have a greater intuitive grasp of some kinds of problems. He didn’t feel a change of major to be appropriate for me at this point.
I told Dash I’d decided to stick it out for a while, possibly take an incomplete in my Differential Equations course to make sure I understood it more thoroughly. He wasn’t all that happy with me, but said it should be my decision. He told me I could sit in class, without expending further effort and take the C if I wanted too or I could continue to take the tests and do the work. If I didn’t show marked improvement within three or four weeks though, he would stop working with me, I.E. reading me the tests. He never did stop working with me and I feel I earned my C. Two years later I could go back to my Physics text and glean useful information, so I must’ve retained something.
Though I didn’t agree with everything Dr. Dash said, or entirely approve of how he handled matters, he did exert a valuable influence over my remaining time at University. I gave myself a fairly rigorous assessment. What did I really know? What could I really do? I dug out the old Trigonometry book. Some of the problems still looked hard. I compared notes with friends. Did these problems still look hard to them? Sometimes they did. I started asking to take tests only from my professors, rather than from a reader. I focused more carefully upon problem-solving techniques.
It is amazing how happenstance can so significantly influence ones decision on important matters. In the wake of Dr. Dash’s criticism, even with Al Miller’s support, I had seriously considered changing my major and therefore probably my career. I didn’t want to go into technical writing if I couldn’t handle engineering concepts. That seemed like being only partially armed. Journalism didn’t feel like enough of a challenge to me, since for me, true challenges in college included mathematics. At this point Lois showed up for a visit one afternoon and said more or less out of the blue, “I guess I don’t take time very often, David, to tell you how proud I am of you and all you’ve done. I know we were kind of hesitant about you going into something like engineering, but you’ve done everything you said you were going to up to this point and it’s obvious that you’ve done just fine.” (Who could throw in the towel after That?!)
Another of Dr. Dash’s comments was pretty much right on target. He took me to task for enrolling in so many classes at once. I was spreading myself pretty thin. Dr. Bollard over in Aeronautics and Astronautics, had similar concerns. Bollard said one could do no better than to get a good background in engineering, then add other things to it later, if necessary. Bollard said that people who hired for big companies looked for guys who knew a Lot about one area and a little bit about a lot of other areas. Emphasis must be placed on The One.
When doing the science fiction course back in Freshman year, I’d sent a couple of my books to the taping services operated by State Services For the Blind. The reader who ended up with these books was a fellow named Andy Andrews, a retired engineer from Bell Telephone. After getting to know Andy’s voice, I was rather surprised to get a call from him one day. Andy said he’d enjoyed a book of mine called Warlock In spite Of Himself, by Christopher Stacheff. He wondered if he could keep the book for a while longer, in order to read if on an hour-long daily program on a special radio station, devoted to blind issues. I said that since I had the tapes, he was welcome to keep the book. I guess Warlock made the rounds of the Andrews family.
Andy would do a great deal more reading for me in the years to come, both technical textbooks and more science fiction. As someone who’d worked for many years in electrical engineering, Andy was fascinated by the methods blind science and technology students used to study and do their work. I shared with Andy my difficult in selecting a specialty area. By the time of my interview with Dr. Dash, I’d been considering a combination of aeronautical and Ceramic Engineering to enable me to design and perhaps fabricate rocket nozzles. Andy thought this would be a good field in which I might work. I suspected I could learn to machine mold forms, formulate materials and operate an isostatic press. I’d already operated a kiln and since my undergraduate days, have picked up a lot more tool-using experience.
Andy said I needed to pick one thing and concentrate on it for a year. It needn’t be what I did with the rest of my life but it would help me clarify what I really wanted to do. This was probably the best piece of advice I’d received so far, much more useful than “You’re unfocused” or “You have too many interests.” It looked like I’d be doing Aeronautics for the next year, sink or swim. After that, we’d see.