High School Academics

Academic Studies at Pacific High School

On the face of it, one might think that a community would support a high school mainly for the sake of the academic studies it offers. Or maybe I’m just hopelessly naïf. All sorts of other accretions seem, half a century ago as now, to have taken over the central rôles.

Me, I always did very well, academically. For a number of reasons I think I understand, and probably for others I don’t.

My parents were very much academically-oriented, far more so than those of my average classmate. As a college teacher with a postgraduate degree, Pappy was right at the top of the local intelligentsia. In our Third Ward congregation, I got the impression that he was probably the only member with a four-year college degree (Mammy would complete hers only when I was in high school).
Other kids liked a lot of things that I didn’t: sports, dancing, general social hanging-around. Lacking such competing interests, I had no trouble keeping up with my studies. Don’t recall ever taking homework home: always had enough solitary time at school to get it done, and was always motivated to do it right.
The Lord has blessed me from the start with a number of aptitudes and penchants that tend to conduce to success in formal schoolwork.
And then we mustn’t forget that the times, they were ripe to encourage a studious kid with an interest in math and science. Remember the date of October 4, 1957? I do: that’s the day the Soviets sent up their Sputnik. And I’d just started my senior year at Pacific High.