15 High Schools

I went to 15 high schools between 9th and 12th grades.  When I tell this to someone in person, they do a double take.  It's kind of a fun ice breaker and it leads to a lot of questions, but it's not really that complicated----my step-father was a welder and he followed the work.  He just happened to have a wife and 4 kids who were involved in all the moves that entailed, so there you have it.  Sometimes the jobs lasted 3 months, sometimes (as in Kemmerer, Wyoming) they lasted 3 weeks.  I went to four high schools in 9th grade, six high schools in 10th grade, four high schools in the 11th grade and finally, ONE high school for my senior year.  That was almost derailed when my family moved to Abilene about 2 months before I graduated.  I begged and pleaded and was finally allowed to stay with friends for that final few months. Although it was an adventure, I was very determined to graduate despite the rocky road I had to take to get there. When you move from state to state you find that, as expected, there are different requirements for graduation and for advancing to the next grade. If I started the school year in Oklahoma with an Oklahoma History class (which was required) what was I supposed to take when I moved to California mid-semester?  In California U.S. History was a freshman class and World History was a junior class, but in Texas it was just the opposite, so when I moved back and forth between those two states (which happened more than once) I was often the only freshmen amongst juniors or the lone junior in with the freshmen.  It was pretty confusing.  Once, when enrolling in 10th grade in Anaheim, CA from Hennessey, OK the counselor just did not know what to do.  She could not match up my classes adequately.  She would find a spot to put me and have to pull me out because the class was already overcrowded.  She finally handed me my schedule:  

1st period:  Attendance Office Aide

2nd period:  Counselor Office Aide

3rd period:  Attendance Office Aide

4th period:  Math

5th period:  P.E.

6th period:  History

Really?  Oh well, it was an easy couple of months.  

Once, in Houston I arrived to enroll and ended up being put in an Advanced Biology class.  I'd never even had a regular biology class and suddenly I was in the equivalent of AP biology lessons.  I had never dissected anything --- earthworm, frog, nada.  My first project was to dissect a pregnant cat and the kittens.  There were always things happening like that because there was just no consistency in my educational journey.

I did have a close call on graduating on time though.  After all those moves and then finally landing at Midland High School for my senior year, someone decided they probably ought to calculate my actual credits.  I'm sure someone drew the short straw on that assignment since it would have all had to have been done by hand.  Maybe that's why it wasn't brought to my attention until some point during my final semester that year and after my family had moved to Abilene, I was called to the Counselor's office and told that it looked like I was going to be 1 credit short for graduation and would have to go to summer school.  After all I had been through I was just not having any of that.  I very tearfully told my story to the counselor.  I had never let it out like that before.  I was a good student, I was very responsible, I was not truant or tardy, I had no control over all the moves that I had made in the past, wasn't there something that could be done?  After much consulting with others there at the school, I was told that I could take two correspondence courses from West Texas State University, but I had to get registered right away.  Thankfully it all worked out and I walked across the stage with the rest of my class in 1981.