Robert Stearns:  

I skipped the 11 grade and started university at 16; and, at that age, clearly, I did not know what I was doing. First, I went directly to U. of Washington for the summer quarter and then down to Portland's Lake Oswego area to attend Lewis Clark College for fall and spring semesters. Feeling that I was on a roll and still not knowing what I was doing, I went to Stanford for the summer quarter where somehow I got some common sense at 17 to slow down the pace a bit. During that summer I told my parents that I was going to earn my way through life entirely on my own after completing the summer quarter at Stanford. (Footnote: I was self-supporting from then on; and now my poor son and daughter have had to do the same. It's about teaching them self-reliance. My daughter began this process at 17 and figured it out immediately. At 21 she is now the vice-president of a northern Virginia medical organization.) So then I had to get a job. Thankfully I had a brief experience as a substitute paperboy in Medford. As I was just 17 in Palo Alto, a paperboy was about the only job I was qualified for. My paper route allowed me to survive until I reached 18 and then I immediately secured a position with the Palo Alto Post Office as a substitute mail carrier. Just a few months into my new job I received a notice that I was going to sooner or later have to report to the draft board. So I applied for colleges/universities that were inexpensive because I was now paying the full bill. I applied to the state school of the University of California at Berkeley and the US Military Academy at West Point, which would be free, if I could get accepted. From the State's Congressional Representative I received a principal appointment to West Point and began my tenure there at 18 in July for Plebe Barracks. In the fall, I participated in the academics and found the academics to be watered down, not academically stimulating and tried to resign and was successful in January of the following year. I went back to the San Francisco Bay area and got a job at IBM. A coworker at IBM gave me their spare Austin Healy to use to go to the East Coast, with the provision that when I got a job there, I would start to make payments on the car. So I went to New York City, at 19, via Mexico City. At NYC, I secured a job at the New York Stock Exchange at Wall Street and lived in the Upper Westside. But a few months into that job a received a notice that I had 90 days to report to Oakland, California back in the Bay Area to enroll in the reserves, which I was obligated to do as I had resigned from West Point. So in March of that year, at age 19, I started heading west, but ended up in Florida, as it was spring break. I met a mature woman, three years my senior in Jacksonville, Florida. She was an interior designer and already had earned a related degree at Univ. of North Carolina at Charlotte. We spent a good two weeks together and mutually decided we were meant for each other, so we upgraded the convertible to a Jaguar XKE and put all of our possessions in and on the XKE convertible and headed West. I enrolled in the reserves and also the University of California at Berkeley where I was to earn a degree in architecture. My wife, we got married in Laredo, Mexico on our way to the West Coast, earned a masters in interior design at Berkeley.... While a UC student I bought, remodeled and sold homes in the Berkeley/Oakland hills -- specifically, in Piedmont and Piedmont/Montclair. My wife wanted me to become a bartender, which was interesting because I did not like to drink. But it turned out she did in a major way. So she took a one-way ticket to Alaska where she could blend in. She still lives in Alaska and, ultimately, had a rewarding career as a director of a post secondary art program. And back to me...After completing my undergraduate degree in architecture and having a lifestyle way beyond any of my architecture professors, I decided it was time for a literal change of venue. I sold my home with a few of San Francisco, the Golden Gate, and sunset to I buy a semi-tractor. I went to Indianapolis to be trained to move peoples furniture across America. I did this, moving people's furniture, as an owner-operator and I contracted out to a major moving company. After three years of moving people's furniture and seeing the country as a well-paid hitchhiker, I thought it might be wise to have a more stable lifestyle and return to a university to get a graduate degree. So from my extensive cross-country travels, I decided Tucson, Arizona was the best place to start my graduate work. I stopped my semi by the University in Tucson and talked to the Dean of Counseling. I said I was interested in getting a Masters in counseling and he said he had too many women in the program and not enough men, so I was accepted on the ...Expand for more