How To Stay Out Of The Refrigerator
Until two years after I quit college, my interest in an education had been contentedly asleep. But
surprisingly my mother told me the dental office where she was working, takes in a hundred dollars a
day. A hundred dollars a day, in 1952. Imagine that! At that particular time I had matriculated in
accounting at the University of Utah.
I dreaded the thought of having to go back to school as I had a low grade point average even though
I would most often study twelve hours 24-7, with the cost of school and the ability to be a very high
income level, small bumps in the road. But with that kind of money I had to be a dentist at any cost.
The registrar’s office at the U sent me a letter stating that my grade point average of D would have
to be raised to a C- or better in order to attend, and the dental schools at that time wouldn't accept
anyone without a B+ average or higher. What a dilemma, and additionally I was out of work.
Being persistent I enrolled for two easy classes plus a couple of classes for no credits. I ended up the
year with a C+ average and eight credit hours. That wasn’t going to cut it. I’d never get in a dental
school at that rate; I’m at least smart enough to realize that. What to do?
I decided to take a year off at the U and enter a different university as a freshman and take all the
classes the dental schools required. I chose to go to BYU and I did. After the year was over I moved
back to Salt Lake City and started back at the U as a junior. I took the same classes I had taken at
BYU.
Finally I was making all A’s. I was accepted as a slow starter, but determined smart applicant at
Loyola Dental School in Chicago in 1959. Living in Chicago in the subzero weather made it even more
challenging to stay out of the frozen clutches of the proverbial refrigerator. In my observation of
students I hope to be an educated man, have a high grades point average, hopefully not having to be in
the refrigerator who is mortgaged body, mind and spirit holding on to the frozen sheep skin for dear life,
no plans to come busting out of the door, just contented to be one of the sheep going where the herd
goes
I didn’t get close to the refrigerator, not even my first year of dental school; I mean the big one that
many graduate into. I mean the brain-gang students that is hopelessly educated to the point of
becoming frozen intellectuals. Once frozen there’s never a thaw. Thus frozen they float around the
Republic forever. I had no intention of being one of those brain frozen ices cubes floating through life’s
seas. Don’t get me wrong I think a brainy college graduate of higher education is useful and needed and
they are well accepted in society, and have lost all their creativity.
Many of my past teachers, and peers, I have noticed are like alcoholics expounding the advantages
of social drinking. It’s been a long winter here at Loyola, with many students stuck frozen. We all
graduate in the spring.
KARL WALLACE
To read more Karl Wallace stories go to: karlwallaceblog.blogspot.com
