I had a choice to go to UC Berkeley or Chico State (now California State University, Chico). UC Berkeley intimidated me as it was in 1968. The beginning of the Angela Davis era, the Viet Nam war protests and civil rights unrest. I wouldn’t have stood a chance of survival!
After a year in college, I became ill with hyperglycemia. I kept fainting and it interfered with my ability to study and keep the hectic schedule I had, carrying 18 units and working full time.
I didn’t finish college, but ended up moving to San Diego where I lived over three years while working three jobs. I moved there to be near my husband who was in the Navy and nearly as soon as I moved there he was deployed to Viet Nam.
For many years I felt bad about not getting a degree and actually had many people who gave me a hard time about not having a degree. But one of the nicest things one of my management consultants ever did for me was to give me this list of amazingly successful people who never graduated.
My husband
If these famous professionals were competing on “The Apprentice 3: Street Smarts vs. Book Smarts,” they would be on the Street Smart team. Believe it or not, these successful men and women do not have college degrees.
- ABC anchorman Peter Jennings. (He dropped out of high school!)
- Director Steven Spielberg
- Nobel-prize winning novelist William Faulkner
- Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates
- Poet Maya Angelou
- Dell Computers founder Michael Dell
- Novelist Jane Austen
- PBS’s Nina Totenberg,
- Former anchorman Walter Cronkite
- Media mogul Ted Turner
- Director Quentin Tarentino
- Director Woody Allen
- Anthropologist Richard Leakey
- Atsronaut turned senator John Glenn
- McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc
- Inventor Alexander Graham Bell
- Inventor Thomas Edison
- Blockbuster Video founder and Miami Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga
- NBC mogul David Sarnoff
- Author Ernest Hemingway
- Architect Frank Lloyd Wright
- Roots author Alex Haley
- Apple cofounder Steve Jobs
- Airplane inventors the Wright brothers.