E. Clinch at UCLA, Twice: Life Changing... Really? Sure

 Edward Clinch at UCLA, Twice: Life Changing... Really? Sure!

    I was going through old emails today. I have done that a lot in the last few months, because I have been unemployed from my main job. Part-time work has been helpful, but it does not fill up all the time. I received a job offer about a month ago, and that has been been good but slow...

    Today I deleted a bunch of UCLA alumni emails. I thought about the time that I spent there. Was it worth it? It had to be. Maybe.

    My mother and he, my father of the same first and last name, met there in 1964, I believe, training to go to West Africa as servants of the greater good envisioned by John F. Kennedy and others.

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    They went, they married, they re-settled in Bloomington, Indiana. A foreign place to them, but it would become their home. And mine, their only son along with the two older sisters.

    I would bounce across the world, to Utah, South America, back to Indiana, Utah, Chile again, the Middle East for a portion, and on to California, eventually. And while there, applying to the California graduate schools and alighting on Los Angeles.

    The rest has been history, no matter what they say.

    I did my degree there in two years, I took the foreign service exam and failed, until the third time? After I had left. And that ended up in nothing great.

    Traveling to more turn downs. Being turned down.

    A career of twists and turns. Certainly some twists. Nothing great.

    But perhaps it can all end well?

    Things have been going that way for my dad. He never earned a college degree, just a lot of other things.

    Way to go (so far), Edwards. Edwards, father and son.

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    I went there last New Year's. Was feeling the effects of norovirus, but it was still nice. The old campus. The old good weather.

    The land of Westwood promised so much.