Community Colleges : CHANCE FOR A BETTER LIFE : ‘My Parents Did Well Just to Finish High School’ : A forward-looking California gave me the opportunity to see if I was college material. Today I have a Ph.D.

My parents didn’t go to college. I have a Ph.D. The difference is that I had a standing invitation from the state of California to attend a community college.

My parents did well just to finish high school.

My mother, who grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood on the outskirts of Kansas City, Kan., was the only one of three children to get her diploma. And my dad, who had to quit Belmont High School during the Great Depression, finished night school when he was 32.

I grew up with a vague feeling that college was for other people.

Consequently, I didn’t take any college prep courses in high school. I didn’t take the SAT. I certainly didn’t file any applications or talk to any counselors or recruiters about college.

Probably to prop up my self-esteem, I remember telling whoever asked--teachers, the guys--that I intended to go to a “junior college” and get a two-year degree.

But whatever ambition I had was focused in other directions. At 18, I delivered a mean pizza and took the test to be a meter reader for the gas company. I received a notice that said I got an 80 on the test, a passing score.

My mom was proud and maybe a little relieved. All I had to do was wait for the call.

A year later, I took my first college class: Introduction to Biology at Valley College in Van Nuys. I got a D.

I completed a class at a time for a couple of years. I’d start off with high hopes and a full load (or close to it), but, one by one, drop almost everything.

College seemed hard. The reading made me sleepy and I had a tough time motivating myself to come to class.

Then came 1977, the year that changed my life. I started the spring semester with my usual load, only to see it dwindle down to a public speaking class. We could get up and talk about whatever we wanted, so long as it fit a broadly defined purpose (to persuade, to inform, etc.)

I remember doing silly things, like trying to persuade people that batting around a Styrofoam coleslaw cup (I was still in the pizza delivery business) was “America’s newest and fastest-growing sport” and presenting an oral biography of a three-pound rock.

I got an A.

For the first time in my life, I thought college wasn’t something just for other people.

Perhaps to prove to myself that it wasn’t a fluke, I signed up for two classes in summer school: business law and beginning reporting. I got a B in law and an A in journalism.

A world opened. I remember looking at the fall class schedule not defensively (which of these things can I pass?), but hungrily. I circled every class I wanted to take at some point during my life.

I circled something like 747 units, pared it to 19 for fall, completed all of them and made the dean’s list.

It’s almost like my life has had two time lines: pre-1977, and 1977 to the present. I can’t tell you exactly what changed in 1977. Certainly normal maturation played a part. Also, I stumbled onto the good side of a mutually reinforcing comfort-success-ambition triangle. Once I felt a little more comfortable, I was a little more likely to succeed. And as the success snowballed, college became the channel for much of my ambition.

But above all, my life changed for the better because a benevolent and forward-looking state provided me with a low-pressure, low-risk opportunity to see if I was college material. Enrollment was easy, classes were plentiful and the price was right (free).

Like my parents, I’m simply the product of available educational opportunities.

I don’t know what would have happened if I had been faced with 1993 community college conditions in 1977. I don’t know if I would have (or could have) paid $10 a unit for a far less rich selection of classes, much less Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposal of $30 a unit. I don’t know if I would have endured the long registration lines, waiting lists, canceled and closed classes and shriveled transfer opportunities.

I might still be delivering pizzas. The gas company never called.