Thoughts After the First: (Some Thoughts After My First Year in College)

By Michael Yergin

One of the things I hate most is people who assume something about me and don't bother (or simply don't want) to ask me if they're right. You cannot assume anything about anybody even though everybody does it to varying degrees all the time. I am, I suppose, as guilty of doing this as the next guy. I find myself making judgments about people before I have really taken the time to get to know them.

This is, undoubtedly, one of the greatest problems of my generation. Many times we seem to be talking too fast. In many cases, our mouths are moving faster than our brains. But I think there is a reason why this occurs. We are pressured to say things before we have really had the time to think it out clearly and logically.

In our society, everybody is striving to be an individual. What happens is that you believe something and if you change your mind you feel that you are being inconsistent with your prior views.

Author Michael L. Yergin pens a surreal look at the college scene during the late 1960s and early 1970s at Southern Illinois University. Full of insight and humor, Thoughts After the First offers a compelling look at this turbulent time in American history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 27, 2006
• ISBN: 9780595813308

Michael Yergin

Michael L. Yergin is an author, life coach, business consultant, and happiness guru. He has published four books and is a veteran broadcaster and relationship expert, as well as a lecturer on positive psychology. Yergin divides his time between Chicago and Phoenix.

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

AFTERWORD

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am deeply grateful to the following people for their valuable help: Dana and Margie Harper, Danny Hirsch III, Gayle Kal, Diane Wexler, Nancy Rautbord, Craig Becker, Philip Levy, Roger Steinbrink, Mark Freeman, Mary Steffey, Jim Cook of The Author’s Office, and my parents.

I am particularly grateful to Susan Rees for her part in the questionnaire and also to Debbie Frazier, editor of the Student Freepress at the University of Denver who was kind enough to write the introduction of this book for me.

I wish to also thank Dr. Delyte Wesley Morris, President of Southern Illinois University, for talking with me, and introducing me to W. Clement Stone, who showed me a new way of viewing the world, and to my teacher, friend, and mentor, R. Buckminster Fuller, who so graciously allowed me in his home and his mind boggling geodesic heart each and every week.

Also, I am greatly indebted to all of the people around the country who worked, without pay, for Project Empathy, the nation’s dating and matchmaking solution. Truly, the only way to gain is to give away. How lucky am I to have had so many people, especially you, Lynne, for allowing me to give and inspiring me to keep on truckin’ down the road and make me feel not unimportant. God bless everybody.

The year is 1969. I am nineteen years old. A large part in writing this book was due to selfish motives. I mean my motivations were to try and do a self-inventory of myself. Through this journey, I hope that some others may too gain some insight, or share a laugh, or walk away after reading this, and maybe receive some benefit no matter how small or unremarkable. And who knows, maybe twenty or thirty years down the road, I’ll have children who will read this book and say, Hmm, dad.. .that was interesting...

Michael l. Yergin carbondale, illinois 1969

FOREWORD

There has never been any time in my life that I thought that I was completely normal. But I never seemed to think much about my non-normalcy until I got into college. That’s when it all started. As early as the first week in the dormitory, I found myself engaged in extremely abstract contemplation, sitting up all night, smoking mixture number 79, gazing out at the world and trying desperately to figure out what was to it.

I started asking myself questions like what was the purpose of life. Or for that matter, what was the point of living. What did it all mean? Aside from the obvious dissimilarities, what did it mean to be a person instead of, for example, say a dog? My little French Poodle, Narcoleps, seemed so happy, so content, so totally at peace with everything. What did he know that I did not? Why was it that although I was not entering that period of my life which everybody had assured me would be the best period of my life and the happiest years of my life, I was not, for all intents and purposes, the slightest bit happy?

Here I was at college, finally, after waiting so very long for this occasion when I would finally be on my own, away from home, away from my parents, to do what I pleased, with whom I pleased, whenever I pleased, and possibly to try to really get educated after wasting 12 years in something that was alleged to be education but was really not.

I thought endlessly about what was causing me to be unhappy. The only thing that I could come up with, regardless of how vague and naïve it sounded, was that there was something wrong, something very wrong, with everything from college and society and all of the bullshit that accompanies it all the way down the line to sexual intercourse.

I was caught up in a hopeless impasse of confusion and despair, not knowing whether or not I had finally gone crazy because of the past five years, in which time I had religiously read every word that Freud had ever written, which could cause anybody to develop such a high degree of introspection and sensitivity that when at their culmination could easily be tantamount to insanity, or were there other people, like myself, who had become nervous, anxious, part-time insomniacs. Spending the better part of their days and nights just

Thinking, incessantly, about everything, and the more they thought the more confused everything seemed in their minds.

INTRODUCTION

Once upon a time, a child went to college.

And because he was yet a child, he was distressed by the world around him where all countries killed to gain their wishes while their people starved. And where people were powerless against the great force called the-way-things-always-were-and-always-will-be.

So he went to college to find out why things were as they were and to see if there was something he could do about it. There, at the college, the wise men he had hoped to learn from seemed unconcerned and even unaware of what the child felt was troubling the world.

He went from area of study to area of study, seeking a way to prepare himself to help the world.

He looked first to the political science department and found there the immutable law that there must always be an oppressed and an oppressor in order for society to be stable.

Then, wanting to be a doctor, he met with other aspiring doctors—who were only concerned with how great their salary would be.

And in sociology he found that all social change requires money, plans, committees, studies, chairmen, groups for action, government support, connections, cross sections of people, and money.

And in economics he was taught the maxim that if there is an increase in employment, there is also an increase in inflation—and therefore an increase in employment is undesirable.

And in psychology the child found out much about rats that reacted to stimuli—but little about people except how to pigeonhole them.

And in business, where he learned how to balance accounts—but nothing about ethics—he was instructed in how to replace the means that he had used to gain his very profitable and successful ends.

And everywhere he looked there was no one who seemed able to make any changes for the better, and the people had often gotten to be too tired even to try.

His fellow students, whom he thought would want to understand and change things, were busy toying with chemicals, or playing in the snow, or just sleeping.

Nowhere could he see any answers.

So he looked inside himself. And there he saw but one person, distressed by the ways of the world and the people in it. And the child felt that he was lost and that all was hopeless.

And then he remembered the good things—kind people, achievements, and especially the Great Potential.

And he knew that it was not for him to ignore, nor to accept evil but to change it. As much as he could—by himself if necessary—in his own way.

So he graduated—perhaps not summa cum laude—but he had been educated.

CHAPTER 1

Did you know that college students are not always balling when they are supposed to be studying science—they are, believe it or not, usually studying science. This notion that we are engaged in incessant fornication is for the most part an adult hang-up.

I recall a telephone conversation I heard a few months ago in a dormitory. Peter, a sophomore, had called home and was talking to his dad. When Peter’s dad asked him how he was, Peter told him that he was kind of tired because he had been up all last night rapping with this girl.

C’mon, said his dad. You can tell me.

Tell you what? Peter asked, not knowing what his father was talking about.

"Tell me what you really did," Peter’s dad replied.

But I told you. We were just talking, that’s all—just talking, really, Peter replied.

Sure, responded the father of Peter. If you do not want to tell me, you do not have to, but you don’t have to hand me a line.

But, Dad, I am leveling with you. Really. We just had a real good talk—that’s all.

OK, said Peter’s dad in a manner which showed he was hurt. If that’s the way you want it to be, that’s OK with me. I guess it’s just that I always thought that you and me could level with each other. But obviously we can’t.

Look, for Christ sake! interrupted Peter, by now a bit angered. I’m telling you the truth. What in the hell do you want me to say to you? That last night I had this broad up in my room and she had not even been in the room five minutes when she jumped on top of me, ripped off her clothes (and mine) and raped me with such zeal and force that I had to smash her in the face with a box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers just to calm her down?

Obviously, Peter’ father is not going to say to his son: Yes, that’s more like it—why didn’t you tell me that at first, because he realizes now that his son is only being smart-assed and sardonic.

The reason why Peter’s father does not believe his son was just talking with some girl the entire night is because Peter’s father does not want to believe this. It sounds too atypical for the college student of today. But, I think that it is understandable why he feels this way. I mean, let’s look at this thing through the father’s point of view.

In the morning, when he goes to the office and somebody asks him what does he hear from his son—imagine how embarrassed he must feel when all that he can say is that my son spent the night with this girl and all that they did was talk.

Peter’s father, like so many other naive adults today, really believes that on a college campus all everybody does is bang until they’re all banged out. They have the idea that any boy can walk up to any girl and say hey-there-chick-what-dya-say-we-go-to-bed.

And the girl replies, Yeah, groovy man, out of sight man, far-out man—I can dig it.

Well, fortunately or unfortunately—I’m not really sure which—things are not like this for the majority of college students.

Today, college students are probably the most misunderstood minority group in the United States. I think that the media is largely to blame for this. All that one reads about in the newspapers today deals with the protestors and the bomb throwers.

These extremely radical agents that the media are always talking about comprise only a very, very small percentage of students. To stereotype, pigeonhole, and make rampant generalizations about all students is a very dangerous thing to do.

Many people believe that anybody with long hair is a radical Commie who wants to destroy our country. Many people believe that a girl who chooses to go braless and shall we say, let it all hang loose, is a whore. Many people believe that all black people always have tooth picks hanging out of their mouths and that the only things they ever say are shit, motherfucker, and right-on.

The point I am trying to make is that people—and by people I mean not only adults, but college students too—are not fair and objective in their evaluation and judgments of other people. Whether it is ethnocentrism, bigotry, or insecurity, I’m not sure. People see in people what they want to see or project—not, in most cases, what is really there.

One of the things I hate most is people who assume something about me and don’t bother (or simply don’t want) to ask me if they’re right. You cannot assume anything about anybody even though everybody does it to varying degrees all the time. I am, I suppose, as guilty of doing this as the next guy. I find myself making judgments about people before I have really taken the time to get to know them.

This is, undoubtedly, one of the greatest problems of my generation. Many times we seem to be talking too fast. In many cases, our mouths are moving faster than our brains. But I think there is a reason why this occurs. We are pressured to say things before we have really had the time to think it out clearly and logically.

In our society, everybody is striving to be an individual. What happens is that you believe something and if you change your mind you feel that you are being inconsistent with your prior views.

A student may hold a certain view and be reluctant to change it because he fears that his peers will not respect him as an individual if he is always changing or compromising his views. People must learn that nothing is permanent if they are to get over this hang-up. What you may feel is perfectly right today may be totally wrong tomorrow. People must be flexible in their thinking at all times.

It seems that the farther on you get in college, the more stubborn you get. As a freshman, students are flexible and open-minded. However, freshmen can carry this to extremes.

My favorite example of this is students in a freshman introductory philosophy class. One week a student might decide that he is a hedonistic utilitarian because that week the lecturer is discussing Betham and Mill.

Next week when the teacher is rapping about Sartre, Kierkegaard, and Camus, the student walks out of class with his head very far up his ass, believing that existentialism is the highest good and truly for him, until next week when he decides that Kantian metaphysics is definitely where it is at and so on, ad infinitum, into the freshman year.

The college student of the ‘70s is unique in many ways because he is living in a time when nothing seems certain or lasting. Everything is constantly changing.

The only institution to remain stable over the years has been the mcdonald’s hamburger. I find that there is something very comforting and secure in the mcdonald’s hamburger. You always know what you are going to get when you ask for one. The mcdonald’s hamburger in itself is pretty lousy, but at least it stays lousy. I guess that it’s just that there is something innately good about ronald mcdonald and the infamous golden arches.

CHAPTER 2

Youth today are simply not given a chance to grow up. Everything seems to be moving so fast that it is becoming impossible to find any things anymore which can be grasped onto and that offer any permanence or security.

Change is evolutionarily and socially necessary and, of course, inevitable. But change, or too much change which is not properly thought out in terms of possible negative consequences, in addition to the positive aspects, is not good.

The youth of today are paying the price for all of the wonderful, myriad innovations which have made us a super ultra technocracy by being the most alienated and unhappy culture of people in the history of man.

Obviously, it is not only the youth who are alienated, for alienation is running just as high, if not higher, among our youngsters and oldsters too.

In most cases, adults can realize what is at the root of their alienation if they are willing to do a little soul-searching. But even though a man may realize what is causing him to be unhappy, this does not necessarily mean that he can change. Take the example of the business executive who has worked for twenty years and now finally is wealthy, socially prominent, owns a nice home, gives his wife anything she wants, etc., but is unhappy and alienated from himself and his universe. What can he do? He has worked most of his life trying to achieve what he thought would bring him