Memory Monday # 68

       Senior Year!  Best year ever!  The fun of being a Senior...the excitement of the future...the apprehension of leaving home!  Neither of my parents had attended college...growing up in the Depression and having to work early in their adulthood did not make it possible.  We, my sister and I, were always brought up to the thinking of "Not IF you were going to college, but WHERE you were going to go".  So this was the year of SAT tests (or the equivelant) and checking out college campuses.
      My sister, graduating two years before me, had the  disadvantage/advantage of having gone through the process before me.  She was always the better student; I was the   "good enough to get by" student!  It was always a shock to our teachers (being from a small town, we had the same teachers all the time!) when I followed in Judy's footsteps and was so different...in all ways! She was painfully shy; I was a talker...she was concentious; I was a goof off! But I did manage to do well enough to get accepted in a few colleges!
      At the time in the 1950's only about 10% of a graduating class would attend college. Of my close friends (a gang of eight girls) only three of us were going to  go on to "higher education". Both of the other two were going to go "out of state"...that was a status symbol at that time...to not go to a "State" School!  My best buddy, Barbee was going to a small private school in Florida; and Peggy was going to the University of Arizona...so I too wanted to go out of state, but I didn't want to go too far from home!  Out of state tuitition was not nearly as expensive then as it is now.
    My home town in Illinois was near the Mississippi River on the West and the Illinois River on the East...rich farm land!  And across the Mississippi River, only 20 miles away, was the state of Missouri....and only 150 miles away into Missouri was Columbia, home of the University of Missouri...Mizzou!! So after visiting the beautiful campus, there was where I was to spend three of the four following years...with some fabulous memories I can bore you with for many weeks to come!

Seal of the University of Missouri