By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — Forty years after graduation from UCLA with a bachelor's degree in political science, I'm back in school again.  I've enrolled as a graduate student in the history department of San Diego State University.  Yesterday, orientation day, ended with a Jewish flavor.

Prof. Lawrence Baron, the history department's advisor for graduate students, had bagels and cream cheese, or lavash and hummus—what he called an intercultural snack—for students and professors who attended the graduate history department orientation in a Storm Hall classroom. I chose a bagel, even though on occasion, I do like to spread hummus on lavash, a flat bread favored by Arabs  Hummus is pretty much a staple at our house, because our Israeli son-in-law, Shahar Masori, loves to whip it up and bring it over.

Baron said his bagels were purchased from a shop that makes them the old fashioned way—boiling them before baking them. He had nothing kind to say about the bagels that are simply baked by mass production outfits.  My guess is that Baron, who previously served as director of SDSU's Lipinsky Institute for Judaic Studies, shared the sense of cultural violation I felt the day the McDonald's chain placed  four bagel combinations on its menu—each topped by a different combinations of pork breakfast product.

Prior to Baron's little get-together , San Diego State University's Graduate Division held a far more formal orientation in Montezuma Hall, which is a large lecture venue in the students' Aztec Center.  Although emcee Dr. Penny Wright, the associate dean for graduate affairs, packed the orientation session with presentations by nearly a dozen speakers, there were some lighter moments leavening the steady stream of serious information deemed essential for incoming graduates to know.

For example, SDSU Vice President Tom Scott, who runs the San Diego State Research Foundation, told us the origin of the term "bachelor's" degree, which presumably all of us had earned.  It has nothing to do with the idea of being an unmarried male—which would have seemed silly, given that more than half the people receiving the degree nowadays are women.  The term really was taken from the French and then corrupted by some Oxford types.  Cheval, in French is a horse; chevalier a knight.  A bas-chevalier is a lower knight.  Scott said that approximately in the 12th century some  Englishmen turned bas-chevalier into bachelor, "moving it from the arena of combat to academia."

Next Rayanne Williams, the registrar, was introduced.  She's the official who, among other tasks, will make certain that students comply with all the rules about adding and dropping courses before this semester's Sept. 18 deadlines. Using a computer with a projector, she started to demonstrate how this is done via SDSU's web portal. As we all watched spellbound, she typed in her password, hit the enter button, and it failed to execute her command.

"We trust you to do this, and I can't even do it!" she said with perhaps a twinge of embarrassment..  Try and try again, and a demonstration sheet was before us.

Dr. Darlene Willis not only is the dean of students, she is something of a cheer-leader.  "Good morning!" she greeted us all.  "G'mng," we mumbled.  She would have none of that.  'GOOD MORNING!" she insisted.  "Good morning!" we tried.  Willis told us that she considered administrators, faculty, staff and students all to be part of a team at SDSU, and then paraphrased her pastor as saying that in "team," there are "no big I's, no little u's." She didn't tell us "y." 

Dean Willis recalled those days of our youth—yes even mine—when school kids played dodge ball on the playground.  If the ball hit you, you were out.  If you caught it, the thrower was out.  Being graduate students can be like playing dodge ball "trying to catch things thrown at you, and not getting knocked out," she declared.

I knew what she meant.  Even before coming to campus, I had tried to peel the parking decal to put it onto a card for my dashboard.  It got all snarled up, and it was unusable.  That meant standing in line at Public Safety office to get a new parking sticker. Wouldn't you know it, there wasn't any convenient parking anywhere near the place!

Crystal Schloemer, the president of the Graduate Student Board, invited us all to a party.  I won't be able to make it, because I'll be in a seminar class, but perhaps hundreds of other graduate students may take her up on it.  It's at 6 p.m., Tuesday, Aug. 29, in the President's Suite of the Aztec Center.

Kimberly Elliott of the Student Health Service began her presentation with a confession. "I might go into a coughing fit," she said,  "It's been going  on a few weeks."  Maybe it was just me, but I thought it was rather ironic that the lady from health services was the only speaker so afflicted.  Terrible coincidence, I imagine.  Elliott also told us that we need to prove that we were vaccinated for measles and rubella.  Let's see, I'm pretty sure I had it done when I was an infant, but at age 61, I'm having trouble remembering.

Debbie Richeson from the Public Safety Office told us we really ought to lock the windows and doors of our cars, and not tempt thieves by leaving valuable things in plain sight. Students have had IPODs, wallets and computers taken from their cars, she said.  Gosh, I'd better lock into the trunk the  Entertainment book that Nancy and I use to save money when we dine out.  Ditto my AARP's card!

Richeson also told us to program Public Safety's phone number into our cell phones, just in case we need help. If we simply phone 911, bureaucracy will step in.  The call would be routed to the California Highway Patrol, whose dispatcher in turn would determine the caller's location, and thereafter inform the caller to call the SDSU campus police.  So, said Richeson, it's best to program Public Safety's number in the first place: (619) 594-1991.

Associate Dean Wright not only was our emcee, she was a presenter as well.  Yes, you can buy the Graduate Bulletin at the book store, she said.  But you can also access it online for free!. Now that's news you can use. Graduates really should familiarize themselves with all the material covered between pages 12 and 42, she said. 

Another Wright way of doing things: we should all memorize our Red ID Numbers; they're asked for all the time.  Red ID Number?  When I was a lad, having such a thing could get you hauled before a congressional committee and questioned about all your associates! 

(To some people the McCarthy era is "history," but later, History Prof. Sarah Elkind told me that so far as she is concerned anything that happened within the memory of people still alive should be termed "current events."  I wonder if she would include my cousin Sara Yaffe in that formula.  She's 102)

Dr. Steve Kramer, the interim dean of the graduate division, followed Associate Dean Wright to the lectern.  He was kind enough to suggest that we all stand up and stretch before he made his presentation, "but don't leave!" he hollered after some students.  Once we settled back into our seats, he emphasized how important it is to read the Graduate Bulletin, in the book or online.  He also recommended that we get to know our graduate advisors as well as the professors in our respective departments.  Someday, he suggested, these folks could be our colleagues.

Camille Nedecker explained to us that she works for the division of research affairs, which makes certain that we follow all proper protocols if we use human subjects or animals in our research.  And, her office is also quite intent on our following the rules when our research is done primarily from written sources: no fabrications or plagiarism is permissible.  She recommended a one-unit voluntary course for graduates, offered on Monday afternoons, that deals with research ethics.

Linda Kilroy, thesis advisor and reviewer, informed us that there are free workshops for students needing Baseline Training and Support (BATS) in how to use such computer programs as Microsoft Word, Excel, Power Point, Adobe Photo Shop and web development.  There are workshops in exactly how one should format a master's thesis. 

There was another presentation from a representative of the financial aid office, but by this time, I'll confess, I had shpilkes—pins and needles—and just had to get up and walk around the Aztec Center.  While I was at, I stood in line and got my official student ID.  I confessed to a sympathetic line monitor  that I hadn't brought my Red ID number with me, and shame-facedly added that I hadn't memorized it either.  "It's okay," she told me.  "They can look it up." 

I felt I really had skated on that one.