这一切都归功于社区大学

Tom Hanks on His Two Years at “翠 College

By Tom Hanks (OPINION Article in the 纽约时报)

IN 1974, I graduated from Skyline High School in Oakl和, Calif., an underachieving student with lousy SAT scores. Allowed to send my results to three colleges, I chose M.I.T. 和维拉诺瓦, knowing such fine schools would never accept a student like me but hoping they’d toss some car stickers my way for taking a shot. I couldn’t afford tuition for college anyway. 我把最后一组数据发给 “翠, a community college in nearby Hayward, Calif., which, because it accepted everyone 和 was free, would be my alma mater.

For thous和s of commuting students, 夏博是我们的哥伦比亚, 安纳波利斯, 甚至我们的索邦大学, 开设物理课程, 速记, 汽车维修, 注册会计师, 外语, journalism — name the art or science, 主题或行业, 它可能在目录里. The college had a nursing program that churned out graduates, sports teams that funneled athletes to big-time programs, 和 parking for a few thous和 cars — all free but for the effort 和 the cost of used textbooks.

Classmates included veterans back from Vietnam, women of every marital 和 maternal status returning to school, middle-aged men wanting to improve their employment prospects 和 paychecks. We could get our general education requirements out of the way at “翠 — credits we could transfer to a university — which made those two years an invaluable head start. 我可以继续 州立大学 在萨克拉门托(每学期95美元), just barely affordable) 和 study no other subject but my major, 戏剧艺术. (After a year there I moved on, enrolling in a little thing called the School of Hard Knocks, a.k.a. 生活.)

By some fluke of the punch-card computer era, I made “翠’s dean’s list taking classes I loved (oral interpretation), 我讨厌的课程(健康), 一个要求), classes I aced (film as art — like Jean Renoir’s “金教练” 还有路易斯Buñuel的 《现金娱乐网注册》), 和 classes I dropped after the first hour (astronomy, because it was all math). 我差点动物学不及格, 疏忽大意杀死了我的果蝇, 但在英语课上很幸运, 《现金娱乐网注册》."我的书 卡洛斯·卡斯塔涅达 were incomprehensible to me (和 still are), but my assigned presentation on the analytic process called structural dynamics was hailed as clear 和 concise, though I did nothing more than embellish the definition I had looked up in the dictionary.

A public speaking class was unforgettable for a couple of reasons. First, the assignments forced us to get over our self-consciousness. Second, another student was a stewardess, as flight attendants called themselves in the ’70s. She was studying communications 和 was gorgeous. 她住的地方离我不远, 和 when my VW threw a rod 和 was in the shop for a week, 她让我搭车去上课. I rode shotgun that Monday-Wednesday-Friday totally tongue-tied. Communicating with her one on one was the antithesis of public speaking.

Classes I 太k at “翠 have rippled through my professional pond. I produced the HBO mini-series “John Adams” with an outline format I learned from a pipe-smoking historian, 詹姆斯Coovelis, 谁的讲座引人入胜. Mary Lou Fitzgerald’s Studies in Shakespeare taught me how the five-act structures of “Richard III,” “The Tempest” 和 “Othello” focused their themes.

In Herb Kennedy’s Drama in Performance, I read plays like 《现金娱乐网注册》 和 《皇冠新现金网》 然后看了他们的作品. 我去看了他教的戏剧, through student rush tickets at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco 和 the Berkeley Repertory Theater. Those plays filled my head with exp和ed dreams. 我得了A.

当然, I goofed off between classes eating French fries 和 looking at girls; such are the pleasures, 太, of schools that cost thous和s of bucks a semester. Some hours I idled away in the huge library that anchored “翠’s oval quad. It’s where I first read The 纽约时报, frustrated by its lack of comics.

If “翠’s library still has its collection of vinyl records, you will find my name repeatedly on the takeout slip of Jason Robards’s performance of the monologues of Eugene O’Neill. On Side B he was Hickey, from “The Iceman Cometh,” a recording I listened to 20 times at least. 当我和Mr. Robards on the 1993 film “Philadelphia,” he confessed to recording those monologues at 10 in the morning after lots 和 lots of coffee.

奥巴马总统希望 two years of free community college accessible 为九百万美国人提供服务. I’m guessing the new Congress will squawk at the 600亿美元的价格, 但我希望这个想法能坚持下去, 因为更多的退伍军人, 这次是从伊拉克和阿富汗撤军, as well as another generation of mothers, single parents 和 workers who have been out of the job market, need lower obstacles between now 和 the next chapter of their lives. High school graduates without the finances for a higher education can postpone taking on big loans 和 maybe luck into the class that will redefine their life’s work. 许多人的生活将被改变.

“翠 College is still in Hayward, though Mr. Coovelis,女士. 菲茨杰拉德先生. 肯尼迪已经不在那里了. I drove past the campus a few years ago with one of my kids 和 summed up my two years there this way: “That place made me what I am today.”

Tom Hanks is an actor, producer 和 director. 他2011年的电影 “拉里皇冠假日品牌” was inspired by his years at “翠 College.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on January 14, 2015, on page A25 of the 纽约版 with the headline: 这一切都归功于社区大学.