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!!!

Tourists go an “see” the sights in Washington DC.   Nontraditional Students who are History Majors EXPERIENCE the monuments of our nation’s capital.  After we had a great time with the Dino Bones and Hope Diamond, Patty and I boarded one of the many tour buses around Washington DC.   Settling in, we decided to make the entire loop of the tour and then plan our stops from there.   The weather on this day was quite tolerable and we had a great ride.   Our tour guide was informative and fun.   The bus takes you to all of the main attractions and you can get off and rejoin the bus later.   First stop was the Washington Monument.   Completed in 1884, the monument is 555 feet tall and is the tallest stone structure in the world.   We took our photos from the bus and travelled on.   The bus goes past the Holocaust Museum and the tour of the US Mint.   They will have to wait until the next trip as our time was limited.   The Jefferson Memorial is another landmark that we photographed from the bus.   Next trip we have a long list of sights to go back to.    The FDR memorial is near the Lincoln Memorial area, it was not visible from the tour bus.   Arriving at the Lincoln Memorial, we decided that this would be our stop as the Vietnam Memorial and Korean War Memorial are close by.   These memorials are were all on my Bucket List so this would be a key stop on our tour.  We stayed on the bus route to see the entire loop before coming back to this stop.   Continuing on the bus we were taken into Arlington Cemetary and this is where the tours start and end.  We changed buses and trekked on.  The tour takes you past some important buildings, famous hotels and White House.   The view of the White House is limited, but to get there would be very time-consuming so a shot from the bus will have to do for this trip.   The bus takes you back down on the Mall proper where all of the Smithsonian Museums are and then heads toward the US Capital Building.   Quite impressive, we were told that the US Flags were not flying over the two wings of the Capital which means that Congress was not in session.   A stop at the Washington DC train station completed the loop.    We stayed on the bus and returned to the Lincoln Memorial where we got off and began a History Major’s experience that will stay with me for a long time.  Sorry if this narrative sounded like a “travel log” or a laundry list of sites, I needed to get these items documented before I tell my tale of this memorable visit.   The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in 1922 and is modeled after a Greek Doric Temple.   The seated statue of President Lincoln is 19 feet tall and carved from 28 blocks of white Georgia marble.  Amidst the throngs of tourists, having fun and taking the required photos smiling in front of the statue, stood a lone History Major, blocking out all around him, silent with that “rush of history” lump in his throat once again.   I took the time to read the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s second inaugural speech that is cut into the marble walls.   Somehow the words, that I have read many times before, mean so much more there.   The seated figure of Lincoln, also an image that I have seen in pictures and history books, had an impact on me that is hard to describe.  I am a WWI Historian, this was not a Fokker or the Wright Flyer, but again I was overcome by the feeling my heart being so full, as it were to burst.   The Reaching Lifelong Goals website is all about these feelings and experiences I have been going through over the past 18 months or so.   My reactions to these long-standing bucket list items have proved to be a physical as well as emotional experience and I have come to savor each and every one as something of a special gift at this point in my life.   I would only hope that my fellow Non Traditional Students can have these same experiences and feelings, each in their own personal way.    Well this is getting sappy….sorry, but as we left the Lincoln Memorial and stood on the edge of the Reflecting Pond, I could look to my left and see the Vietnam Memorial, and I knew I was in for another bout of emotional drain.   But first, we walked a short distance to the Korean War Memorial.   This is a very beautiful memorial to the veterans and dead of the Korean War, America’s forgotten war.    The 19 statues of US Army infantrymen on patrol is quite a sight to behold.   They are set against a black marble wall that has images of service personnel from all branches that seem to be floating just under the surface of the shiny marble.   Quite a striking display.   I was very impressed by this memorial, the detail and personalities of each and every soldier/statue was truly breath-taking.    I gathered my strength, so Patty and I could walk to the next History Major Dream Vacation experience of the day.

For lack of a better description, Vietnam was “my war”.   Growing up in the 1960s, I sat with a TV tray at dinner, watching the NBC news….images almost everyday of the war in Southeast Asia.   I graduated from High School in 1974, not of draft age yet as the war was coming to a close.   If I had been born just one year earlier, I could have been a name on this wall.   Not being drafted to go to war, I enlisted in the USAF anyway.   I sat in the Enlistment station in August 1974 and watched Richard Nixon resign the Presidency.   A mere 20 minutes later, I was taking the oath to join the military (the officer giving the oath told us that even though we just saw Nixon resign, it still was binding, we were swearing to the “office, not the man”…kind of a surreal memory to be sure!)   and I was off to basic training at Lackland AFB, TX.   The Vietnam Memorial is moving to many people, for a variety of reasons.   I am probably unusual in that I was not personally touched by the war.  None of my friends were killed, I can only remember a couple of them that even were “in country”.   That is not to say that I was not deeply effected by my visit to the wall.   All of the history of the time, my younger years during the war and the fact that I was born just a year too early to serve all weighed heavily on my heart as I stood there, reading some of the 58,260 names.   There were small remembrances left there that day, a fatigue shirt, (with the name Creed on the pocket) much like the USAF Fatigues I wore on a daily basis, flowers and unit patches really hit home with me.    After a short time regaining my composure, we just made it to the Tour Bus stop in time to get back to the mall.   I still needed to see the military display at the Smithsonian American History Museum so we got off at the National Mall and spent some time again in this museum.   I was keen to get to the gift shop to buy a T-shirt with Lincoln’s famous quote: “it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt”.   This will be a cherished souvenir of my trip to the American History Museum.  This visit was quick, and I included it in my narrative of the first trip to the National Mall. To complete this post about the Washington DC National Mall, I will include a couple more of my favorite photos.   At right is the WWI memorial near the White House.  The Golden Blazing Sword is a memorial to the veterans and lost of the First World War.   Since this is my main interest in my History Major journey, it is fitting. At left is one of the many views of the US Capitol Building from my collection.  The National Mall is quite an experience.  We only scratched the surface of the history there.   Our next trip will have to include the places we did not have time for.  High on this list is Ford’s Theater and the Holocaust Memorial.    This day ended our visit to the Washington DC area and we left for a visit with Patty’s sister Jennifer, her Husband Brian and my 10-year-old nephew Rafe in Oley Pennsylvania.   But, on the way there….a bucket list check off!   Gettysburg will be the next post in the chronicles of the History Major’s Dream Vacation.