A Philosophy Major In Texas

Who Didn’t Know What He Was Getting Until He Retired

Sam David Parker🌸
3 min readOct 5, 2023
A box of mixed chocolate bonbons. Looks yummy! Dang!
Photo by Monique Carrati on Unsplash

“Life is like a box of chocolates,” I thought Forrest Gumpily. “But my life is more like a can of mixed nuts. I can see what I’m getting, but I don’t always get enough of what I like.”

You don’t always know what you’re getting in a box of chocolates.

One day in College in the sixties, I told my faculty advisor I was choosing secondary education. That meant I would take many exciting courses applied to the school teaching profession. I had to take a curriculum class or two. I had to take a couple of psychology classes. I had to take a philosophy class.

The philosophy class was difficult and the Prof told me and a bunch of ol’ knuckleheaded boys sitting in the back of the classroom that we would fail. I knew we didn’t understand philosophy, but I wanted to be a schoolteacher, so I needed to pass the class.

Accordingly, I asked the professor how we could compensate for our lack of attention in his class. What I heard astounded me. He said to sit at the desks in front of the class, take notes, and then “…look up and nod as though you understood or thought what I said was important.”

He thought that would inspire the other class members.

So that’s what me and the other old boys decided to do. But I wanted to do more than pass the class. That’s when I decided that besides looking up and nodding as though I understood, I would say a word like “indubitably.” I’m not sure that that was an appropriate word, but it sounded like it was OK.

That’s when I got interested in philosophy.

I was getting to understand the stuff. So, I took another couple of classes in philosophy and eventually entered the master’s degree program for educational philosophy. You know, in Texas, it was a small department. The head of the department was happy to have another student. He made it easy for me, and eventually, I became a philosophy major with a master’s degree.

Of course, if you ask me today what my philosophy of life was, I will say that I was neither a realist, an idealist, or a pragmatist. I mainly wanted to get by the day without too many aches and pains or having to sit on some thistle.

This is my face. Receeding hairline, scruffy beard, kinda Irishy.
Selfie of me tryna look philosophical.

Sam is a retired drug counselor & keeps his Texas license current. An MA from UTA, he writes about addiction to substances, behaviors, and thistles of the soul.

--

--

Sam David Parker🌸

I write about addiction to substances, behaviors, and thistles of the soul. Human rights are God given rights.