I attended my public grade school and high school education in a time when California schools were some of the finest. The small town of Hollister provided me an excellent education that went well beyond the basics. I am often amazed at what I must have learned in those years, knowledge which surfaces at odd moments that I don’t remember learning. Besides Algebra, which I in fact use all the time in everyday life, the most important thing I learned was grammatical sentence diagramming – bless you Mrs. Jones!

I went to college early, because the music and drama programs had really gone downhill and a high school with a dress code was no place to be for a budding hippie. At Gavilan Junior College (most places call them ‘community colleges’ but we called it “high school with ash trays”) I took courses in every liberal art offered. Over the several semesters I ‘majored’ in Art, Ceramics, Drama, Music, Philosophy.

There was a one term expedition to Stanislaus State University in the middle of my first two years, where I thought I would pursue a Drama major, but it turned out the school was Teacher Education focused and I was more interested in a professional dramatic career.

The next term, back at Gavilan College, I took my first Psychology course and I was in love. The professor told me I had a natural gift for the field and would joke that she had to throw out my exam scores to get a usable grading curve for the rest of the class.

In the end, I graduated from Gavilan with a “General Humanities” major because there was not enough time to change to Social Sciences. But this proved to be a blessing because, while the Psychology program at San José State University was full when I applied, I was able to enroll as a Philosophy-Psych major. This program was dissolved during my first term and I was transferred into Psychology anyway.

I took a two year hiatus to attend the Youth With A Mission School of Ministry and to become a licensed Assemblies of God minister as a youth pastor in California and Oregon. When I returned to San Jose State for my final year I finished my degree in Psychology, along with a double minor in Drama and Music – the latter done in one 22 credit-hours semester.

Even though my favorite psych professor, Dr. Ginsberg, wanted me to become her final grad student mentee, I chose to pursue my Masters at Santa Clara University where the focus was on Counseling Psychology rather than the Experimental Psychology at SJU. I felt the counseling degree was more in line with the ministry career I was pursuing. I spent four years part-time completing the coursework and comprehensive exam to graduate in 1982 with the title “Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology – Pupil/Personnel Services.”

I have twice pursued a Doctorate program. The first was at the University of Memphis where I worked on the Doctor of Higher Education degree at their unique Center for the Study of Higher Education. About half way through the program a change in University leadership led to a dropping the major and eliminating the weekend format courses. I dropped out because my work travel schedule did not allow me to attend weekday courses.

A few years later, I wanted to pursue a Ph.D. in Psychology at Chicago Theological Seminary, mainly because my favorite author, Dr. Robert Moore, was on the staff. I was coming at the program somewhat backwards because the typical student would begin post-graduate work at CTS with a Masters of Divinity, so my main pre-dissertation coursework was to complete the theology courses. In the end, I chose to work on a Masters in Theology instead of the Ph.D. - until two recessions put the last semester’s work on financial hold.

An article about my work history coming soon.

An article about my journey coming soon.