Editor’s Note: As I indicated Sunday two weeks ago in the introduction to a series on the importance of the press in making democracy work, there can be no doubt that experience matters. This is the third part of a series designed to show how experience matters when it comes to understanding media and politics — and how to make democracy work. It is a very rough first draft of what will eventually be a literary, non-fiction memoir published with ink on paper in book form.

In case you missed Part 2, Chapter 1:
Musical Chairs and The Summer of ’79

Chapter 2: The Pioneer — To Print or Not to Print

by Glynn Wilson

When I first stepped into a college classroom it was a true revelation. I noticed right away there were no bars on the windows or fences surrounding the property. There was no assistant principal watching from the roof, making sure no one left campus for lunch — or Tom Foolery.

When you make it to college, the schedule is not constrained to an 8 in the morning jump-start and a 3 in the afternoon cookie. Up on college hill, you could come and go as you pleased, even sign up for any course you wanted to take — at any time of the day or night.

And no one yelled at you for smoking. In fact, in those days, you could smoke right in the classroom while the professor lectured. You could bring your own portable ashtray to class. Sometimes the professor smoked too. I thought that was pretty cool.

Unlike my experience in high school, where let’s just say I was considered something of an outlaw or a rebel, I took to college life like a wood duck takes to water. I was a tad older than some of the freshmen, but still young enough to fit right in.

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