Alan Stein:  

How do I sum up my life since 1977, when there was no such thing as compact discs, the internet, cell phones, HDTV, MP3 players, Wii, etc? When Jimmy Carter was president and the "Republican Revolution" was just an unrealized nightmare that was still years away from being realized with the election of that old B-movie actor dude? When John Lennon was still alive and well (I still really miss his presence) and Madonna had not yet made a record? When marijuana filled the air at every rock concert and showing of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show? When WMHS constructed a "smoking shed" for the students' use (it's very hard to believe now) that was used as much to light-up joints as it was for cigarettes? Well, I can't really and, as Stuart Smalley would say, "That's OK". It takes the pressure off just knowing that, given my high school "outsider" status, I won't be getting many visitors to my profile and hence I have almost the same degree of autonomy and freedom in writing this as someone does when writing a private journal entry. After WMHS, I graduated from Suffolk County Community College with an A.A. in Nothing Useful, and then headed off to SUNY at Geneseo where I got my first taste of real freedom, which, of course, I enjoyed. At some point in my junior year, I got a little freaked out when I knew that the time was coming for me to declare a major, and I had not a clue as to what I wanted to do with my life. I wound up visiting my sister in Baltimore in the summer of 1980 and I remain in the area still, although my sister returned to New York many years ago. I ditched Geneseo for the low-wage work world in Baltimore for a few years so as to "find myself". After a while, it dawned on me that I wasn't going to be one of those few fortunate people for whom a light bulb goes off in their head to tell them when they hit upon their life's purpose. Instead, I pragmatically reviewed the courses that I had taken up to that point and, realizing that I had taken more sociology courses than anything else, enrolled in Towson University where I got a B.S. (a pretty accurate description, I might add) in Sociology in 1986. This was followed by a Masters in Social Work degree (MSW) in 1991. Even before I went to Social Work school, I worked in human service related jobs for years and, all throughout my degree program, I worked in a local Department of Social Services branch doing Adult Protective Services work (if you know of a "vulnerable adult" who is being abused, neglected, or exploited, they are the folks that you call, at least in Maryland). I worked in ...Expand for more