Starting Problem

I've had so much going on the past few days that I'm not sure where to start.  I guess it makes sense to take care of unfinished business from my last posting, so if you don't know who Thomas Mapother IV is, I'll tell you that he is known as Tom Cruise.  I'd change it, too.  Our friend Terri in Hesperia knew the answer, so let's challenge her with the late Eugene Maurice Orowitz, a TV icon as an actor, director and producer.  Another celebrity great stolen from us far too soon by cancer.  Who has a clue?  No fair using Google.

Last Friday I drove my daughter, granddaughter and two of her friends 170 miles to Seward, Nebraska, to attend Concordia University's "Visit Day", which acquaints prospective students with the school.  My Granddaughter, Enchantra, has already been admitted, but her two friends, Ryanne and Brittany, were undecided about the school.  From my perspective, it was a dynamite visit and an impressive university.  It's small, only 1300 in the student body, but is well supported by endowments and scholarships, and I found the facilities and the classroom equipment to be first rate.  

Originally built to turn out Lutheran Ministers, the school now offers a wide selection of majors including art, which is my granddaughter's interest.  Concordia has a top notch reputation for its computer graphics schooling and their computers are top of the line Macs, so it's hard to go wrong.  The three girls were the only visitors that day looking at art as a major, so the director of the department took us on a personal tour of the art building and it left us with a deep appreciation for how the school does things.  

It's obvious that Concordia is not in the business of just cranking students through the process and taking their money.  This school spends a great deal of time with each and every student and never lets them forget that the purpose of the schooling is find employment in a career that they enjoy.   One of the university administrators made it clear that especially with freshmen, they expect every instructor to have personal and positive relationship with every student in their classes.  On the average, there are 14 students for every instructor, and in the freshman classes, all instructors carry a PhD.  I remember sitting in the auditorium at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, CA, with 500 other students for World History and again for Marine Biology.  No auditorium classes exist at Concordia.  

While TV and movies may glorify the "slacker" culture, being a slacker at Concordia will get the student a quick exit.  The antics of "Animal House" don't exist here, and any students who try to enact them will be out the door.  It was stressed by the administrators that character and integrity are expected from every student.  Impressive.  

Before we left, the area was hit by a major snow storm and driving back was not a lot of fun.  The girls all wanted to go shopping in Lincoln, which is a real city of 250,000 and about 24 miles from Seward.  My daughter Eva, having once lived in Seward, said "I know a shortcut to Lincoln".   I shouldn't have listened to her, because the drive was a harrowing experience.  The road simply disappeared beneath the falling snow and I had to follow the car in front of me hoping that he or she knew where to drive.  On this drive, I learned the real reason why the state puts noise producing grooves on the edges of roadways.  Happily, they also put them down the center stripe of the road we had taken, and if I got too far to the right or to the left, the noise let me know to correct my direction.  We got to Lincoln OK, and I spent a couple of hours in a Barnes and Noble store with coffee and a book while the girls "did their thing".  The drive back on I-80 was easier to a degree, as all the snow had been cleared, but there was a great deal of ice on the road, and of course it was dark.  I drove as carefully as I could, but was worn out with nervous exhaustion by the time we arrived home safe and sound.  

More about life in Nebraska tomorrow.