Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2000 21:49:57 GMT From: saabsternopsameja.com Subject: Re: "White Trash"
I resent "The Watcher" both for posting this to many innappropriate forums and for his undisguised class prejudices. That being said, does this nerdy chick have a boyfriend? Saabster 85 900 8v 5spd In article <8nn4qi$9vb$1nopsamesin.netcom.net.uk>, "The Watcher" <watcher2000nopsamswinds.netNOSPAM> wrote: > Straight from the trailer park. Perhaps I should have made the heading > "Trailer Trash"? > From the Saturday, August 19th 2000 Los Angeles Times, Valley Edition, > section B, page 10: > > She's Only 14, but > More Than Ready to > Hit the College Books > By MATTHEW EBNET > TIMES STAFF WRITER > > FULLERTON-The mother and daughter sit not two feet apart at a table at Cal > State Fullerton, and it's clear the two still live in vastly different > worlds. > It is more than a generation gap. The mother, a waitress, is 35, and the > daughter, a genius, is 14. But today the two somehow are closer than ever, > partly because the high-school-educated mother perused her daughter's > textbooks for the first time, but mostly because it's the day they've come > to Orange County to put a little girl from Idyllwild in college. > Shawna Carlson on Tuesday will become the youngest person ever to attend Cal > State Fullerton full time. To boot, she's entering as a junior and taking > five classes, one more than a full load. > "She was my first child," said Cheryl Carlson, Shawna's mother. "I thought > it was normal . . . how smart she was, how she was walking when she was 7 > months . . . It took a while to realize what we were dealing with. But here > we are." > Shawna, who uses phrases such as "layered contextual stuff" and out of > boredom slept through classes at Mt. San Jacinto College, where she got her > associate degree this year in social behavioral studies, will continue to > live with her parents in a mobile home in the Riverside County mountain > community of Idyllwild. But three days a week, she'll live with her > grandmother in Fullerton, taking classes two days and studying on the other. > Does she have trepidation about attending a four-year school? > "When I was [in community college] I didn't really understand pressures or > that I was different from other people in class. I was studying. I don't > feel any pressure now." Shawna said she might not be old enough to > understand the pressures of being so young at a university. All the better, > she said. "I'm here for the teachers." > Shawna defies stereotypes. She is not a geek; friends come to her birthday > parties. She fights with her two younger sisters over compact discs. > It's hard to tell when folks realized Shawna's mind contained such > multitudes. It could have been when she walked before crawling. Or when she > began reading adult books at 4. Or when she balanced the family's finances > before she was 10. But her mother figures the realization might have come > the day Shawna was reading some fat book on the couch. "I couldn't go near > her. She was in another world. She was 7." > > Wants to Pursue > a Career in Law > > Shawna has read George Orwell's "1984" 10 times. She read "War and Peace" > twice, but the book bored her. For a while, computers tweaked her mind. Her > job last summer was to help an Idyllwild man build Web sites and computers. > She built a PC from scratch. But that eventually bored her, too. She didn't > want "a life in a cubicle behind a computer. Ugh." > And so she wants to become a lawyer. She's majoring in political science and > political justice, and wants to be a criminal prosecutor. > But with her brains, why Cal State Fullerton and not Harvard or UCLA? > Cheryl Carlson and her 39-year-old husband Doug, a roofer, simply don't want > their daughter that far away, or in a town without relatives, or in a city > whose harshness would break a small-town girl. > Beyond that, the parents say, they weren't aware of scholarships and grants > that could help her. > Shawna's parents are paying for her education and saving to give her a > laptop, something she's wanted since she was 7. > > Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.
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