After World War II, and my discharge from military service, I went to live in New York City. There, a Veterans Adminstration official said I must become a Physics Major if I wished to attend Columbia University with tuition paid for by the "G. I. Bill" (for which I was eligible, after 5 years in the Army Air Corps). I'd been a weather observer and forecaster in the Service, but the nearest meteorological major was at Cornell U., Ithaca, NY.

I really wished to major in Journalism at this school (considered the best Journalism School in the world), so I could become a science writer. And I was totally unprepared for a physics major.

How unprepared? In going to college, our son, Tim (music major), had more precollege math than I did. In going to college, our son, Chris (archaeology major), had more precollege math than I did. In going to college, wife Esther (French major) had more math than I did. My last math course had been 9th Grade (JHS) algebra. A reschooled dropout, I qualified for credit in a HS Physics Course by a home-written test and 2 consecutive hours of Laboratory experiments, in making up a semester's work for graduation in only 2 weeks at Senior High School, Tulsa, OK (written up for years as one of the "thirty best in the country"!).

But the VA official forced me into physics to simplify his work-load. Columbia University registered me as a Physics Major because they wanted my "G.I. Bill" money. So began my 8 years of FEAR! (of my studies) and LOATHING! (for the quasi-recondite math and physics lectures) at Columbia U. and New York University.

We had no resident President. The month I entered Columbia, Dwight Eisenhower went AWOL to Europe become Head of NATO without relinquishing Columbia Presidency to use as a base for running for American Presidency -- leaving a "Junta" with questionable legitimacy to run Columbia. I and my fellow also had no resident Dean.

You could not enter Columbia College if over 26 years of age, average age of Veterans at this time. So a night school, School of General Studies, became a degree school to collect "G. I. Bill" revenues.

Most of our SGS profs and instructors had no offices; we consulted with them on Campus park benches.

Louis Hacker, appointed SGS Dean, left Oxford long enough to accept the office and returned to Oxford. Some of us first saw our Dean for the first time at a Alumni cocktail party after graduation. The Assistant Dean, Jack Arbolino, tried hard to help us, but had little clout. (Arbolino later went to Princeton and established the "Advanced Credit Program".)

The Registrar's Office lost (but found) all of my records 3 times during my 4 years there -- the last time, just a month before Graduation.

I never once had a curriculular adviser in my major, either in Physics or Mathematics. My first year adviser was an English instructor who put me into College Algebra and Calculus at the same time, although I did not, currently, have the course requirements for Calculus. I later studied (essential!!!) Analytic Geometry. But I was never allowed to take a course in Trigonometry! (Ironically, on becoming a teacher, Trig was the first course I was assigned! But, as I show elsewhere, I discovered, then extrapolated, a (Cauchy-originated) generatic method of teaching Trig as a simple vector-gnomon extension of arithmetic.)

My second year adviser was a Chemical Engineering prof. For the 3rd and 4th years, my curricular adviser was an Astronomy prof.

The matter of adviser was especially critical at Columbia because the Catalog could not be trusted to advise you in choosing courses.

Here's how my shift from Physics major to Math devolved. In 4 years at Columbia -- during 30 course hours of Physics, 32 course hours of Mathematics, 12 course hours of Chemistry -- I never once got a prof to answer a technical question -- until this Post-Graduate summer course in Atomic Physics. The prof had just started to answer my query as to how probability entered quantum theory, when a murderer's shot scared hell out of him, so he never finished answering my question.

This communication-breakdown, coupled with a traumatic lab experience ("Sit on it!"), made me give up Physics, switching to a Math Major at New York University.

For more lurid details, see "The Anti-Electron Murderer".