CHESSNOID

The day after Christmas is a nice day to just relax and take in the year.  Yes, there are a million sales out there if you want to get a good deal.  All you have to do is brave the crowds at the malls.

What did I do?  I just reflected about all the great things I have been able to experience in my life.  For some reason I started thinking about my college days at Woodbury University.  When I enrolled there back in 1985 (yikes!) it was still located in downtown Los Angeles.  It was in my last year of school in 1988 when the university moved to Burbank.

I tried to locate an old picture of my original campus on 1027 Wilshire Blvd on the Internet, but can you believe I could not find one in google.  So I tried all the other search engines like Yahoo, Bing, and whatever I could think of.  They tore down the 4 story building many years ago, and now it is just a parking lot.  I believe they are building a new skyscraper there since we don’t have enough in downtown Los Angeles.

I went to the Woodbury website looking for pictures the way I remembered it, but only came up with these tiny pictures.  And these are definitely before 1985.  However, I do remember the front of the building did look the same as  when I attended.

I don’t know why but I get very obsessive about finding things the harder it is to locate.  I even went on YouTube, looking at old downtown LA clips since the building was there for over 50 years.  If you have a picture of the old Woodbury building, please email them to me.  I would really appreciate it.

While I was looking at their website, I clicked to see how much tuition is now.  It just amazes me how much tuition is nowadays.  I believe it was just shy of $30,000 for one year.  That is crazy!  I know it is like that at all private schools, but really how do they expect high school graduates with no jobs to come up with that type of money.  Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for my education, but that type of money seems unreasonable.

On average most students take 4 years to finish school, so that would equal to about $120,000 in tuition (or student loans) before you get your first real job.    The average American household income is about $50,000.  I really wonder how it is possible for kids to go to USC, UCLA and other private schools nowadays.  You would think rich parents, but I think they are a dying breed in this economy.

Back on the subject of my old school, I found some blogs of current students attending there.  Very interesting stuff. I wish we had computers and internet back then.  I think it would have been fun recording my thoughts like I do now and looking back on them at a later time.

Anyways, I started thinking about old classmates from Woodbury and wish I had kept in touch with them.  I did locate a couple, but quite honestly without knowing their last names that search ended fast.  That did inspire me to go look at high school classmates since I remember their names both first and last.

Sure enough, I signed up and saw quite a few people I knew.  There was even a 20 year class reunion4 years ago and one of the people who organized the event was nice enough to  post pictures.  Of course I looked at them, and was very shocked at how old everyone looked.  Wow, everyone looked old.  Of course, that made me think, Holy Crap, I am that old too.

It really is weird to see your old friends look like their parents now.  I didn’t find everyone I had hoped to find, but I went ahead and registered just in case anyone from my class got nostalgic and wanted to look me up.

That’s enough of my ranting for now.  Thanks for stopping by and have an excellent new year!

Cheers.