SHORT
STORY I wrote in my Freshman Year at Loyola
from Loyola and practiced dentistry in Payson, UT stunned me when
he told me his dental office
usually takes in a hundred dollars a day. A hundred dollars a day.
Imagine that! I just had to be a
dentist.
I subsequently was in my second year of
attendance at the “U”. I dreaded having
to go to
college as I got low grades even though I would study twelve hours a
day. I wasn't very smart. The
registrar’s office 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 continue attending the University, and to top it
off all the dental schools
at that time required a 3.5 grade point average. What a dilemma, there I
am sitting with a 1.8
average.
Additionally I
was out of work and couldn’t find a job.
Being persistent,
I deiced to enrolled the following quarter at the U, but enrolled for just two
easy classes plus a couple of classes for no credits. I thought a
light schedule would make it easy for
me to raise my average grades.
But, unfortunately, I ended up with only a 2.4 average and only 8
credited hours. That wasn’t going to cut it; at that rate I'd be an
old man by the time I made 3.5
average. I was at least smart enough to realize that.
What to do?
I decided to
take a year off at the U of U, and subsequently entered BYU, as a freshman.
I took a heavy class schedule, 21 credit hours with solid classes
for two semesters. Then in the fall I
Went back to the U of U and enrolled in the same classes. I
didn’t mention to the Loyola admissions
office I had attended the Y:
merely got off to a slow start but now with a 3.8 average, I expected to
be one of best in the class of ’63.
On the creative part of this story, I
didn’t get close to the refrigerator, not even in my first year, I
mean the big one that many graduate students get locked
into. I mean the brain-gang students that are hopelessly educated to the point of becoming frozen intellectuals. Once frozen they never a
thaw, they just float around the Republic. I had no intention of being a brain-frozen ice cube floating
through life’s seas.
Don’t get me wrong, I think being a brainy
college graduate is great, they are well accepted in
Society. However,
not always following the crowd is even better and more rewarding. I hope to be
an educated man, with a high grade point average sure, but at the same time, not being in one of
those GE refrigerators; mortgaged, body, mind and spirit, while holding on tight to a frozen rigid
sheep skin for dear life, with no plans to come busting out of the fridge door.
I’ll not be a
contented sheep going over the cliff with the herd. It’s been a cold year and
that is
not good if you’re locked in.
What’s changed
in forty seven years since I graduated from Loyola?
Not
much. At the graduating class in 2000, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION the commencement
address was given by: Thomas J. Dart (JD’87), Cook County sheriff Quote:
“Far too many times in
our history, things were done because that’s the way they were always done. Or
because that’s what someone was told to do. But what it that way is wrong---or
causing an injustice? That’s when it’s up to someone to stand up and say, ‘Wait.
This isn’t right.’ And as I look out into this audience today. I ask you: Which
voice will you be?”
Amen.
Dr. KARL WALLACE D.D.S.
To read more Karl Wallace short stories: karlwallaceblog.blogspot.com
