As a new high school grad in 1961, I had earned a four-year state scholarship from Wisconsin pre-DVR services, and I was excited about getting my degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
I remember going to the Madison registrar office on Bascom Hill ready to apply for school, only to find the admissions people wouldn’t accept my application because they believed I couldn’t climb the hills and steps on campus to make it between classes.
Reluctantly, I agreed to take my first two years of classes at the then Wisconsin State College at Platteville, a smaller, flat campus. I earned straight “A’s” and then was finally accepted in 1963 as a junior at Madison, where I could obtain my journalism degree.
During the summer after my sophomore year, I learned how to use Canadian crutches in the fields of our home farm, timing my pace each day so by that fall I knew I could even climb the Bascom Hill steps to get to class within the 15-minute break between sessions.
Looking back, I could have used today’s virtual options in education as well as the curb cuts and elevators now mandated by the ADA. I could have also used a mobility scooter, like my present-day Amigo, which, at the time, was not yet on the market.
But attending Platteville for two years gave me a perspective I wouldn’t have had by starting my freshman year on the Madison campus. I learned to work around a pre-ADA obstacle. And I gained a better understanding of the values of small-town, rural Wisconsin, which I needed to eventually develop the corporate communication function for a just-formed dairy cooperative that is now Foremost Farms USA.
* What setback has molded you into the more-effective person you are today?
Looking back on both my personal and work lives, I've experienced set-backs that were exactly what I needed at the time. Hindsight is most often amazing.
As a new high school grad in 1961, I had earned a four-year state scholarship from Wisconsin pre-DVR services, and I was excited about getting my degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
I remember going to the Madison registrar office on Bascom Hill ready to apply for school, only to find the admissions people wouldn’t accept my application because they believed I couldn’t climb the hills and steps on campus to make it between classes.
Reluctantly, I agreed to take my first two years of classes at the then Wisconsin State College at Platteville, a smaller, flat campus. I earned straight “A’s” and then was finally accepted in 1963 as a junior at Madison, where I could obtain my journalism degree.
During the summer after my sophomore year, I learned how to use Canadian crutches in the fields of our home farm, timing my pace each day so by that fall I knew I could even climb the Bascom Hill steps to get to class within the 15-minute break between sessions.
Looking back, I could have used today’s virtual options in education as well as the curb cuts and elevators now mandated by the ADA. I could have also used a mobility scooter, like my present-day Amigo, which, at the time, was not yet on the market.
But attending Platteville for two years gave me a perspective I wouldn’t have had by starting my freshman year on the Madison campus. I learned to work around a pre-ADA obstacle. And I gained a better understanding of the values of small-town, rural Wisconsin, which I needed to eventually develop the corporate communication function for a just-formed dairy cooperative that is now Foremost Farms USA.
* What setback has molded you into the more-effective person you are today?
Looking back on both my personal and work lives, I've experienced set-backs that were exactly what I needed at the time. Hindsight is most often amazing.