Roger Werner:  

I never really got the hang of high school and my four years felt more like a prison than going to school. I look back to that time and marvel that I actually managed to graduate. I suppose I was motivated but only marginally so. I recall perhaps three or four teachers that helped me a great deal although they probably never knew it. I think perhaps if I got involved with some extracurricular activities it might of helped me but I was so introverted I elected rather to keep to myself. Thanks to my guidance counselor I managed to get accepted into college...thus avoiding the draft. I don't mind admitting that my main motivation for going to college was draft avoidance. Education and classwork were something to do and that's about it. Attending College is really where my life started as it gave me a chance to sort of reinvent myself but that took more than a year. I honestly had no idea what I wanted to do with an education. Today, such an attitude is viewed rather negatively as many people begin college with rigid career aspirations, view it as a sort of passport to a good job, and a way to earn a living. I have to say that for more the last t hing on my mind in September 1968 was a career, a job, or earning a living. I didn't chose a major until my sophomore and I suppose my goal was to become educated. I recall that was certainly the goal of my professors and instructors. I really had no idea just how well I was educated until I attended a state university on the West Coast. I almost flunked out my first semester at Belknap but fortunately, I quickly figured out how to college worked and never had a problem with grades again. College athletics helped me with my confidence but not with my personal insecurities. I'm amazed at how angry I was at that time in my life. Athletics permitted me to focus that anger in a constructive way. I suppose I had my first close friends in college. Time seemed to drag during that four years but I deeply regretted having it end in large part because I had grown so find of the people I lived and spent time with. I've always been fearful of change and graduating college was a radical change with much of the fear caused by my lack of career aspirations: i still had no real idea what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. After I left Belknap I went through a period of what one might call disappointment. I has majored in history and had also gained a credential to teach. After graduation however, I discovered that I didn't like teaching. No...that's inaccurate. I enjoyed the intellectual act of teaching; what I detested was being a teacher-baby sitter. I had no interest in figuring out how to motive students to learn. My attitude was simple: If students wished to learn, I would teach them but if they didn't it wasn't my responsibility to provide motivation. Of course, such an attitude is counter productive and it was clear to me that teaching was not really an option (I wasn't going to be a lousy teacher). What then does one do with a degree in history and a teaching credential? In the early 1970s the answer was not much! I worked in various retail and sales jobs for a while, then got a chance to break into a new career path. I was hired as a police officer for a small New Jersey City. It didn't take long for me to figure out that I hated minding other people's business and I saw enough purposeful violations of individual civil and constitutional rights that I decided I wanted no part of law enforcement. Further, no one could ever pay me enough money to shoot someone or be shot at. I left the police department for what I thought might be a better job as a Corrections Officer with the New Jersey Department of Corrections. Corrections proved to have even less appeal to me that law enforcement and teaching. I was two years out of college and still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life . I did understand that I wanted more than just a job. During the years I lived with my parents, I saw my father leave for work and come home 12 to 14 hours later five to six days a week. He detested what he did for a living. I promised myself that I would never ever sell my life for a salary. From end of July 1974 to January 1975, I worked (sort of) at a variety of silly and forgettable jobs (security and retail sales mostly) but really focused on having a good time. After almost 18 months of serious partying, I started to feel guilty about being rather aimless; I decided that it was time for me to take life serious. Since I had never taken life serious, I had no idea how to begin. Fortunately, for me a friend was registering for classes at a nearby state university and suggested I tag along. Since I wasn't working, he thought that I might find a few classes that interested me. How right he was. That trip to Sonoma State changed my life. I met the professor who would eventually become my mentor and friend, and, the person who probably had more influence on my life than anyone else. I enrolled in a couple of anthropology classes thinking I'd work towards another Bachelor's degree. It took me less than a month to understand that I had found what I was looking for--namely a career. At the time, job prospects in archaeology for white makes was pretty grim but that didn't matter since making money was not a motivation. I worked to earn enough money to buy food and gas, pay rent, and keep myself stocked with beer and tequila. In March 1977, I was working par...Expand for more