I'm Dr. Mark Schultz, running for school committee in the town of Natick, Massachusetts
This is the Frewsburg Cental School Debate Club circa 1965. I'm the handsome fella fourth from the right in the back row. Two future lawers, four engineers, one physician, two Ph.Ds and one minister are pictured here. Note the lack of internet, ipods, laptops, cell phones and all the other electronic junk now considered an essential part of an academic career. In the background, you might be able to just make out shelfs of books, for this was a library of that era. Surprisingly, none of the books (to my knowledge) were printed on parchment.
Frewsburg is a small town in western New York. When I was growing up, that area was very republican and very conservative. Barry Goldwater did well there in 1964. My Grandfather, who raised us, was perhaps the only democrat in town. He owned a one person business called Acme Patterns, which put him at the beginning of the phone book (no google then). I learned a lot from him, and he embossed the back of his business card with the twelve principles of his life code, which I've repeated here:
- The value of time
- The success of perseverance
- The pleasure of working
- The dignitiy of simplicity
- The worth of character
- The power of kindness
- The influence of example
- The obligation of duty
- The wisdom of economy
- The virture of patience
- The improvement of talent
- The joy of originating
For me, that pretty much sums up the characteristics that a "self actualized" person should strive for. I hope that if he's looking down on me from Heaven, he thinks I've done a good job living up to his example.
After high school, I attended Jamestown Community College, which at that time was a very decent instution. This is a picture of me working on my first car in about 1967. How many kids buy their own cars these days? I majored in Chemistry, since I didn't have any idea about what I might ultimately want to do. I transferred to a 4 year school within the state university system and got a BA degree in liberal arts, chemistry and labwork having lost their appeal by then. Still no idea what I wanted to do, but I was a big winner in the first draft lottery (number 34) so I expected I'd be spending a couple of years working for Uncle Sam.
Anyway, I graduated from college in 1970, during the height of the Vietnam war protests. I was pretty apolitical and would have gone to war had I been directed to do so. I was saved from that unpleasentness by flunking my draft physical. I didn't contrive to do so, but the doctors at the induction center picked up the first tell-tale signs of a neurological problem which was to blossom into full blown multiple sclerosis many years later.
The country was in a recession then and while I sent out over 100 letters for a job, I got exactly zero offers. Not knowing what else to do I went to graduate school, starting in a psychology program but quickly switching to engineering so that I would not have a repeat of being unemployable when I finished. During this time I got hooked on computer programming and spent the next 27 years in various aspects of the computer industry.
First there was aeorspace/defense where I participated in many interesting projects and met many talented people. One of my managers wrote much of the software that took Neil Armstrong to the surface of the moon. I participated in a very small way in the early days of the GPS system. We figured there might be a civilian market for maybe 5000 units. When the Berlin wall fell I knew that defense budgets would be shrinking so I moved on to manufacturing. Reinventing myself once more. Again, many interesting projects for LTX, Morotrola and the Foxboro Company as well as my own startup which didn't work out so well; I'm an engineer not a businessman. I also did a 5 year part time stint teaching at the State-of-the-Art program that Northeastern ran. After 9/11 I was laid off and decided to make a major career change. So I went back to school.
I recieved a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Boston University in the spring of 2009 at the young age of 60. Talk about deja Vu all over again. I now am employed by the Veterans Administration as a Health Statistician. I feel qualified to be a school committee member because I know the value of education. I've re-invented myself three times in the course of my career. I have unconventional ideas about education and am not afraid to not follow the crowd. I always ask what works and what doesn't. I like people but that doesn't mean I'm a go along to get along kind of guy.
This is a great book, by the way.