SOLTuesday: Personal Archives

            I’ve been writing essays about all of the jobs I’ve had in a very checkered career, in between (and following) three different bouts of undergraduate education. Sometimes I was working and going to school at night at the same time, so it seemed appropriate to mention some of my classes.

            This took me to a set of files in my personal archive, a folder containing all my grades while I was at City College (in New York City), as well as a couple of folders of papers I wrote for those classes.

            There are courses on my transcript I have no memory of: Constitutional Law—Individual Liberties; Metropolitan Government and Politics (I was a history major, so those political science classes make sense, but they left no imprint in my brain); Russia Since 1855 (don't remember much of this, either, though this is probably when I read Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s “What Is to Be Done?” about 19th century Russian socialism).

            My school papers, though, are priceless because of comments from professors. On the midterm for the history class on the Progressive Movement is this note: “When will you start speaking up in class?!!!” 

            I’m not sure I ever did, not back in 1966.

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