Thursday, September 24, 2009

30th Anniversary of First Day at Cal

30 Years ago today the high school classes of 1979 began their first day of classes at Cal Berkeley, thus officially ending our high school years. Of course, there had been a week to move into the dorms and get settled as well as the class enrollment process. But on this Monday, 9/24/79, we had to attend college classes for the first time. And my first class was 8:00 AM. English 1A. And boy, did I learn how far behind I was in my writing skills while taking that ten week class. The other classes, Math P and Poli Sci 1 were also challenging, but I will always think of the English 1A class as the one that jolted me into taking school seriously and forcing me to realize that I had to work hard to make it at Berkeley.

Also on this day 30 years ago, I attended an Elton John concert at the Berkeley Community Theater with my friend Rick Toft, also a Cal freshman from San Ramon's Class of '79. The concert was really fantastic. First, it was a relatively small venue and second, Elton John had decided to scale back from the bombastic glasses and high heel shoes and just play piano. No band, save for Ray Cooper's percussion accompaniment. We had a lot of San Ramon students at Cal and I really regret that we all went our separate ways for the most part rather than bonding together a bit more. Of course, a lot of us were ready to explore this new world rather than hold on too much to the past.

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