I look back at my school days and seems I took little interest, for some reason my hand writing was terrible, that I pasted on to my sons. My first son's mother had the most beautiful hand writing, took to a calligraphy pen with no effort after I gifted a set to her as she had never used one. Yet my son has my horrible hand writing.
Was not all that good with spelling either and I hated English classes at school, more so with the English teacher in high school. How ever, in primary school we had these comprehension cards to do as exercises. If I recall correctly you had to read them the answer question, I excelled doing them.
Parent's were illiterate and placed little value on education so they were happy to for us kids to get a job and drop out of high school as soon as we could. I dropped out of year 9 high school not long after turning 14, non of my 4 brothers finished high school and not sure if my sister did.
It was when I was working on the prawn trawlers that I took to reading books, just novels. Sending months at sea and having time to spare at time it was a good way to pass the hours. But I really got into reading and before long would looking to swap books with people on other trawlers.
From there on in I would read often but mostly favourite authors and stuff recommended to me then I started using libraries, it was wonderful access to all those books without having to buy or swap. So it was in the libraries that I ventured into the non-fiction section and I started enjoying those, quite sure it was a book "Psychology 101" that really got me into the non-fiction.
So got right into reading Psychology and related subjects to the point I considered getting into uni to study Psychology. I did look into it, twice in fact but the fact that I was a high school drop out meant it was a difficalt path to get in to Uni.
LOL I had a similar issue getting into TAFE to do a business course, need to do an exam to show I had and education level of a year 10 student. Not sure what my result was but was enough to get me in, funny a young lass in that exam complained that the time we where given didn't allow her to do much more than one page. Gees think I got through more than ten.
So I get into tafe for a certificate lll business course, got through that and was able to advance to certificate lV and then completed a Diploma. It was as I was finishing the Diploma that I found out that would make me eligible for entrance to Uni and I would have credits, oh what the hell I applied got in to Uni and graduated with a Commerce Degree, Double Major Management and Marketing
Funny when I first mentioned to my mum I was going to Uni she said, how can you do that you have horrible hand writing. Why is it doctors are renowned for bad hand writing?
Well I must say if not for word processor and computers I could not have got through Tafe an Uni, I still laugh that will over all I got good grades my grades for hand written essay exams was terrible. I am quite sure the examiner had so much trouble reading mine they just gave me 50%, fortunately essay exams where only a few.
That was quite a few years of education as a mature aged student but I quiet enjoyed it
