Vnuchka Memoirs, Part V

Back-up Blip

In the fall of 1971, I was working at 7-11, hadn’t re-enrolled in college, and was dating a very nice young woman named Janet, a lovely, interesting, and intelligent woman. She was going to Cal State Fullerton, and she knew I had studied Russian in high school. She suggested I check out the Russian language program at her school. It was Russian, so I HAD to go. I went to meet the Russian professor. He was fairly young, American, and was the head of the department and sole instructor. He had talked to Janet and was very interested in recruiting me. He asked about my Russian language background, so I told him about my 2 years of Russian with Mr. Guidry at La Porte High School. He seemed impressed, although I didn’t think I’d said much to impress anybody. He then asked if I wanted to sit in on one of his classes. I said, “Sure, why not?” We settled on a third semester class the next afternoon. By the way, during this interview not a word of Russian was spoken. You’d think he’d want to check my ability to speak the language, but nope. The next day, I found out why. He taught the old school, grammar-translation method. He didn’t speak Russian in his class either. He wrote vocab and grammar on the board, and quizzed students in English about what he was writing. I saw very early that his third semester students knew less than half what I had learned from Mr. Guidry in high school. I knew this was a bad fit for me. Heck, I learned more Russian from the 2 songs I knew from high school. After class, I told him I enjoyed his class very much, but I had no money to go to a 4-year college. That was true. I enlisted in the US Air Force and was sworn in on December 15, 1971. Goodbye, Janet. Goodbye, California. Goodbye, Uncle CA and Aunt Margaret. Goodbye, hair. My military career had begun.