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[Akka Homestead <akkabhomestead AT yahoo.com>]

Today I spent some time looking at Sarah Palin.  I saw a CNN program on 
her that kind of bothered me.  They interviewed her sisters about her 
college transfers.  Before that program, I had no idea that she had 
attended so many colleges, and like most, I was almost instantly 
repelled by that notion-red flags went flying.  Did she fail, I 
wondered?  It was my first thought.  My second thought was , well, at 
least she stuck it out and finished her degree.  I recall a comment by 
one of her sisters that struck home with me, and that was "We were all 
told that we would be responsible for our own college education".  I had 
been told the same thing, and I told my kids the same thing.  I guess 
that is why I decided to look into this further.

I looked at several different sources to get the following timeline:

Fall of 1982:     U of HI at Hilo, according to her bio, left this school 
after 3 weeks due to constant rain.  They have no record of her 
matriculation, but we will still count this as School #1.  If it were my 
bio, I would not count it, but just to be hard, I gonna.. She probably 
withdrew with all her money even..no harm no foul.

Fall of 1982 HI Pac U        School #2 spent one quarter or semester(not 
clear 
which one)
I personally believe-no proof whatsoever- that because she started 3 
weeks late and was probably the typical unfocused college freshman, she 
probably failed some if not all of her classes.  For someone like Palin, 
it was probably a wake up call.

Note: I was in college during this time as well.  Most schools were in 
the process of changing from the quarter system to the semester system. 
 In every semester system I have ever seen, the second semester is 
called the Spring Semester, so I am making the assumption that Spring of 
83 would mean from like Jan to May or whenever the semester started and 
ended for that year.   Either way, there is no real gap between HPU and 
North Idaho

Spring 1983 and Fall of 1983    North ID College    School #3
Palin spent the equivalent of one year here.

I am making the assumption that Palin started over here...it makes sense 
to scale back if you have flunked out of a 4 year school to go to a 2 
year school for a while to get back on your feet.
I will call this her Freshman year.

After the Fall of 1983, which would have been in the winter of 1984, 
early 1984, Palin was not in school.  There is a gap in her education 
here until the Fall of 1984.   At first I suspected that perhaps she had 
personal issues, maybe even a pregnancy, but I discounted that after 
learning the following.  During that time is when she entered the beauty 
pageants to obtain scholarships.  By all accounts this is the sole 
reason she did so because she was not the "pageant type" according to 
her friends and family on the CNN interview.  They were all shocked by 
the pageant thing, but she did get a scholarship-I don't know how much.

Fall of 1984  and Spring of 1985      U of ID     School #4
This would have been her Sophomore year.

Fall of 1985 brings Sarah back to Alaska
    Matanuska-Susitna College, 14 miles from home    School #5
She apparently only spent half a year here, the first half of her junior 
year.  This, for me, begs the question of why she went home-was it 
because of Todd or some other family issue...WHY?

Spring 1986, Fall 1986, Spring 1987 U of ID  return to School #4, not #6
This would have been the second half of her junior year and her senior 
year.  She graduated, in effect, on time in the Spring of 1987.

With all of that, we can pretty much rule out that she flunked out of 
college after college.  I do believe she probably flunked out in HI. 
However, there is no way she could have graduated if she had flunked 
more than that.  Her grades may have been marginal.  I don't look at 
grades to judge ability because I, too, worked my way through college, 
and even with scholarships, many times I worked 3 jobs to do it.  My 
grades suffered, but I passed.  What I believe is that she kept 
transferring primarily due to money issues. She may have taken a wobbly 
course, but it is more on track than it would appear when you see 
headlines like "6 colleges in 6 years".
(http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hjGaAjQoUCE3VQ4N3M852LEdOVtwD9307GG00)
For one, 1982-1987 is 5 years, not 6, and most articles of this type 
seem to count Univ of Idaho twice, even though it was the same school, 
same college, same major.
If I were counting, if it were my resume, I would say that I went to 4 
schools over a 5 year period.  I guess, though, if she said that, she 
would technically be lying.  I dunno.  I just thought I would pass on 
what I did and discovered. It was actually better than I thought.  After I 
sat and looked at it, I did not get that "wishy washy feel", nor did I get a 
"she was a screw off" feel.  It actually made me 'like' her more, but I do 
realize I made some assumptions that may not have been true.  But assuming 
money was the problem, she actually did stick it out, and was creative in the 
way she got money for school.  All of that does not earn a vote, but I guess 
it does go to character. 
I also looked at the change of major thing.  She started in Hawaii as a 
business major, but it is a rare thing for a freshman to later graduate with 
the same major he/she started off with.  If she did flunk out there, then it 
would make sense that her major was listed as general studies at the next 
college.  Of course, she ended up as a journalism major.  I saw comments that 
questioned why she never worked on the newspaper or other typical 
journalistic extracurricular activity.  To me, it was obvious.  I never had 
time to do anything fun when I worked my way through college.  I never had 
time for anything extracurricular.  Again, I am making an assumption that 
might not be true, but it is a possible explanation.
 Make of it what you will.
I seriously doubt Palin will be VP.  I think Obama has this one wrapped up, 
but I don't think we have heard the last from Palin.  I think she will turn 
up again in a few years.  Time will tell.

Akka B



>From genegerue AT ruralize.com  Thu Sep 18 21:59:10 2008
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On Sep 18, 2008, at 5:31 PM, Jerry B wrote:

> Now this I would call big news ... success at manufacturing cement
> with
> no CO2 emissions ( present source of 5-10% human added CO2) by
> removing
> CO2 from smokestacks of power plants and passing it through seawater.
>
> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/01/MNGD12936I.DTL&feed=rss.news

Big news indeed. If this proves to work as it seems, he will be Saint
Constantz.