Reflections on an Academic Career.

The article presents author's reflections on an academic career. The author narrates his own experience as an academician. None of us chooses the time or place of our birth or who our parents are. The author was born in 1917 in Fort Worth, Texas, and his parents were an immigrant father who arrived in the U.S. unable to speak English and a mother born of immigrant parents who arrived similarly one generation earlier. Bilingual education was unheard of back then. They struggled, learned English, and became good citizens the hard way. The combination of circumstances made author very lucky. His parents were not well educated by modern standards but were quite intelligent; the timing enabled the author to grow up during the Great Depression. The whole family knew that they would have to work hard just to survive. Aside from several serious illnesses during childhood and adolescence, author's pre-college years were uneventful. Being in the Boy Scouts meant a lot to him. He graduated from a small high school at 16 with an adequate foundation for college.