Ol’ Weird learned the tools he needed for life while at West Point. He even earned his nickname there.
Besides a tremendous foundation in math, the sciences and engineering, we all got well-rounded in English and other foreign languages, law, psych, sosh and history, plus a few electives. By graduation, every last one of us had upwards of 200 credit hours, a genuine BS degree so broad we were qualified to be admitted to virtually any graduate program at any university in the country. Civilian professors were thrilled by our study habits and discipline, as we knocked out program requirements with astounding effectiveness.
My own personal appreciation of our cadet academics came in 1987, when I sat for the Engineer-in-Training exam. Having been out of school almost two decades, I showed up for the open book exam with nothing but a single yellow reference book and my old slide rule.
Kids I was taking the exam with arrived with shopping carts full of reference books, notes, texts and marvelous programmable graphing calculators. Never even having seen a slipstick, they were astounded when I showed them the technology that put a man on the moon. Most of them busted the exam, but dang if this old fart didn’t max that sucker! Many thanks to our Alma Mater.
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