Reaching Lifelong Goals as a Nontraditional Student

Alright, up til now, this History Major’s Dream Vacation has kind of been all about ME.   Airplanes, Trains, Ships, History Museums, I will take full responsibility for that content.   Well, on our last day in Oley, Pennsylvania while visiting  Patty’s sister and her family, we spent a day that was all about Patty.   The sweetest place on earth, Hershey Pennsylvania!   Chocolate World!  This attraction is about an hour from Oley and we took our nephew, Rafe and headed out for a chocolate adventure.   Jennifer and her husband Brian were entered in a triathlon in Reading and had left early in the morning.   This day was the only rainy one we encountered on our trip, a leftover storm coming up from Texas.    Not letting weather stand in our way, we decided to enjoy our day.   The Hershey Chocolate World venue is really something to experience.   A very high-tech amusement park is also part of the park.   Weather prohibited going on the rides, but there still is plenty to do at Chocolate World.   I would have to say that this place is major sensory overload.   An informative ride about the manufacturing of chocolate was our first stop.   Lots of animated displays about Hershey’s story, along with singing dairy cows, was really quite fun.   We then took the tour bus all around the Hershey area and learned about the huge chocolate factory, the Milton Hershey School and other sights around the area.   A very informative tour with lots of historical goodies for me to enjoy as well.   After the town tour we came up with a plan of action for the extra special activities at Chocolate World.   One thing I noticed was that all of the amusements at Chocolate World were very high tech and they all seemed to dump you out in the gift shop areas.   The “Really Big 3D Show” was a hoot, with a “host” lecturer and a slick “promoter” as hosts.   With images coming at you, smells of chocolate and mists of “rain” in the auditorium, this was a fantastic experience for us all.   Our nephew, Rafe got a big kick out of this show and wanted to see it again.    We also signed up for a “chocolate tasting” class which was again, very entertaining and informative.   Wish we could have tasted some other styles of chocolate,  but the main types (all Hershey products, of course) were represented.   The tasting room was decorated with some wonderfully colorful murals about chocolate.   I learned  about chocolate and how cocoa beans are processed as well as the different “notes” of flavor that differentiate dark from milk chocolate.    All chocolate is good, but Patty’s favorite is dark chocolate.    We were all on a sugar high and had a great time.    The Hershey Chocolate World is an experience that everyone should have.   The events all cost a pretty penny for admission, individually…   That being said, the shear joy of experiencing this through the eyes of Rafe was, as they say, priceless. This day on our vacation was supposed to be all about Patty, but I had a great time as well.   The gift shop trip was Patty’s chance to bring home a T-shirt to wear, proclaiming her visit to the Sweetest Place on Earth.    My wife was being a saint in trying to make sure that I fulfilled lifelong goals on this trip, and I was overjoyed that she was having so much fun on this day with Rafe.    The photo below was about mid day at Chocolate World, crowds of happy children and haggard adults filling the main hall.

We made it home to Oley by dinner time and spent a wonderful evening of family time with Jennifer and Brian.   We played games, discussed Shakespearean History (Jennifer has her Ph.D in that discipline) and overall had a wonderful visit.   Too short, however, as we had to leave on Monday morning to get back to Maryland for our flight out on Tuesday.    The main event for the trip on Monday….the National Air and Space Museum, Udvar Hazy facility in VA.

Tomorrow’s posting will be back to History Major stuff again, another Bucket List item checked off in a spectacular way!!

Breaking news!!  Non-traditional students find success at OSU!   My daily Oregon State University newspaper, The Daily Barometer published a wonderful article about Non Trads.  I was surprised to find my photo (at left) on the front page, above the fold on this morning’s edition.   The author of the article, Kayley Hanecek, spent about an hour and a half interviewing me about life as an older student in today’s collegiate life.   Her research into the Non-traditional Students at Oregon State was quite complete.   There are 4,615 Non Trads at OSU out of a student population of around 22,000.   The rate of increase over the past couple of years is over 8%, which is most likely due to the downturn of our Nation’s economy.   She goes on to highlight the ASOSU  Non-Traditional Student Task Force and the work they are doing on behalf of the older population at our university.   The article tells my story of being out of school for 35 years and finally coming back to earn my long desired college degree.   I am proud to represent my fellow older students.   My story is probably a little more unique than the majority of Non-traditional Students, my gap in school attendance is not the norm for the demographic.  Many of us are dealing with issues of balancing family life, work and everyday life with the goals of our studies.   The older student is a minority in education today, but a growing section of the population in higher education.   Non trads make up around 20% of the student body at Oregon State University.   Which makes the Non Trads in colleges today one of the fastest growing “minorities” .  In the Nation’s community colleges this percentage is probably higher as the older population is in a retraining mode.   The article also listed that I have been maintaining this Reaching Lifelong Goals.com blog and that I am a volunteer at the Albany Civil Theater.   (actually, it is a CIVIC theater, but we are quite “civil” to each other…)    Kayley tells my story of Non Traditional Student life in a detailed and entertaining way.  It is difficult to condense a lifetime of being a working stiff in the real world, but the author tells it like it was!   The final line of the article is my quote, “I’m unique, I’m just a geek having fun”     I do declare that  indeed, I am a History Geek and my college experience is proving to be a great deal of fun.    I am finally having the experience and fun of being a crazy college student, I’m just a little too old to pull all-nighters anymore!

The title of the article says it all “Non-traditional students find success at OSU” Open this link and have a good read!

I am sorry for the delay in new postings about my Dream Vacation.   Reaching Lifelong Goals.com was hacked last week!    I ended up with a malware infection that sent everyone to a fictitious website through a redirect error.  These people are down right evil.   The amount of problems floating around the internet by this malicious hacking is huge.   Google the problem and you get millions of hits!  Through the great help from the Go-Daddy support, I was able to remedy the problem and now Reaching Lifelong Goals is back up and running smoothly.    I decided to create a separate category for this series about my vacation to the East Coast.   The entire collection of articles about a History Major’s pilgrimage will be available under umbrella:

http://reaching-lifelong-goals.com/category/history-major-dream-vacation/

Hopefully, I will be able to finish this series up during this next week.   I still have a Major Bucket list item that was checked off, the National Air Space Museum, Udvar Hazy facility in Virginia.   This was another special experience and it deserves another two-part extensive description.   Thank you for your continued support of this series.   I have a lot to share about this experience, and I am happy that there are folks out there who enjoy my chronicles.   Reaching Lifelong Goals.com is back up and running with a vengeance now and I hope the hackers all would just stay away.   Tomorrow, we will visit the sweetest spot on earth Hershey, Pennsylvania.

I have added a few odd photos into this post just for fun.    Each photo has a story, maybe they will inspire a new post in the future…

For our last weekend on the East Coast we visited family in a wonderful small town called Oley, Pennsylvania.   Patty’s sister, Jennifer and her Husband Brian moved there a number of years ago.   My 10-year-old nephew, Rafael was a treat for Patty and I to visit.   He is quite the young man nowadays and really kept Patty going with conversations about online gaming.   Jennifer is a professor at Kutztown University which is about a half an hour away.   Being the history geek I am, this small town did not disappoint me.   The town of Oley is about 10 miles Southeast of Reading, PA.   It was founded in the early 1700s by German and French Huguenots seeking religious freedom.   One of the early settlers in the area was Mordecai Lincoln, great-grandfather of the 16th President Abraham Lincoln.   Oley’s big claim to fame is that it is the birthplace of Daniel Boone in 1734.   The Oley Valley played an important role in the Revolutionary War by sending food and cannon balls to George Washington’s encampment at Valley Forge.  The original name for this town was “Friedensburg” but that was changed after WWII as the name was often confused with a similar Friedensburg located farther North in Pennsylvania. Walking up and down the main street where Jennifer and Brian live I was enjoying all of the Victorian homes.   I found one home that was built in 1814 and is still occupied today.   Wonderful architecture and history just by walking a few blocks in either direction.  Wonderful details of these homes were a photographer’s dream as the cast iron fence to the right shows.   I did stroll through the town cemetery and was fascinated by the oldest tombstones dating back to the beginning of the 1800s.  Of special note was the grave of a Revolutionary War Soldier from the town.   Jacob Reppert, PVT Continental Line, Revolutionary War,  Born 1762, Died 1837.   To think of the history this man experienced.   I put my Historian Hat on and thought of what an excellent research paper this story could be.    This term at OSU, am taking a class called “The Historian’s Craft”    HST 310.   My professor specializes in the Revolutionary War period.   He gave me some guidance on how one would go about researching this man’s history.   During the 1830s, Revolutionary War Veterans made petitions to the US Government for a pension.   These records vary from just some info about dates  served, to complete diaries of the soldier’s service during the war.   I’m not a 18th Century Historian, as I specialize in WWI Aviation, but I somehow feel a connection with this soldier.   Maybe it was just another “rush of history” clouding my sensibilities, but I have filed this info away for a future research paper about this individual’s service history and story.   I am sure that it will come in handy for some History Class in the next couple of years.

A family treat for Patty and I was being able to attend our nephew’s first soccer game of the season.   The Oley Valley team won decisively!   Being the good Uncle, I documented the game for History!!   Rafe’s team was in Blue.   I was really impressed with the athletic prowess of their team and was as proud as I could be of my nephew!   After a nice BBQ lunch back in Oley,  the entire family group took a road trip to visit Jennifer’s Kutztown University campus.    So now this Oregon State Beaver has set foot on two colleges in the East, Univ. of Maryland and Kutztown U.   Huzzah for the Golden Bears and Terps!!    I really enjoyed this visit, Kutztown University, first established in 1866 is a little older than Oregon State.   Some great old buildings, and the Administration Building has the distinction as having a “screaming chicken” bell tower.   In the photo at left, you can see that when viewed from a corner angle, the two clocks are the eyes, and the peaks of the roofs look like an angry beak!!   I’ll have to wander around the OSU campus to see if we have a “screaming BEAVER” building!   We drove around the small village of Kutztown and I enjoyed the historical look of the main street.   It seemed like everywhere we went in this area of Pennsylvania, I was treated to cool old buildings.    This is one thing that I noticed about our visit to the East Coast, History is everywhere.   No wonder I considered this a dream vacation.   We enjoyed a fine meal at one of the “college kid” hangouts and made our way back to Oley for an evening of gaming with Rafe.  This vacation and all of the museums have really been “all about me”, finally this weekend of our trip was “all about Patty”.   The plan for Sunday was to take our Nephew to the sweetest place in the world….Hershey Pennsylvania!!    Tomorrow’s post is all about my wife’s dream vacation, CHOCOLATE WORLD!!!

You do not have to be a History Major or a Civil War nut to be deeply moved by a visit to Gettysburg National Military Park.   The Civil War is not my specialty in History, but I am a keen observer of all things in military history.    Having just taken HST 202 during Spring Term of last year, I was still interested in this period of our country’s past.   Gettysburg was “on the way” to our visit with Patty’s sister in Oley, Pennsylvania.   We planned on Friday to be a travel day, with a stop at Gettysburg en route.  I was very pleased to see that the visitor center for the National Park had just been rebuilt into one of the most impressive historical interpretive centers I have ever had the pleasure to experience.   Opened in 2008, this huge facility has a wonderful Civil War museum and visitor facilities for the battlefields.   I’m sorry to say, that we did not take the driving tour of the 6000 acre battlefield, but my visit to the museum more than made up for that.  One thing that I noticed in this facility is the cutting edge museum technology that was  evident everywhere, I’m just a geek that way, I guess.   The displays were just spectacular and the artifacts are quite significant as well.   On display was the actual pen the Gen. Grant signed the surrender papers with, the chairs that both Lee and Grant sat in and many other very important items relating to the battle of Gettysburg.   I was proud to see a copy of the Emancipation proclamation actually signed by Lincoln that was donated from a Oregon source.  The everyday life of the soldiers on both sides was displayed in an informative and educational manner.   I was really impressed with the overall feel of the museum.   Patty really enjoyed the hand-made US Flag of the period on display.   The stars were sewn on in a pattern that was unusual and it looked almost like folk-art.  Of course, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address took an honored spot in the museum.   You enter a room that is specifically designed just to sit and experience these famous words.   The actor presenting Lincoln’s words really gives the feel of the man, it was a very moving experience.   I know, but by now you should have figured I would be having one of my “rush of history” moments.   Yes, it took a while to get over hearing those words again and in such a haunting manner, as if from Lincoln himself.   Somehow, being in Gettysburg, they had much more impact on me.   It was very interesting to see the display with the positive and negative reviews of the address.   Lincoln’s words were not universally admired. Take the time to click on both of the images and read what reactions to the Gettysburg Address appeared in newspapers after the event.   The Battle of Gettysburg was a turning point in the Civil War and the story did not end there.   New historiography shows that the small town of Gettysburg was deeply affected by the battle for many months afterward.   The idea of creating a Military cemetery to take care of the thousands of bodies that were still there is a wonderful story in itself.   The city of Gettysburg was one of our stops on the way out-of-town, I really wanted to see the Train Station where Lincoln arrived.   Being a railroad history nut as well as a History Major this was a double pleasure.   The building is much like it was that day in November 1863 when Lincoln arrived.   It has been restored and had some nice displays in the passenger lobby.   I was happy that we took the time to see it. One of the items in the museum really spoke to me.  The Confederate General Paul Semmes was mortally wounded on July 2 near the Wheatfield, his loss was a blow to the CSA forces.   On display is his General’s frock that still bears the blood stains from his wounds.   The personal nature of this single artifact was extremely poignant as an illustration of the horrible carnage of this major battle.   Like many of these posts, I have left the best for last.

Along with admission to the museum portion of the Visitor’s Center, you also are treated to a very moving and well produced film about the history of the battle, the Civil War and the aftermath.   Narrated by Morgan Freeman, this film was so moving I had a hard time finding my way out of the theater.   The second major treat after the movie was viewing a 360 degree Cyclorama of the battlefield.   On a second level above the theaters, this display is a 377 foot in diameter  by 42 foot high circular image of the entire battlefield.   It is displayed with artifacts of the battle in the foreground and is an experience in itself.   I was thinking all during the presentation how great this computer simulation of Gettysburg was, so colorful and detailed.   Much to my amazement, this cyclorama is actually an artist’s PAINTING first exhibited in 1884.   The entire battle from the third day is depicted with Pickett’s Charge as its main feature.   The French artist came to Gettysburg in 1882 and made sketches from a platform.  He had input from the actual Generals and Officers who took part in the Battle.   It is considered to be accurate based on their input.   The Cyclorama recently reopened after undergoing a five-year conservation effort-the largest conservation effort of its kind ever undertaken on the continent.   I thought it was impressive just as a modern display, little did I know that this work of art was over 100 years old.    Seeing this Cyclorama in this restored condition was the highlight of the visit to Gettysburg.   No photography is allowed or I would have taken a 360 degree panorama of the entire work.   Suffice it to say, my History Major’s Dream Vacation was still in full swing, even on a travel day.   Even though we only had time to do the museum/movie/cyclorama at the visitor’s center, the experience was right up there with my other Bucket List achievements.   This was one of the most moving, gut wrenching and satisfying History Major experiences of my life.   Like so many of the Lifelong Goals this vacation had fulfilled, this day will stay with me for a very long time.

This quote from Maj. General Joshua Chamberlain after the battle is one of the final displays as you leave the museum.   I stood and read it multiple times.   I feel that it completely summed up the feelings one could have about this place in Southern Pennsylvania.   Both in 1863 as well as today, these words still ring true.

Tomorrow, our visit with Family in the quaint little town of Oley, Pennsylvania.