Hitting the books
. . . and the freeway
September, 1959. Well, this was sure different from Purdue. To get to class at USC I had to take the Santa Ana freeway to the spaghetti-bowl interchange near downtown L.A. and go south on the Harbor freeway to the USC exit. Today, the directions would be: I-5 to I-10, then south on I-110 to the USC exit. On a good traffic day it was about a half-hour drive, but it could be much longer.
There were three of us in the Hughes Fellowship program who carpooled as often as possible. One fellow---the one with red hair---had a VW 'beetle.' Three of us in that car on the freeway was, well, scary. We passed the time with some good discussions, sometimes heated, about the pros and cons of southern California life-style.
I needed 30 hours of courses to complete my MSEE degree. That's ten three-hour courses, which further breaks down into three three-course semesters and one summer-school course. The ideal schedule was three hours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. I was usually able to set up a schedule that was close to that.
Three courses stand out: Non-linear Differential Equations, Servomechanisms, and Semiconductor Theory. That last course was difficult. The text book was extremely hard to understand: every single word was important. While trying to do homework you would swear that the book didn't cover the problem. The next day the teacher would point out the three words somewhere that covered it. And of course, the same was true for tests. I don't think I got an A in that course.
In the morning when we arrived on campus, we headed for the cafeteria if we had time. Percy Faith's "Summer Place" was playing constantly on the juke box in those days. Whenever I hear that song I am transported in time and space to that place.
I did finish the course work in three semesters plus a summer school and received my MSEE degree in January, 1961.