Hayter for May 21, 2023
Mark 1967 Kay
“A Life After Graduation. Say What?
I saw some pictures in the newspaper last week of graduating seniors. They were decked out in their flat, square caps with the attached tassel, and a long robe that practically covered their shoes. Yep, it’s beginning to look a lot like the end of school.
My friend and fellow teacher Larry Salmons and I generally had graduation duty. There are a lot of duties for teachers. My least favorite was potty duty. Lunch duty was no fun either. For a few years at McCullough High, there was even a smoking duty. I’m thinking that’s been outlawed. But then I digress.
High School graduation is one of those events in life, that you look forward to from junior high on. And then it arrives. Yahoo! And then it’s over. What do I do now? It’s one of those wobbly rungs on the ladder of life.
If you’re an only child, your parents have likely made arrangements for your future. There were seven of us kids in the Hayter family. If you can afford it, you go to college. If you can’t afford it, then you get a job. If you’re one of three sisters, you get married. Not one of us was told that information. We just kind of picked that up.
My oldest brother, Larry, got a job at
Randall’s Super Market when he was a Sophomore in high school. Except for his
one-year stint as an A&M cadet, Larry had a job every year until he
retired. He was a postman for a good while. He never got to deliver the mail,
but he did sort it. I think computers do that today. Eventually, Larry got a
degree in chemistry that helped him get a job in the lab of one of the petrochemical
refineries in Pasadena.
Dennis got a summer job as a lifeguard and
worked his way through college. His younger brother, Mark, got a job in a
factory that used asbestos, benzene, and other chemicals that would evaporate
10 seconds after you opened the drum. It was the stuff used to make pipe
insulation and adhesives for fasteners.
So, during the summers, Dennis would tan
while sitting in a tall chair watching people playing around in a large
swimming pool with diving boards and a slide. And, he was given a whistle
While Dennis was doing that, his kid brother Mark was in a smelly factory mixing weird chemicals coded with numbers into huge vats at a time when safety masks were not provided until a government inspector showed up. I didn’t make as much as Dennis, but I got to mix chemicals in a hot warehouse and fill the concoctions cans, put a lid on ‘em, and then stack ‘em on pallets.
After Dennis graduated college with a degree in Phys Ed., he got drafted and went to Viet Nam. He survived and came back unscathed… physically speaking. Then he went back to college and got a Master’s in Phys Ed. and became a coach.
My draft number was 338, so instead of going to Viet Nam, I made use of my degree in forestry and became a Forester for District Six of the Texas Forest Service in Conroe. Had I kept with the job for 10 years, I might’ve become a decent forester. Instead, I quit after two years and went to Sam Houston State where I got a Master's in History and Political Science and became a high school teacher with Conroe ISD.
It was when I retired from teaching that I realized how much I enjoyed the job. I didn’t care for grading papers and preparing lesson plans, but I enjoyed talking to and with high schoolers. It helps if you can remember what it was like to be in high school.
Big Al, the youngest Hayter boy got a job with the telephone company immediately after he graduated from Pasadena High. This was back when phones were hooked to wires affixed to telephone poles. Surely they don’t still call ‘em telephone poles. And don’t call me Shirley.
Al was soon promoted to telephone repairman, where he got to go to homes and repair…uh, telephones. After that, he got the job of traveling around to small facilities that had a lot of wasps in ‘em but no windows. He would do stuff with wires. He tried to explain it to me once, but I couldn’t make sense of it. I just knew I didn’t want to be alone in a small windowless concrete structure with wasps.
My sisters, Lynda and Susan got married immediately after high school and each raised a family. Jill worked at Oshman’s headquarters for a while before getting married and raising a family. Each of the sisters ended up with tougher jobs than their brothers.
I don’t see how any of this info could benefit any of this year’s graduating seniors. No way could anyone earn enough money in one summer to pay for a year of college. And, obviously, many graduating seniors have no desire to get a college degree. That opens up many other options.
The bottom line is not, “What do I want to do?”, as much as it is, “What can I afford to do?” Fortunately, we live in a country where you don’t have to stick with your first choice, assuming you can afford a second choice.
Regardless, there comes a time in each person’s life when this question will arise. -- “If I had it to do over again, what would I do?” The answer will not change a thing. The only question that truly matters is. – “What should I do now?”
The beauty of that question lies in the fact that it does not necessarily have to relate to getting a job… unless your job means everything to you.
END
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