I. The Journey of Sights and Sounds
Chapter 4: The Hopelessness of Group Z
Moving on from Sherman Middle School, I went to Galileo High School. Those were the years of social chaos in the Bay Area with the Vietnam War and its protests, sit-ins at colleges, the Hippy Movement with “Free Love”, and “Down with The Establishment”. I was aware of them, but I wasn’t involved in them.
My parents emphasized education as the way to upward mobility, to financial freedom, and to success. If I didn’t want to live like my parents in Chinatown, I needed to go college so that I could get away Chinatown. Academic excellence was the key word.
For me, the high school years were academicly crushing. I was given an IQ test. I was placed in the Z group of the XYZ. What’s the Z group? It’s the slow learner. My friends in their junior and senior years took calculus, trigonometry, physics, chemistry, Latin, German, advance literature, etc. Most of my friends graduated and went on to Cal-Berkeley, Stanford, or some other State University. I was taking remedial English, woodshop, home economics, Spanish I, Civics, and I barely passed geometry. My GPA was 2.4 and that’s getting A’s or B’s in woodshop, home economics, metal shop and ROTC. I was ashamed of myself when I heard the classes my friends were taking. I didn’t dare say what classes I was taking!
I recalled sitting there taking the SAT test. I just stared at the math problems, I couldn’t solve them, especially the word problems. I read the short stories, but the answers eluded me. The verbal and grammar sections were beyond me. I didn’t understand why I go, you go and he, she it goes. I thought it should be I go, you go, and he, she it “gos.” You just add an s to the end of the letter. My SAT score was so low that my school counselor told me NOT to apply to college but just get a job!
When I heard those words, they were like a death sentence. Don’t even apply to college! Am I going to be like my father stuck in Chinatown the rest of my life! I didn’t want that but what options did I have? City College was the only route for me. They have to take everyone, even dummies like me.
Even if my life depended on it, I couldn’t solve math problems of two trains moving toward each other or the angle of something. My papers were filled with red ink with lack of subject-verb agreement, run-on sentences, incorrect punctuations, etc. I stuttered when I spoke and when I read something I didn’t fully understand it. It was as if they were just letters or words on a page. There was no connection or meaning to those words. If my high school counselor had no hope for me, I was truly hopeless.