my educational autobiography

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My Educational Autobiography

Word cloud of this educational autobiography in the form of a lightbulb.

Learning As Living

Acceptance...and acceptance
Orientation
First 2 Courses Completed
First 2 Courses Finished
Semester 2, Here We Go
The Existential Crisis of the Week
The Balancing Act
Negotiating Privilege in Higher Education
Zeroing in on Research
Completing the Second Semester
So Starts the Third Semester
My Educational Philosophy...for now
And Sometimes, You Feel It
Semester's Endgame
Year 1, Officially Done
Year 2, Week 1, Day 1
Year 2, Week 1 Done!
1/3 Complete!?!?
Day 1; Semester 5
Share and Share Alike
Mindful and Mind-Filled
5th Semester Down
Day 1, Semester 9
The Two Demons of My Doctorate
When Senioritis Kicks In
The Final Friday
Dissertation Journal #1
Dissertation Journal #2
Dissertation Journal #3
Dissertation Journal #4
Dissertation Journal #5
Dissertation Journal #6
Dissertation Journal: QP Revised Edition

Educational Autobiography: a Way of Growth and Development

Categories: Personal Growth and Development

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Published: Feb 7, 2024

Words: 699 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Early childhood education, elementary school, middle school, high school, lessons learned.

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How To Write An Autobiography

Autobiography Examples

Top Autobiography Examples & Samples For Your Help

Published on: Sep 10, 2021

Last updated on: Feb 12, 2024

Autobiography Examples For Students

An autobiography is the story of someone's life written by them. They might write about their hardships or success. Here are some examples of autobiographies that might inspire you to write your own.

Short Autobiography Examples

This is a good example of a creative and interesting autobiography to read. It will teach you how to write your own great autobiography.

Autobiography Examples For Class 6

Autobiography essays are not easy to write. They are different from other essays because they tell the story of a person's life experiences. Every person has a lot of interesting experiences, so it can be hard to choose which ones to write about.

For your help, we compiled an example that you can use for your help and make your writing process easy.

Autobiography Examples For Grade 7

Only you know yourself best. Writing an autobiography is a great way to share your life with others. Everyone has a story to tell, and writing an autobiography is one way to leave your mark on history.

Here is an example that gives you a better idea of sharing your life story with others.

Autobiography Examples For College Students

An autobiography is a text that tells your life story. It can be in the form of a memoir , which is more informal or more formal. Autobiographies can be written for different reasons:

To introduce yourself to the world.
To get into a program at school, for a job, volunteering, etc.

You can find more ideas for an autobiography from this example.

Note: As a college student, you might encounter confusion distinguishing between an autobiography and a statement of purpose . While both involve personal narratives, autobiographies provide a comprehensive life story, while statements of purpose focus on specific goals and qualifications for academic or professional opportunities. Understanding their distinct purposes and structures can help streamline your application processes effectively.

Autobiography Examples For High School Students

An autobiography is a self-written biography that someone writes about themselves. They might write about all of their life or just some parts. They do this to share their experiences, put them in a larger cultural or historical context, and entertain the reader.

Take a look at the below example and create a well-written one without any mistakes.

Spiritual Autobiography Examples

A spiritual autobiography is your life story. In it, you write about how God has been present in your life. This includes your journey in and out of organized religion and everything spiritual.

Writing your spiritual autobiography is a chance for you to identify specific experiences with God. You will then reflect on how those experiences have impacted you.

Below is an example for your ease.

Autobiography Examples in Literature

An autobiography is a book written by somebody about their own life. It tells the story of the authorâs life, accomplishments, things they have done, etc.

The following is an example that can help you better understand how to write an autobiography.

Cultural Autobiography Examples

A cultural autobiography is more than just telling your life story. Your cultural identity reveals your beliefs and ideas about culture. It also shows how culture affects different cultural groups that make up who you are.

You may want to write a cultural autobiography better to understand yourself and your culture's role in your life. It is important to be aware of your own cultural identity in a multicultural world and be open to other cultures.

An example of a perfect cultural autobiography is below for your help.

Educational Autobiography Examples

The educational autobiography is a way to tell your life story. This type of autobiography includes what you did in school and how it affected other parts of your life.

Take a look at this example to see how to write a good educational autobiography.

Social Class Autobiography Examples

In most sociology classes, students are assigned to write a socio-autobiography. This assignment helps them understand that the subject is relevant to their daily lives. Your interactions with society have a big impact on who you become as a person.

Writing your social class autobiography is a great way to show people how you fit into society. The following example will show what kind of social autobiography looks like.

Autobiography Examples For Kids

Children are often encouraged to write an autobiography, but few people recognize the importance of this task. Everyone has something special from their childhood that they should remember and reflect on. Writing about your life is a good way to do this.

There are many different ways to write an autobiography. If you are writing about yourself, it is best to start by writing about your early life and work experience.

You can also mention your school experiences. After that, you can write about other topics that may be of interest to readers, like your hobbies or interests.

Here is an example that will help in starting an autobiography.

We all have the opportunity to write our own story, but it doesn't always come easy. If writing about yourself seems difficult, then follow the examples mentioned above.

However, if you want a professional writer to write it for you, just say ' write an essay for me ' and consult a professional at CollegeEssay.org .

We have expert writers who will help you write an autobiography, personal narrative, college essay, and any academic assignment.

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How to Write an Educational Autobiography

An educational autobiography summarizes and reflects upon the experiences and events in a person's life up to the present time. Topics to be addressed in an educational autobiography could be your favorite subjects or teachers in school, what kind of awards you won or why you chose a particular college. Educational autobiographies are most often used by teachers, but other working professionals, as well as students, can create them and find them very beneficial.

Examine educational documents. Thoroughly review report cards, transcripts, résumé, certificates and any other important papers for special dates and honors. Highlight or earmark any details to include in the autobiography.

Organize the events on paper as they occurred in time or as flashback stories. Some writers prefer chronological order, whereas others arrange experiences according to personal significance and not necessarily when they happened.

Write the first draft with a clear beginning, middle and end. Check for proper spelling, punctuation and sentence structure. Read the draft upon completion to determine if further editing is needed.

Type the final version of the educational autobiography in a word-processing program.

Add computer-generated pictures or drawn pictures if you wish.

Educational autobiographies can also include favorite songs and poetry that reference endearing events or fond memories.

Things You'll Need

University of Wisconsin Osh Kosh: Educational Autobiography Statement

Based in western Tennessee, CiCi Jackson began writing in 2000. She is a "Chicken Soup for the Soul" contributor and the author of five self-published books. She is also a certified school counselor. Jackson holds a B.A. in sociology from Vanderbilt University, M.S. in counseling and personnel services from the University of Memphis and Ed.D. in educational leadership from Union University.

How To Write An Educational Autobiography

Published: November 3, 2023

Defining an Educational Autobiography

An educational autobiography is a personal narrative that focuses on your educational experiences and journey. It allows you to reflect on how your educational background has shaped your beliefs, values, and goals.

Unlike a traditional biography, an educational autobiography focuses specifically on your educational experiences, both inside and outside the classroom. It delves into crucial moments, challenges, successes, and even failures that have influenced your academic growth.

Writing an educational autobiography provides an opportunity to explore your relationship with education and how it has impacted your life. It allows you to delve into the factors that have shaped your educational journey, such as influential teachers, significant events, or personal experiences.

In your educational autobiography, you may want to consider including various aspects of your educational experience, such as your early years in school, your transition to high school or college, or even your experiences in extracurricular activities. You may also explore the impact of educational policy, societal factors, or personal circumstances on your educational journey.

By defining an educational autobiography, you set the stage for a thoughtful exploration of your educational experiences and their significance in shaping your identity and future aspirations.

Choosing the Focus and Scope

When writing an educational autobiography, it is crucial to determine the focus and scope of your narrative. This involves deciding which aspects of your educational journey you want to highlight and the depth of detail you wish to provide.

Start by considering the main theme or message you want to convey through your autobiography. Are you aiming to explore a particular academic achievement, a transformative learning experience, or the overall impact of education on your life?

Once you have identified your focus, think about the specific moments, events, or periods of time that best exemplify your chosen theme. These could include significant milestones such as completing a challenging project, overcoming educational obstacles, or discovering a passion for a specific subject.

Consider the scope of your autobiography as well. Are you aiming to cover your entire educational journey from childhood to present, or do you want to focus on a specific period or educational level? Determine the timeframe that best suits your narrative and supports your intended message.

While it may be tempting to include every educational experience you’ve had, it is important to strike a balance. Select the most relevant and impactful moments that contribute to the overall story you want to tell.

Remember, the focus and scope you choose will greatly influence the structure and content of your autobiography. Therefore, take the time to carefully consider your options and ensure that your chosen approach effectively communicates your experiences and their significance.

Outlining the Narrative

Outlining the narrative of your educational autobiography is crucial in organizing your thoughts and ensuring a coherent flow to your storytelling. A well-structured narrative will engage readers and allow them to follow your educational journey with ease.

Start by brainstorming the key events, experiences, and milestones that you want to include in your autobiography. Reflect on the significant moments that have shaped your educational path and consider how they connect to your overall theme or message.

Once you have identified the main points, arrange them in a logical order. You might choose to structure your narrative chronologically, starting from your early educational experiences and progressing through to your present educational pursuits. Alternatively, you could organize your autobiography thematically, grouping related experiences together.

Within each section of your outline, consider the details and anecdotes that will bring your narrative to life. Describe specific moments or conversations that highlight the emotions, challenges, and triumphs you have faced along the way.

Remember to incorporate descriptive language and imagery to engage the readers and create a vivid picture of your educational journey. This will help them connect with your experiences and make your autobiography more memorable.

As you outline your narrative, be mindful of the balance between sharing your experiences and providing analysis or reflection. Aim to strike a balance between storytelling and sharing your thoughts and insights regarding the impact of these experiences on your personal and academic growth.

By creating a clear and detailed outline, you will have a roadmap to guide the writing process. This will make it easier to expand upon each point and maintain a cohesive narrative throughout your educational autobiography.

Identifying Key Moments and Experiences

In writing your educational autobiography, it is essential to identify the key moments and experiences that have had a significant impact on your educational journey. These moments will serve as the building blocks of your narrative and provide insight into your growth and development as a student.

Reflect on your educational journey and consider the moments that stand out to you. These could be positive moments of achievement, such as receiving an award or excelling in a particular subject. They could also be challenging moments, such as struggling with a difficult concept or facing obstacles in your academic path.

Think about the experiences that have shaped your perspective and contributed to your personal and academic growth. This can include transformative experiences, such as studying abroad or participating in a research project, as well as smaller moments that have had a significant impact on your educational trajectory.

Consider the relationships and influences that have played a role in your educational journey. This can include influential teachers or mentors who have guided you, supportive classmates who have encouraged you, or family members who have instilled in you a love for learning.

Remember that the key moments and experiences you identify should align with the overall theme or message of your educational autobiography. Each moment should contribute to the narrative you are weaving and provide insight into your educational growth.

Once you have identified these key moments, consider how you can delve deeper into each one. Describe the specific details of each experience, including the emotions you felt, the lessons you learned, and the impact it had on your academic and personal development.

By identifying and exploring these key moments and experiences, you will create a rich and engaging narrative that showcases the significant milestones in your educational journey and the lessons you have learned along the way.

Reflecting on the Educational Journey

As you write your educational autobiography, it is important to take the time to reflect on your educational journey and its significance in shaping your beliefs, values, and goals. Reflection allows you to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of your experiences and extract meaningful insights from them.

Consider the lessons you have learned throughout your educational journey. Reflect on how various educational experiences, both positive and negative, have shaped your character, work ethic, and intellectual growth. Think about the skills you have acquired, the knowledge you have gained, and the values you have developed as a result of your education.

Reflecting on your educational journey also involves acknowledging any challenges or setbacks you have faced. Consider the obstacles you have encountered and reflect on how you have overcome them. Discuss the strategies or support systems you have utilized to navigate difficult situations and the growth that has resulted from those experiences.

Furthermore, take the opportunity to reflect on the personal and social impact of education. Consider how your education has not only influenced your individual growth but also your interactions with others and your contribution to society. Reflect on the ways in which education has broadened your worldview, instilled empathy, and empowered you to make a positive difference in the world.

Throughout your reflection, it is important to be honest and introspective. Analyze your strengths and weaknesses as a student and consider how they have influenced your approach to learning and your choice of academic pursuits.

By engaging in reflective thinking, you will be able to gain valuable insights into your educational journey. These reflections will not only add depth and authenticity to your autobiography but also allow you to celebrate your achievements, appreciate the impact of education, and set future goals for continued growth and learning.

Incorporating Personal Growth and Development

One important aspect of writing an educational autobiography is highlighting your personal growth and development throughout your academic journey. Your autobiography should go beyond a mere recollection of events, providing insight into how you have evolved as a learner, thinker, and person.

Start by reflecting on the areas where you have experienced growth during your educational journey. Consider the skills you have developed, whether they are academic, interpersonal, or problem-solving skills. Reflect on how these skills have evolved over time and discuss specific experiences that have contributed to their development.

Identify the challenges you have faced and how they have pushed you to grow. Discuss how you have embraced opportunities for personal development and how you have grown as a result of overcoming obstacles, such as academic struggles, time management issues, or balancing multiple responsibilities.

Incorporate your personal reflections on the moments and experiences that have had a significant impact on your personal growth. Discuss how these experiences have challenged your perspectives, expanded your horizons, or instilled you with new values and beliefs.

Consider how your educational journey has shaped your identity and influenced your future aspirations. Reflect on the passions and interests sparked by specific educational experiences and discuss how they have influenced your choices of majors, career paths, or areas of further study.

Furthermore, discuss the role of self-reflection and self-awareness in your personal growth. Share how you have engaged in introspection and actively sought self-improvement throughout your educational journey. Discuss the strategies you have employed to foster personal growth, such as seeking feedback, setting goals, or engaging in self-directed learning.

Incorporating personal growth and development into your educational autobiography adds depth and insight into your narrative. It showcases the transformative power of education and allows readers to connect with your experiences on a personal level. Moreover, it highlights your resilience, adaptability, and commitment to continuous learning.

Including Challenges and Obstacles

Writing about the challenges and obstacles you have encountered in your educational journey is an important aspect of an educational autobiography. Sharing these experiences provides a realistic and honest portrayal of your growth, resilience, and ability to overcome adversity.

Identify the challenges and obstacles you have faced, both within and outside the realm of academics. These may include academic difficulties, personal hardships, time management issues, or external factors that have impacted your educational progress.

While it may be tempting to only highlight your successes, it is important to include the challenges you have faced and discuss how you have dealt with them. Reflect on the emotions you experienced during these challenging times, such as frustration, self-doubt, or fear, and discuss the strategies you employed to overcome these obstacles.

Highlight the lessons you have learned from these challenges. Share how they have shaped your resilience, tenacity, and problem-solving skills. Discuss specific instances where you have grown and adapted in the face of adversity, demonstrating your ability to persevere and learn from setbacks.

Emphasize the support systems that have played a role in helping you navigate these challenges. This can include mentors, teachers, tutors, friends, or family members who have provided guidance, encouragement, or practical assistance.

Including challenges and obstacles in your educational autobiography adds depth and authenticity to your narrative. It showcases your ability to overcome difficulties and demonstrates your determination and perseverance in the pursuit of your educational goals.

Remember to strike a balance between discussing challenges and highlighting your achievements. While challenges are an important part of your story, they should not overshadow your accomplishments. Use them as stepping stones towards personal growth and emphasize how they have shaped your educational journey.

By including challenges and obstacles in your educational autobiography, you provide readers with a more nuanced understanding of your experiences and inspire them with your ability to overcome adversity.

Highlighting Influences and Relationships

An educational autobiography is not only about your personal experiences but also about the influences and relationships that have shaped your educational journey. Your interactions with teachers, mentors, peers, and family members have had a profound impact on your growth, development, and outlook on education.

Reflect on the individuals who have influenced your educational journey. Consider the teachers or professors who have ignited your passion for learning, challenged you intellectually, or provided guidance and support. Discuss how their teaching styles, encouragement, and feedback have influenced your academic pursuits.

Include anecdotes or specific instances where these influential individuals have made a significant impact on your educational experience. Share how their mentorship, advice, or belief in your potential has shaped your academic achievements or motivated you to overcome obstacles.

Highlight the relationships you have formed with peers and classmates. Discuss how collaboration and shared experiences have enriched your learning and contributed to your personal and academic growth. Share the insights and perspectives you have gained through conversations, debates, or group projects.

Additionally, acknowledge the impact of family members and their support in your educational journey. Discuss how their values, expectations, and encouragement have influenced your dedication to learning. Share the role they have played in fostering a positive attitude towards education and the opportunities they have provided to support your academic pursuits.

By highlighting these influences and relationships, you demonstrate your gratitude and appreciation for the individuals who have contributed to your educational journey. It also adds depth to your autobiography by showcasing the collaborative and interconnected nature of education.

Remember to provide specific examples and anecdotes that illustrate the profound influence of these relationships. Emphasize the lessons learned, the growth experienced, and the lasting impact they have had on your personal and academic development.

By recognizing and highlighting the influences and relationships in your educational autobiography, you demonstrate the power of human connections and the role they play in shaping our educational paths and aspirations.

Utilizing Descriptive Language and Imagery

When writing your educational autobiography, it is important to effectively engage readers by utilizing descriptive language and imagery. By incorporating vivid details and evocative descriptions, you can paint a vivid picture and bring your educational experiences to life.

Use sensory language to describe the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures associated with your educational journey. This allows readers to immerse themselves in the narrative, making it more engaging and memorable. For example, instead of simply stating that a classroom was crowded, you could describe the sensation of bodies pressing and the buzz of voices intermingling.

Employ figurative language and poetic devices to add depth and richness to your writing. Metaphors, similes, and personification can help convey complex emotions or abstract concepts in a more relatable and evocative manner. For instance, you could compare the excitement of a new learning opportunity to a bright beacon guiding your way.

Paint vivid imagery through descriptive details. Use specific and concrete language to describe people, places, and objects. Instead of saying you enjoyed reading, describe the feeling of the book’s pages against your fingertips, the musty scent of old paper, or the tranquil atmosphere of the library where you found solace.

Incorporate storytelling techniques to engage readers on an emotional level. Create a narrative arc within your autobiography, incorporating rising action, climax, and resolution. This enables readers to connect with your experiences and emotions, making your story more captivating and relatable.

Remember to vary your sentence structure, tone, and vocabulary to keep your writing engaging. Use descriptive adjectives and adverbs to add depth and nuance to your descriptions. Employ strong verbs to convey action and emotion. This will help the reader visualize your experiences and create a more dynamic and engaging narrative.

Utilizing descriptive language and imagery in your educational autobiography allows you to go beyond the facts and statistics, creating a more immersive and memorable reading experience. By engaging the reader’s senses and emotions, you can forge a deeper connection and ensure that your narrative leaves a lasting impression.

Creating a Coherent Structure

A coherent structure is essential in writing an educational autobiography that flows smoothly and effectively conveys your narrative. By organizing your ideas and experiences in a logical and cohesive manner, you can guide readers through your educational journey and ensure that your story is easily understood.

Start by outlining the main sections or chapters of your autobiography. Consider the various themes, periods of time, or significant events that you want to include. This will help you establish a clear roadmap for your writing and ensure that each section contributes to the overall story you want to tell.

Within each section, create a clear and logical flow of ideas. Begin with an introduction that provides context and introduces the main theme or focus of that particular section. Then, develop your narrative by sequentially presenting your experiences, key moments, and reflections.

Use transitional phrases and words to guide readers through your autobiography smoothly. These can include words like “first,” “next,” “then,” “meanwhile,” or phrases like “in the same vein,” “in contrast,” or “on the other hand.” These transitions help create a sense of cohesion and clarity as readers move from one idea or experience to the next.

Ensure that your paragraphs are well-structured and focused. Each paragraph should have a clear main idea or topic sentence, followed by supporting details and examples. This helps maintain coherence within each section and prevents the narrative from becoming fragmented or confusing.

Consider the balance between storytelling and reflection. While it is important to share your experiences and key moments, it is equally important to provide analysis and reflection on the significance of these events in relation to your educational journey. This balance ensures that your autobiography is both engaging and insightful.

Throughout your writing, be mindful of the overall arc of your narrative. Introduce tension, build suspense, and create a sense of resolution as you move through your autobiography. This keeps readers engaged and invested in your story, eager to discover what happens next.

Regularly review and revise your autobiography to ensure that it maintains a coherent structure. Pay attention to the flow of ideas, the organization of sections, and the clarity of your writing. This will help refine your narrative and ensure that your message is effectively conveyed to readers.

By creating a coherent structure in your educational autobiography, you allow readers to easily follow your journey and connect with your experiences. A clear and well-organized structure enhances readability and ensures that your story resonates with readers on a deeper level.

Editing and Revising the Autobiography

Edit and revision4g are crucial steps in the process of writing an educational autobiography. They allow you to refine your writing, improve clarity, and ensure that your narrative is engaging and impactful. Consider the following tips as you edit and revise your autobiography:

First, take a break and distance yourself from your writing before diving into the editing process. This will help you approach your work with a fresh perspective and identify areas of improvement more effectively.

Read your autobiography aloud or have someone else read it to you. This can help you catch any awkward phrasing, repetitive language, or grammatical errors that may have been missed during the initial writing process.

Review your introductory and concluding paragraphs to ensure they effectively set the stage for your autobiography and provide a satisfying ending. Consider if they effectively introduce the main themes, engage the reader’s interest, and leave a lasting impression.

Check for consistency throughout your autobiography. Are verb tenses consistent? Are the names and details of individuals or events accurate and consistent? Ensuring these details are cohesive will help avoid confusion for the reader.

Pay attention to the clarity of your writing. Are your ideas expressed clearly? Are your sentences and paragraphs well-structured? Consider simplifying complex ideas, eliminating unnecessary jargon, and ensuring that your language is accessible to a wide range of readers.

Eliminate any unnecessary or repetitive information. Streamline your narrative to focus on the most important moments and experiences that contribute to your overall theme. Avoid tangents or unrelated details that may distract the reader from the main storyline.

Enhance the coherence and flow of your autobiography by using transitional phrases and words to connect ideas. Ensure that there is a logical progression from one paragraph to the next, guiding readers through your narrative smoothly.

Engage your readers’ senses and emotions by incorporating descriptive language and imagery. Revise your writing to include vivid and evocative descriptions that bring your experiences to life and allow readers to deeply engage with your story.

Proofread your autobiography multiple times, paying careful attention to spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Use online tools or enlist the help of a trusted friend or editor to catch any errors or typos that may have been overlooked.

Finally, seek feedback from others. Share your autobiography with trusted friends, family members, or educators, and ask for their insights and suggestions. Their perspectives can provide valuable input and help you further refine your writing.

By actively engaging in the process of editing and revising your autobiography, you can transform your initial draft into a polished and impactful piece of writing that effectively communicates your educational journey to readers.

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Life Histories, Educational Autobiographies and Experiential Learning (Article).

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The year 2022 marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Helen Callaway and Judith Okely’s edited anthology Anthropology and Autobiography. During that generational span, which roughly mirrors the life history of this journal, the book has had far-reaching influences, anchoring a legacy that few such conference collections can imagine for themselves. Indeed, the volume has become a classic reference work for scholars in all walks of the social sciences and humanities when it comes to considering a range of interrelated themes: the reflexive turn; personal encounters in the field; the literary influence of the biographical on ethnography; anthropology’s ancestries/histories (Lohmann 2008; Pina-Cabral and Bowman 2020); and so on. Another aspect of this endeavour is looking at ‘anthropology at home’ (Jackson 1987), with all the implications that this brings for research (Peirano 1998), including the notion of ‘auto-anthropology’ (Rapport 2014: 24–35).

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The chapter reviews three different approaches to biographical methods, the biographical interpretive method, oral history and narrative analysis. Each is outlined in turn, looking at distinguishing characteristics. Each makes use of the interview to generate data and while each has unique strengths, the chapter concludes with a commitment to an oral history approach with its focus on the dynamics of the interview

Patrick LAVIOLETTE , Aleksandar Boskovic

The year 2022 marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Helen Callaway & Judith Okely's edited anthology 'Anthropology and Autobiography' (1992 Routledge). This Special Issue of AJEC commemorates that volume and its impacts across the social sciences and humanities. It includes this editorial, an interview with Ulf Hannerz as well as seven orginal articles, including an introduction by Okely about the origins of the debate to comprehensively address the autobiographical within anthropological analysis and ethnographic writing.

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My Educational Autobiography

Author’s Note: This was a paper I wrote for one of my graduate classes working towards a degree in Instructional Design. The assignment was to write our educational autobiography that discussed our lifetime learning experiences with context of the social events, technology, and cultural factors that influenced our learning, along with reflection on good and bad learning experiences. We were also challenged to present in a creative web-based format. This is my paper. I decided to post it here not only because of the amount of work that I put into writing this, but also because I liked the overall design of the presentation. This is the first complex interactive web page I’ve built, and hope to do more work like this in the future.

February 10, 2019

Introduction

T his educational autobiography has been difficult to write and not just because I’m narrating nearly sixty years of continuous learning. Many parts of this narrative are painful, with a few parts that bring pride. But I feel it is important to honestly relate the history that has shaped my approach to learning, and how these experiences will continue to shape my approach as a future instructional designer and adult education teacher.

First: I have never been a “good student,” even though I’ve always respected education and continuous learning. My educational history has been checkered and generally difficult. I now believe many of my issues can be traced to the neurodevelopmental condition “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder – Predominantly Inattentive” (ADHD-I). I was only recently diagnosed and started medical treatment. However, the symptoms that led to this diagnosis have been with me for most of my life.

My symptoms of ADHD-I include short attention spans; difficulty paying attention to details and making “careless” errors; trouble organizing tasks and hesitancy to start large projects; forgetfulness in daily activities; the appearance of not listening when spoken to, and difficulty completing tedious or time-consuming tasks. It’s always been extremely difficult for me to focus on reading technical literature even in my professional career. Another facet of my ADHD-I issues has been what some ADHD researchers describe as “hyperfocus”: the ability to become completely immersed in a project and rapidly master new learning material, but then move on to something else.

Having made myself familiar with ADHD-I symptoms I now believe I’ve struggled with this condition starting at least midway through elementary school. My symptoms seemed to have been more pronounced during time periods when I was under high stress or chronically fatigued and have generally increased with advancing age. I also suspect my ADHD-I coping strategies, developed without understanding the underlying causes, have not always been effective for academic learning.

Personal Learning Style My personal learning style has always been inspired by the opportunity to take advantage of a learning situation, usually whatever job I happened to fall into. I’ve typically gone into a new job knowing little to nothing about the required skills, mastered those skills, then moved on to something new. My educational history and professional career reflect these symptoms. My most prevalent learning style can be described by one of the four types of Self-Directed Learning (SDL) defined by Clardy (2000) as Synergistic Self-Directed Learning (SDL) ; learning that is optional and inspired by the opportunity to take advantage of a learning situation made possible by someone else. [1] In my case, that “someone else” has always been whatever job I fall into. The theme of my professional career has been a pattern of restlessness in the types of jobs I’ve held. Most of my job training has come through formal certification and qualifying courses, and I’ve never stayed in the same type of work for more than a few years. My career pattern has enabled me to master a range of skills even though I have minimal academic education compared to colleagues in my present career field of consulting.

About this autobiography.

I have nearly sixty years of continuous learning to relate. When I include the context of social, political, and cultural events of the time, along with positive and negative experiences and technology impacts, I have a lot of subject material to write about. As a way of keeping my educational autobiography manageable I have chosen an interactive web page format.

My learning experiences form three eras: my K – 12 education, my navy career, and my post-navy career. I will relate these experiences in a chronological timeline of learning events posted in a brief format. Any relevant social, political, and cultural events critical reflections or insights discussions of the particular educational model of the time period, or other narration relevant to the specific learning event may be accessed via accompanying sidebar icons that open pop-up windows. My readers may elect to open as many or few of these pop-up windows as you have the patience to read.

I’ve also created occasional “Tool Tip” windows to explain a word that doesn’t rate a full sidebar popup; these words are underlined Example Example of a Tool Tip window used to explain a term. and in blue font.

I will finish this autobiography with reflections on why I have chosen to join the instructional design and technology field as a fourth and probably last career.

K - 12 Educational Experiences, 1961 - 1974

1961 - 1972 farmingdale, long island, new york.

I remember my elementary school classes as regimented and unforgiving to students who “acted out,” defined as doing anything the teacher didn’t explicitly tell us to do. High test scores received positive reinforcements with gold stars on the papers and public praise from teachers. Poor test scores received negative reinforcements with teachers publicly shaming the students in class and sending letters home to the parents. I received far more negative reinforcements than positive.

My learning issues started early. By the beginning of third-grade I was a failing student. Upon a teacher’s advice, my parents had me take a vision test and discovered I was extremely near-sighted. I was failing because I literally could neither see the classroom chalk board nor read my books. I was prescribed strong (thick) glasses which solved my immediate learning issue. Young children in that era who wore glasses were not common as they are now; I remember being the only student in my class and one of the very few in my entire elementary school who wore glasses. Although glasses corrected my vision they also earned me unwanted attention from bullying classmates.

Having corrected my vision, I became an indifferent student with mostly passable grades. However, by sixth grade I was typically reading two to three books per week far above my “approved” reading level. The contrast between my recreational reading and indifferent school grades did not go unnoticed by my teachers or parents, and I was constantly chastised by all concerned for “being lazy.” The bullying from classmates became relentless. There was no relief; if I tried to ignore my attackers I was mocked for being weak and attacked again. If I tried to fight back, my teachers accused me of being a troublemaker and disciplined me.

Junior high school (grades seven to nine) was slightly better. I excelled in shop and mechanical drawing but was barely passing math and foreign language (Spanish). I was also struggling in English and history classes; I would read the textbooks cover-to-cover in the first month of classes and then lose interest. The bullying finally tapered off by ninth grade, possibly because the perpetrators found better uses of their time. By now I was consistently reading four to five books a week, a mix of science fiction with occasional nonfiction books and classical literature. There was no focus to my reading; I just browsed library shelves and checked out books on impulse that looked interesting. I also spent a lot of time at home tinkering with “science projects” and model rocketry. My junior high school classes were more flexible and forgiving to students who were less conforming. However, I continued to experience far more negative reinforcements than positive.

In high school, during tenth grade, I started to do well. At that time Farmingdale High School was considered one of the more progressive high schools in the area. I was doing passably well in most classes except foreign languages and math, and focused on a major in mechanical drawing, part of the school’s industrial arts program. My teachers were uniformly better than those in my junior grades. That year, several teachers formed an experimental program that might have been a precursor of today’s advanced placement programs. I applied and was accepted into this program, scheduled to start the following school year.

That summer my family and I moved to the Hudson valley region of New York State.

1972 - 1974 Pine Bush, Hudson Valley Region, New York

My former major in mechanical drawing wasn’t offered here so I was placed in a math and science major. I did get into an electronics shop program which was about the only class I did well in that year. I felt my teachers, some of whom were long-time residents with their own children enrolled in the school district, were mostly indifferent or uncaring educators. I distinctly remember one teacher spending the entire year telling us what we were going to learn in his class, sometime soon, whenever he finished gossiping and talking about hunting.

About mid-year I mentally checked out of my studies. I increased my recreational reading to an average seven books per week, burning through the school library. For most of the books I read, mine was the first and only name on the book’s checkout card. When I wasn’t reading I worked part-time at a summer camp next to our property. My parents were too focused on their own issues to pay attention to my schooling. I ended eleventh grade a “C” student and desperate to finish school. My guidance counselor helpfully explained that after high school I needed to go to college or trade school or else, in his words, “you’ll be a failure the rest of your life.”

By the start of my senior year, 1973, I was ready to quit school and get out of Pine Bush. I started thinking about joining the navy. I had been inspired by my maternal grandfather and one uncle who had been sailors in their youth, and I had grown up on their sea stories. I was also fascinated by submarines and had a dream of becoming a submarine sailor. That October I answered an advertisement for the local navy recruiter.

Navy Learning Experiences, 1974 - 1996

1974 navy enlistment and basic training.

I took the military entrance exams and scored in the top two percentile, which qualified me for every program the Navy offered. My poor vision disqualified me for some of the more esoteric programs such as nuclear power and navy diving but I was accepted for submarine duty and accepted into a training program only available to people with my top entrance scores. Prerequisites for both required me to have a high school diploma and to enlist for a minimum of six years. In January 1974 I enlisted and was scheduled to go on active duty immediately upon completing high school. I bowed to the needs of the greater good and stuck out my remaining senior year.

I graduated in June 1974 as a straight “C” student, received my diploma, and left home for navy basic training (“boot camp”) five days later. I was seventeen years old and I never again wanted to see the inside of a classroom.

Learning Experience - Navy Technical Training

Upon arriving at Great Lakes Training Center I was processed in for the next convening Electronics Technician (ET) “A” school class. I was then told about my training program, referred to as the “training pipeline,” as this was the curriculum needed to be completed prior to our first ship assignment (“The Fleet”). I’d already been accepted into submarine duty so I was in a submarine training pipeline consisting of ET “A” school, followed by submarine school, then submarine-specialized electronics training, and finalized by a “C” school, all of which would require a minimum of one and a half years. Only then would I first see the inside of a submarine.

Although I had some trepidation about going back inside a classroom I quickly found myself excelling. I had been doing some hobby electronics back at home in addition to the electronics shop class in my high school junior year, so I already had basic electronics knowledge.

The course work was intensive and kept me focused, I got along reasonably well with my classmates, and I enjoyed what I was learning. Except for occasional uniform inspections classes were our only duty. We were in school eight hours each day, five days per week, with occasional evening homework. Weekends were normally free time. The classes were tightly structured and the instructors, all of whom were senior ETs with at least six years fleet experience, were dedicated educators. Throughout my first 24 weeks of ET “A” school I easily remained in the top third of my class.

After completing training in Great Lakes I transferred to the submarine base in Groton, Connecticut, for sub school. I spent eight weeks learning the intricacies of nuclear submarines. Topics included hydraulics; compressed air; hydrodynamics; electrical power distribution; submarine electronic systems; torpedoes; ballistic missiles, and the basics of nuclear-powered propulsion.

Then I was back studying electronics again, this time maintenance of specialized electronic equipment I would be responsible for maintaining aboard submarines. During this phase of training I began having academic issues. I couldn’t maintain focus and dropped to the bottom third of my class. I was getting tired of school and wanted to start living the life of a submarine sailor.

I struggled through class, graduated, and transferred to the naval base in Hawaii for my sixteen week “C” school on the operation and maintenance of highly advanced (for that era) electronic warfare intelligence-gathering equipment installed on certain submarines. During “C” school I academically crashed. I could no longer maintain focus on classes and emotionally I felt as if I was back in my senior year of high school. Although I loved being in Hawaii I was having culture shock issues and just flat tired of classrooms. The instructors placed me on mandatory remedial academics meaning almost every weeknight one instructor stayed late tutoring me. I finished the bottom of my class with a “mercy pass” as the school didn’t want to drop me.

I finally reported aboard my first submarine seventeen months after joining the navy.

1976 – 1981 USS Scamp (SSN 588)

My first learning experience on Scamp was qualifying as a submarine crew member. The qualification process starts the day a new person checks aboard. So, on Friday November 22, 1974, I reported aboard USS Scamp (SSN 588) , a nuclear fast attack submarine, which happened to be in Hawaii. I was handed a set of qualification books and told we were getting underway to San Diego the following Monday.

Learning Experience – Submarine Qualifications

I also had to complete qualifications for a myriad of different minor tasks while simultaneously performing my assigned job of maintaining submarine electronics equipment. Despite finally achieving my dream of being a crew member on a submarine, my qualification progress was spotty. Qualifying crew members had to show weekly progress against a set of standards and if we fell behind we were placed on mandatory after-work study hours. While in port I fell behind due to my working requirements but at sea I was able to catch back up.

I hand-traced the Scamp’s numerous piping and machinery systems, learning where all associated valves, pumps, motors, electrical switches, storage tanks, and other components were located throughout the boat Submarine Terminology: Submarines are called “boats,” never “ships,” by their crews, a tradition that dates to the early days of the first U.S. Navy submarines that were only 53 feet long and held a crew of six people. Over the years since, Admirals periodically request submariners use the term “ship” instead of “boat.” Those Admirals have been ignored. . I studied schematic drawings of the boat’s systems until I could draw them from memory. The only area I was not required to learn was the nuclear reactor compartment as per navy regulations only people who completed nuclear power training were allowed there – this was the program from which I had been disqualified due to poor eyesight. I learned how to report casualties, how to combat fires, and how to operate all non-nuclear systems. I learned my duties for various shipboard routines including normal at-sea operations and different types of simulated combat operations.

Finally, I was ready for the next phase of my submarine qualifications. One day I spent several hours with one of our commissioned officers on a “walk-through”, showing him every mechanical and electrical component on the boat and explaining its purpose. Having successfully passed my walk-through I was ready for the last qualification event: my oral exam known as the “qual board”. Several days after completing my walk-through, the ship’s executive officer (second senior officer on-board) convened my qual board. With him was one of our chiefs and two junior enlisted crew members one of whom was nuclear power trained. For the next four hours they grilled me. I was required to draw from memory the schematics of four shipboard systems randomly chosen by the board members. I explained the heat cycle of the nuclear power system, the fresh water distribution system, and the process for launching torpedoes. I described how to combat an engine room fire and line up the ventilation system using the snorkel mast. After four hours the board members decided they’d grilled me enough. I passed.

Several days later, on Friday August 6, 1976, in front of the entire crew, our commanding officer presented me with my qualification certificate and pinned a set of silver dolphins onto my uniform. I was qualified in submarines just a few weeks past my 20th birthday. Today, that qualification certificate hangs on my wall next to my college diploma. I wore silver dolphins on my uniform every day after for the rest of my navy career.

Learning Experience – Scamp University

Crew members are expected to continually train for different tasks and expand their ability to maintain and operate ship’s equipment. Some tasks (such as first-aid) required periodic retraining. Submarine crews hold constant drills for firefighting, flooding, loss of major equipment, and combat drills. At the fleet training level submarines conduct near-constant operations with surface ships (aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, and frigates) and other submarines in combat exercises known as Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) training.

My at-sea duties placed me in an integral part of every fleet exercise we held while on Scamp .

After two years of operating my primary “C” school equipment, I qualified on Ship’s Navigation Submarine Terminology: In the Navy, the enlisted people who perform the daily navigation duties are referred to as Quartermasters. and for the last two years my primary duty was navigating the submarine at sea. As a crew member I trained constantly in all aspects of submarine operations and simulated combat. The learning experiences I most enjoyed, however, were our occasional port visits. We visited ports in Canada; Panama; Japan and Okinawa; the Philippines; seven countries of South America, and made periodic visits to Hawaii.

I transferred off Scamp to another submarine in January 1980. I left Scamp about the same time my former high school college-bound classmates had just landed their first post-college jobs. In truth, Scamp became my Alma Mater. Nearly 40 years later I still keep up contact with some of my former shipmates and attend ship’s reunions.

1980 – 1982 USS Dolphin (AGSS 555)

After four years on Scamp I was coming up on the end of my obligatory six years enlistment and faced with the decision to either reenlist or leave naval service. My department head talked with me and suggested I consider submarine special programs, then called the “Deep Submergence Program.” This consisted of a small fleet of navy owned and operated deep-diving submersibles Submarine Terminology: A submersible is a small submarine with underwater endurance of only a few hours and requires a surface ship for support, typically a research vessel. In contrast, a submarine has longer range and can operate for weeks or months without outside support. used for marine research, search and recovery, submarine rescue, and two special-design research submarines. The program sounded different and interesting, and I wasn’t yet ready to leave the navy anyway at that time.

I applied for the Deep Submergence Program and was accepted for an assignment to the deep-diving diesel-electric research submarine USS Dolphin (AGSS 555) also home ported in San Diego, California. I left Scamp and reported aboard Dolphin in February 1981.

Learning Experience – USS Dolphin

I served on Dolphin for a little over two years. My learning experiences came from being around the teams running experiments and performing operations that even within the submarine community were unique. As with Scamp , at-sea duties placed me in an integral part of every operation we conducted. I had the opportunity to observe the experiments and occasionally assisted the research teams with their equipment repairs.

I also completed my mandatory submarine re-qualifications on Dolphin which earned me the right to wear the silver Deep Submergence Insignia on my uniform, along with my silver submarine dolphins.

As my tour on Dolphin ended I had to decide on my choice of next assignment. A normal navy career consists of a tour of sea duty followed by a tour of shore duty, then another sea duty tour, with the length of time per tour determined by a person’s rank and rating. I had already bollixed my rotation cycle by going from one submarine directly to another and was told I now needed to take a shore assignment.

Navy instructors are carefully screened and selected from only top performers. I requested, and was accepted, for navy Instructor Duty.

1982 – 1986 Instructor Duty

Instructor training school.

Prior to reporting to my next assignment as a Navy Technical Instructor I attended Instructor Training (IT) school, a four week “C” school that awarded another NEC NEC Navy Enlisted Classification, a micro-designation within a specific rating that indicates a specific ‘C’ school upon successful completion. The school was in San Diego and my class convened in April 1982.

During the four-week course we were taught public speaking, instructional theories, and curriculum development using the Navy model of that era. We were required to develop and present to our class four progressively more complex presentations during the course, with the last presentation written to the Navy training model. As with my earlier “A” and “C” schools the classes ran eight-hour days five-day weeks. Upon graduating we were awarded the NEC 9502 designation as a Navy Technical Instructor.

Eight years after barely graduating high school I had earned formal designation as navy instructor.

1982 – 1986 Submarine Training Facility

Upon completing IT school, I reported to Submarine Training Facility (colloquially referred to as SubTraFac ), the submarine training center at the navy base when I had previously served on Scamp and Dolphin . I quickly qualified to teach several one and two-week technical courses and settled into the school routines.

Learning Experience – Navy Instructor.

Two years into what was to become a four-year instructor assignment I was selected to attend SubTraFac -sponsored curriculum development training. This was a two-week class that taught the submarine-specific curriculum format.

Following successful completion of this course, I was first tasked to revise one existing course. After completing the revision, I developed a completely new course SubTraFac had needed. Once I completed and implemented that course I implemented a two-week course new to SubTraFac but developed at another navy training center. As part of the course implementation process I trained new instructors to teach those courses.

Near the end of my four-year tour my command awarded me with “Master Training Specialist” (MTS) designation, a formal designation awarded to the top instructors in a given training center. To earn this recognition, I was required to consistently receive excellent instructor evaluations, show demonstrated mastery of curriculum development, and complete an oral board with one of our training center’s educational specialists on all aspects of navy training. When I transferred to a sea duty tour six months later I was one of two designated MTS instructors in SubTraFac , an organization composed of about 260 instructors.

1982 – 1984 National University

The Department of Defense (DoD) had recently started offering tuition assistance for active duty personnel as part of the total pay and benefits package and being on shore duty gave me a lot of free time. Several colleges and universities had offices on base, so I researched them and applied to National University for an Associates of Applied Science (AAS) in Business Administration.

National Universities’ program was designed around four-week class schedules, one class at a time. The course required two classroom sessions per week night and a full day every other Saturday. Homework and semester projects were the norm for all classes. I would complete one course then immediately jump into another.

I completed my AAS Business Administration and received my diploma October 2, 1983, graduating Cum Laude . While working on my AAS I realized I enjoyed Marketing the most out of the various elements of Business Administration. I enjoyed multi-disciplinary research and communications work and decided to pursue an undergraduate degree in Marketing.

After completing and receiving my AAS Business Administration Diploma I started my core courses for a BS Marketing program. I successfully completed several upper-level business courses but then mentally “hit a wall.” I could no longer handle the demands of the intense class schedule. I quit school and focused on developing my social life for the rest of my shore tour.

1986 – 1989 USS Dixon (AS 37)

Near the end of my four-year tour at SubTraFac I requested a sea duty tour on a submarine repair ship, also known as “Submarine Tenders.” I then received orders to USS Dixon (AS 37) , again home ported in San Diego.

I had been promoted to Chief Petty Officer one year before transfer from SubTraFac and as a new Chief I was expected to run one of the many repair shops on Dixon . My assigned shop was the “Submarine Mast, Antenna, and Hydrophone Repair Shop,” which came with my colloquial title of “Shop Master”. This shop handled repairs of the highly specialized retractable submarine masts. My shop also repaired submarine sonar sensors known as hydrophones.

Learning Experience – Shop Master, USS Dixon

The repair work my shop was expected to perform required knowledge of hydraulic systems; mechanical cable linkages; pressure-proof watertight connectors; electrical cabling; hydrostatic testing; torque settings; crane lifts and rigging; fiberglass repair; camouflage painting, and machining work. All repairs were performed within the framework of the SUBSAFE Submarine Terminology: SUBSAFE A quality assurance program implemented by the US Navy after the USS Thresher was lost during sea trials due to faulty workmanship. The level of quality assurance in this program is perhaps second only to that of the nuclear power program. Since implementing this program, the Navy has not lost any submarines due to faulty workmanship. quality-assurance program. Notably absent from my shop duties was any work involving actual electronics.

Two-thirds of the 19 people assigned to my shop were drawn from electronics ratings with the rest drawn from mechanical ratings. None of my personnel had experience with this work before being assigned to the shop. I also had no earlier experience with this type of work. Personnel turn-over was high; most people rotated out to a different shop or transferred off Dixon after about eighteen months. Adding to my complications, my shop had been poorly served by the previous several Shop Masters and earned a well-deserved reputation for being among the worst-managed shops on Dixon .

The work was fast-paced and demanding. We would plan out a repair job and our plans would usually be good right up until step one, at which point all bets were off and we had to figure things out as we went along. For most of the time I managed this shop my normal work schedule was twelve hour days and six day weeks. During periods when the shop was really busy I worked longer hours. I did discover I had a talent for “thinking on my feet” and working well under stress caused by everything going wrong at the worse possible times.

There was a formal navy-sponsored Journeyman Journeyman: A journeyman is a skilled worker who has successfully completed an official apprenticeship qualification in a building trade or craft. Journeymen are considered competent and authorized to work in that field as a fully qualified employee. They earn their license by education, supervised experience and examination. certification program with an associated NEC for mast, antenna, and hydrophone repair. However, the certification could only be obtained by at least two years of relevant work experience and on-job training followed by passing a written exam.

After two years managing the shop I applied to take the certification exam and passed. I became one of only a handful of navy personnel at that time to hold the highly specialized Journeyman NEC for Submarine Mast, Antenna, and Hydrophone repair.

Shortly before I rotated off Dixon at the end of my three-year tour my shop was formally recognized as one of the best-managed shops on Dixon, during an annual inspection by Senior Navy officials.

1989 – 1993 NATO Assignment, Naples Italy

I was assigned to oversee a multi-national multi-force office providing staff-level management of all logistics needs for NATO-owned communications equipment throughout Italy. My direct staff consisted of three Italian Army Warrant officers; one Italian Air Force sergeant; two US Air Force Sergeants; Two US Army Sergeants; one UK Royal Navy Petty Officer and one UK Royal Air Force Sergeant. I reported directly to an Italian Army Junior Officer. Our staff managed all logistics support for NATO-owned communications systems throughout Italy.

Managing a multi-national multi-force organization with our scope of responsibilities forced me to learn a management style entirely different than what I had previously learned in the navy.

I had married just before I was assigned to USS Dixon and my wife and I made good use of the opportunity to travel around Europe these three years.

I also gained understanding of my U.S. sister services (Army and Air Force), learned the Italian way of life which was so diametrically different than American life, and gained a working knowledge of conversational Italian. I had consistently failed foreign language studies while in high school but after two years of total immersion in Italy I became very comfortable speaking Italian with a modest vocabulary. Had I stayed in Italy for a fourth year I am convinced I could have mastered the Italian language.

1990 – 1993 Regents College

By now I held an associate degree with some upper level credit towards a Marketing degree, and extensive navy training that potentially offered some amount of college credits. I had my educational background evaluated by an educational specialist in the military-sponsored Education Center and was recommended for a non-residency program offered by The Regents External Degree Program (Regents College), of New York State. At the time Regents College was one of only two programs in the United States that offered non-residency programs.

I enrolled and started working my courses. There were two US-based colleges Colleges Two American colleges had extension campuses on the US Navy base: University of Lavern and Maryland State University. with extension campuses on the US military base and I was able to complete all my general educational requirements through these schools. My core business and marketing courses were more difficult.

One option Regents made available was coursework through “distance learning.” This was the Pre-Internet era and distance learning for overseas military meant mail-correspondence with a stateside college.

While I took my general requirements through different extension campuses on the US military base I also started a distance learning course through University of Illinois at Urbana Champlain. The coursework was supported by an assigned professor in Illinois and consisted of assigned textbook reading followed by reporting on the reading, with a mid-term and final exam proctored by the base Education Center in coordination with the university.

I now believe that my ADHD-I issues were an important factor in the difficulties I experienced completing this course that took me a year of effort.

By the time I was scheduled to transfer back to the US to sea duty I was still four business core courses short of completing my BS Marketing degree program.

1993 – 1996 USS Port Royal (CG 73)

As I approached the end of my NATO tour I was faced with an important decision on my next assignment. I was due for another sea duty tour but did not want to go back to a submarine. Once again I was looking for something different to do. I applied for and received orders to the cruiser USS Port Royal (CG 73), a ship still under construction at a shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

My wife and I arrived in Pascagoula in June 1993 and by October we had already fallen in love with southern Mississippi. About this time, I passed my 20 year career point and decided to retire at the end of my Port Royal tour. We purchased a home in the Pascagoula area and my wife opted to stay there while I finished out my last two years on Port Royal in Hawaii.

Learning Experiences – USS Port Royal

I retired from active navy service and left Port Royal in February 1996 while my ship was deployed in the Persian Gulf. I was flown back to Pascagoula, Mississippi to rejoin my wife and my navy retirement from active military duty became official on April 30, 1996.

1993 – 1995 Completing Bachelor’s Degree

Two courses were available at the University of Southern Mississippi extension campus 30 miles to my west and the third at the University of Southern Alabama on their campus 40 miles to my east.

Over the next eight months in Pascagoula waiting for the Port Royal to complete construction I sequentially enrolled in and completed these three courses. I was down to one last business core course, and Port Royal was leaving Pascagoula. I took my last course as distance learning, this one though University of Southern Alabama.

As with my earlier distance-learning course, this took a year to complete. My assigned instructor did work with me but the coursework was difficult and shipboard life made it far too easy to be distracted. My mid-term and final exams were proctored by the ship’s educational officer and at the end of 1994 I did pass my course. My final transcripts were sent to Regents College and in January 1995 I was awarded my Bachelor of Science Marketing Diploma via mail.

My ending transcripts showed course work from the US Navy and seven different colleges and universities earned over a twelve-year period. I held an overall GPA of 3.54 but Regents College did not grant academic awards.

Six months later I took my Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) so I would have the option for a master’s in business administration (MBA) program after retirement.

Post-Navy Career, 1996 - Present

My learning experiences didn’t end with navy retirement. Transitioning to civilian life was an emotional adjustment I don’t ever care to repeat, and one that every retiring service member must deal with. My career since leaving the navy has evolved into government consulting . I drifted into logistics not through any post-navy career plan on my part but by reason that I couldn’t get a job doing anything else.

I started an MBA program through the University of Southern Mississippi extension campus but was unable to focus. Again, I suspect my issues with ADHD-I played a large role in these difficulties. I was dealing with a lot of cultural and emotional issues from the military-to-civilian transition and adjusting to life back with my wife after a two-year separation. I completed one class towards my MBA, then dropped out part-way through my second class. It is just now, 23 years later, that I’m returning to school to earn a graduate degree.

As with my navy career, my jobs have been my learning experiences as I’ve never done the same type of job twice. Over the past eight years I’ve earned five career-related certifications recognized within the military contracting field and in private industry. I’ve also earned a Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Adult Education Certification.

Since leaving the navy the highlights of my work / learning experiences include the following:

1996 – 1998

While the jobs weren’t very challenging, in looking back I realize that managing the warehouse was one of the more enjoyable jobs I’ve held in my post-navy career. We shipped out large assemblies using priority overnight freight or direct-to-user trucking services, then managed the re-stock. This was also my first post-navy foray back into logistics.

Running the network also pulled me into computer software. I taught myself how to program in Microsoft Visual Basic (MS VB) and developed a new database application for managing warehouse inventory.

These two themes of software and logistics formed the basis of my post-navy career.

1998 - 2000

While I enjoyed the work I discovered that I didn’t care for the Air Force style of management. After two years I quit to go back to a navy-centric working environment.

2000 – 2006

I worked as a subcontractor for two years building MS VB applications for different departments within the logistics group. When an opening came available I was hired directly into the yard. After another year the shipyard sent me to a training program for supportability engineering. After that training I worked as a supportability engineer for my remaining time at the shipyard, working on short turn-around studies and projects.

On August 23, 2005, Hurricane Katrina blew through the Mississippi Gulf Coast and flooded my home along with several thousand others. I had divorced from my first wife in 2000, remarried, and my new wife had just moved in. We spent our first year together rebuilding our home. In September 2006 I accepted a job in Rosslyn, Virginia, and my wife and I moved to the Washington DC area.

2006 – 2008

In Rosslyn I worked for a small firm that specialized in foreign military sales work. The firm had a contract to develop the logistics support for a fleet of four missile patrol craft a small shipyard in my former Mississippi hometown was building for the Egyptian Navy, and hired me to manage that work. Shortly after I moved the ship construction program was delayed, so the company owner put me to work writing contract proposals for foreign military sales new business. This was the first time I actually had the opportunity to use my marketing education for a job. Show more Show less

2008 – Present

The nature of consulting work suits my learning and work styles and thus this is the longest I’ve been with one firm. My pattern with Booz Allen is to work on a given contract for two to three years then move on to a different contract with new challenges and learning opportunities. I also occasionally get invited to work on short-term projects of several months duration and do proposal writing.

To date I’ve worked on two different contracts for the US Coast Guard’s new ship construction programs; a Navy contract for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program; a contract for Navy mines and mine countermeasures systems, and more recently a contract for the US Navy’s Virginia-class submarine construction program. This is the first time I’ve worked within the submarine community since leaving Dixon in 1989.

Over the past eight years I’ve earned several industry-recognized credentials in aspects of logistics and configuration management. I don’t have the academic background that my Booz Allen colleagues have, but I’ve discovered that my broad base of hands-on knowledge and skills mostly compensates for my lack of academics in providing client support. Even though my lack of formal education somewhat limits my upward mobility within Booz Allen, this is not an issue as I’m on the tail end of my planned full-time consulting career.

My Goals For Instructional Design

I’m approaching my second retirement age as defined by Social Security. Although I’m more than ready to spend my remaining years fishing, boating, and paddling kayaks, I also recognize I need to keep my mind active with new learning challenges. I’ve decided I need to go back into teaching, focusing on adult education. Earning my Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) adult education certification several years ago was my first step. Working towards this graduate degree in Instructional Design and Technology is my next step. I want to spend at least a few years of my second retirement working in adult education as my way of giving back to my community.

My learning path has not been a typical one and the fact I’m by far the oldest person in my graduate classes is not lost on me. Un-diagnosed and untreated ADHD-I may have been a reason inhibiting my formal education, but that’s not the only reason. I’ve always placed work above academics and preferred learning by jumping in and doing something.

I don’t regret the path I’ve taken; I’ve had a rich and fulfilling life. But I also recognize I’ve been fortunate in my career choices, with my best choice being my decision to join the navy immediately after high school. The navy gave me a chance at a meaningful career and a second chance at an education after even my high school guidance counselor expected me to be a life-long failure. Not everyone is so fortunate to have a second chance the way I did.

I’d like to work in adult education as my third and (presumably) final career as a way of helping other adults who want a second chance. Learning disabilities aren’t the only reason young people may not earn a high school diploma or get into a college right out of high school. Native-born Americans growing up in economically-depressed areas with underfunded and neglected schools also struggle with limited opportunities. Some young people simply make bad life decisions that take years to recover from. Immigrants come to this country as adults looking for a better life and more opportunities than they had in their native country but struggle just to learn English as they adapt. Regardless of the reason, I believe an adult who wants to try for a better life deserves to have their second chance. In a small way, I’d like to be part of the solution by helping to offer them education.

Sincerely, Ron Charest

[1] Clardy, A. (2000). Learning on their own; vocationally oriented self-directed learning projects. Human Resources Development Quarterly , I I(2), 105-125, cited in Sharan & Bierema, Adult Learning Linking Theory and Practice (2014)

Long Island is geographically an island [1] surrounded by the Long Island Sound to the North, the Atlantic Ocean to south and east, and the East River to the west which physically separates Long Island from most of New York City. Culturally, the western Long Island counties of Brooklyn and Queens make up two of the five boroughs of New York City, while the eastern counties of Nassau (where Farmingdale is located) and Suffolk are a mosaic of communities densely populated by almost exclusively white middle- and upper-middle class families. These two eastern counties are referred to as “The Island” by the residents, as differentiated from the two western counties which are part of “The City” of New York. The two eastern counties of Nassau and Suffolk form a cloistered commonality, culturally isolated from the contiguous United States by New York City.

In the immediate post-World War II era, the population of Long Island rapidly grew due to the then-new phenomena of mass-produced residential housing tracts. Between 1950 to 1970 the combined population of Nassau and Suffolk counties more than doubled in size, growing by over 1.6 million people as suburban development pushed out from New York City. [2]

Life in 1960s Farmingdale was all about tight-knit conformity. My cultural environment was sprawling grids of intersecting two-lane streets framing rectangular blocks of same-looking houses inhabited by same-looking white middle-class people. Everyplace I needed to go – schools, libraries, stores, friends’ homes – were within walking or bicycling distance.

[1] On February 19, 1985, the United States Supreme Court decided by a 9-to-0 vote in United States v. Maine, 469 U.S. 504 (1985) that Long Island is legally part of the mainland of New York and therefore a peninsula. As a native Long Islander, I categorically attest that no real Long Islander agrees with the Supreme Court.

[2] Christopher Jones, “ Long Island Index Long Island’s Transformation, 1970 – 2010 Interactive maps of Long Island show historical trends in population growth, demographics, education, income, and employment. ” January 2015

I would categorize my elementary schools as following the behaviorism model of education. But, I think my experiences showed the dark side of behaviorism – I believe this educational model also encouraged a culture of conformity in the teachers and in turn the students. Teachers expected students to comply with whatever the lesson plan required without deviation. When students would not (or could not, due to learning issues or other reasons) meet the lesson objectives the only tool the teachers were trained to use was negative reinforcement. As a student’s learning issues increased, the negative reinforcement from teachers increased.

I also believe that the behavior of some teachers towards their students would be considered verbally abusive by today’s standards.

I speculate that teacher’s propensity to use negative reinforcement indirectly encouraged bullying. Students who already had a propensity for bullying behavior picked up on the cues of teachers who focused regular negative attention on specific students. Those bullying students picked their targets accordingly. Since their victims were already considered “problem children” by the teachers and school administration, the teachers and administrators felt less reason to intervene on basis that the victim “deserved it.”

My school experiences as a victim of relentless bullying and my educators’ perceived actions of doing nothing about bullying, have left me cynical that present-day educators are doing anything significantly different about bullying than mine of the 1960s. I do see that today there is more cultural awareness of bullying as an unacceptable mode of behavior. However, people do not change. I believe that any educational model which encourages conformity will invite bullying on students who do not conform to the school norms. Students who do not conform will be “problem students” to the administration. I sincerely doubt that many teachers or administrators will go out of their way to defend bullying victims who are already seen as problem students.

I would be happy to be proven wrong.

During the later half of my junior year a group of teachers announced the start of a special learning program planned to start the following year. Their program would schedule shortened six-week classes on a variety of topics including both required courses and electives. I believe now this may have been an early model for today’s advanced placement programs.

The Long Island economy of the late 1950s to early 1960s was predominantly a mix of professionals commuting to New York City, post-war industrial work driven by the aerospace industry, and local businesses serving their communities [1] . The aerospace industry was booming from defense contracting and the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) space programs.

My father was a skilled tool and die maker working for small machine shops under contracts to major aerospace firms. However, the aerospace industry on Long Island was collapsing by the late 1960s and my father began having difficulties holding jobs. It wasn’t just my father having problems; by 1970 I remember people talking about out-of-work aerospace engineers pushing hotdog carts.

In 1969 my mother inherited property in the mid-Hudson Valley region of New York State, two hours’ drive north of New York City. In late 1971 my father grew so desperate for work he searched in that region and did land a job better that he could find on Long Island. In the summer of 1972 we moved. I completed my last two years of High School in the town of Pine Bush.

[1] Christopher Jones, “ Long Island Index Long Island’s Transformation, 1970 – 2010 Interactive maps of Long Island show historical trends in population growth, demographics, education, income, and employment. ” January 2015

The culture of 1972 Pine Bush was so different from Farmingdale we may as well have moved to another planet.

The Hamlet of Pine Bush, too small for its own census code, is in Orange County which along with Sullivan and Ulster counties make up the central Hudson Valley region of New York State. Between 1960 and 1970 the three counties experienced an overall average eighteen percent growth, mostly driven by people moving in from New York City and adjacent Westchester county [1] . While there was more ethnic diversity in the Hudson Valley region than Long Island, most ethnic minority groups congregated in the region’s cities.

The economy immediately surrounding Pine Bush was based on family farms (dairy cows, horses, small acreage cornfields), summer camps and vacation communities for “City People” (New York City residents), light manufacturing, and small businesses serving the local communities. Many families had roots in the area going back generations. But by 1972 the population growth was causing mostly unwelcomed change. Many of the area’s new residents commuted downstate to New York City or otherwise out of area, carving bedroom communities into previously rich farmland.

The Pine Bush High School had only opened two years before I moved there – built to accommodate massive growth in the school district. My Pine Bush High graduating class of about 265 students was the largest ever, but a big contrast to my Farmingdale High School class of almost 1000 students. The long-time residents were not entirely welcoming to the new-comers and there were definite social stratums among my classmates.

Nothing was close by as in Farmingdale. School was 15 miles and a one-hour bus ride away. Anyone I made friends with were miles away and I needed to be driven by my parents. The only library was the high school library. Any stores I wanted to go to – hardware stores, book stores – were over 30 miles away in the city of Middletown. My dependency on being driven everywhere I wanted to go deepened my sense of isolation and increased the difficulty I had adapting to my new environment.

[1] “ 1970 Census of Population , Volume I Characteristics of the Population, part 34 New York section 1 ,” US Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Issued March 1973

To be fair, there were caring teachers and counselors in the Pine Bush school district dedicated in working with students. I did have a senior year math teacher and a physics teacher who put considerable effort into working with me. It was because of those two teachers I was able to graduate.

However, I saw the overall educational model of Pine Bush as completely lacking a framework of professional educational standards. There appeared to be no overarching educational model for teachers, and teachers taught however they wanted. There appeared to be no formal administrative oversight of the teachers and no recourse for failing students to have someone to turn to for assistance. The school appeared to have no intervention strategies developed or utilized to assist students and made no outside resources available.

It appeared that even for the teachers who did care, they didn’t understand they needed intervention strategies and programs to refer struggling students to. The two teachers who did help me worked in a vacuum of school support.

My K-12 education was a wretched experience that nearly drove me away from formal lifelong learning. I graduated high school school with a sour disposition towards teachers and academic achievement that took years to come to terms with. I credit my life experiences in the Navy for restoring my interest in formal education and providing the means and motivation to get to where I am today, a graduate student candidate in the field of education.

In truth, I still hold a lingering suspicion and cynicism of public education teachers that I work to consciously suppress.

The military of 1973 was not the military we have today. The Vietnam war, for U.S. forces, ended in March of 1973. Over the several years previous our country was increasingly torn apart by protests of draft-aged people facing conscription into the military for a war fewer and fewer Americans saw any reason to conduct. In 1968 alone, we suffered 16,899 young men killed [1] and the My Lai Massacre shocked our nation. [2] Anti-war protests had become increasingly violent and sometimes even deadly – to the protestors. [3] As many as 100,000 draft-age men (ages 18 – 26) had fled the U.S. to avoid conscription. [4] The Army was collapsing with morale described as the worst in American history. [5] Troops returning home from Vietnam were generally ignored or even shunned by their communities. [6]

The draft effectively ended in June of 1973 with a change to all-volunteer military forces. When I contacted my recruiter in October 1973 I was literally one of the first applying under the all-volunteer military program. With the loss of the draft and the shift to all-volunteers, given the serious public antipathy towards the military, new recruits were scarce. Although the military had rigorous enlistment standards, in practice recruiters were then accepting anybody physically capable of walking into the office and signing their name.

I received very mixed reactions on enlisting from my classmates and adults in the community. A few adults (including my parents and some teachers) were mildly supportive, as were some of my classmates. Many classmates were merely dismissive. A few classmates were openly incredulous and encouraged me to “reconsider.”

[1] National Archives, Military Records, “ Vietnam War U.S. Military Fatal Casualty Statistics ” https://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics

[2] History.com Editors, “ My Lai Massacre ,” History.com, 9 November 2009, https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/my-lai-massacre-1

[3] On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed college students at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four students and nine others. On May 15, 1970, Mississippi law enforcement officials opened fire on unarmed college students at Jackson State college in Mississippi, killing two students and wounding twelve others.

[4] Cortright, David (2008). Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 164–165. ISBN 978-0-521-67000-5.

[5] Col. Robert D. Heinl, Jr., “ The Collapse of the Armed Forces ,” North American Newspaper Alliance

Armed Forces Journal, 7 June 1971 https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/Vietnam/heinl.html

[6] Ciampaglia, Dante A., 8 November 2018, History.com, “ Why Were Vietnam War Vets Treated Poorly When They Returned? ” https://www.history.com/news/vietnam-war-veterans-treatment

United States Navy ratings are general enlisted occupation classifications, consisting of specific skills and abilities. Each naval rating has its own specialty badge, which is worn on the left sleeve of the uniform by enlisted personnel in that rating. Each rating has an associated technical training program to teach enlistees the necessary entry-level skills, known as “A” schools. Personnel within a rating are further micro-designated by a “Navy Enlisted Classification” (NEC) which is awarded through advanced technical training known as “C” schools. The length of technical training varies by ratings.

A person is assigned to a rating upon completing basic training, and normally remain in that rating for the duration of their navy career. Military promotions in rank, along with military duty assignments, are made based upon ratings. Throughout a person’s navy career, they are defined by their rating and form a rating community composed of people with shared occupational values and common experiences. There is nothing equivalent to these rating communities in our sister military services.

I had been accepted into what was then referred to as the “advanced electronics program” which covered a group of ratings all designated to work on navy-specialized electronic systems. My assigned rating, chosen by a faceless bureaucrat who knew nothing about me other than my entrance exam scores, was “Electronics Technician (ET).” People in this rating primarily perform maintenance of non-combat marine and air search radars, and radio communications equipment. ETs are also responsible for maintenance of a broad range of minor types of electronic equipment not covered by other ratings, so people in the ET rating are nicknamed “Everything Techs.”

To this day, I define myself as “former ET” when discussing my career with other navy veterans.

The U.S. military was an early adopter of formal instructional design using the behavioral model. Courses are taught within a framework of clear learning objectives over a specified period of instructional time based upon Gange’s nine step learning model [1] :

1. Gain attention: Present stimulus to ensure reception of instruction. 2. Tell the learners the learning objective: What will the pupil gain from the instruction? 3. Stimulate recall of prior learning: Ask for recall of existing relevant knowledge. 4. Present the stimulus: Display the content. 5. Provide learning guidance 6. Elicit performance: Learners respond to demonstrate knowledge. 7. Provide feedback: Give informative feedback on the learner’s performance. 8. Assess performance: More performance and more feedback, to reinforce information. 9. Enhance retention and transfer to other contexts

Unlike my experiences with K – 12 education, navy instructors used more positive reinforcement than negative, worked within a tightly structured framework of curriculum tied to a specific set of training objectives, and had a framework of educational resources to assist struggling students. I can honestly state my navy training schools were my first experience with educators who universally cared about their students.

However, the schools did have minimum academic requirements and students who didn’t maintain their grades were reassigned to other ratings with less intensive training requirements. Over the 24 weeks of training, we lost about ten percent of our class.

Years later, when I applied for Instructor Duty, I learned navy technical instructors were tightly screened and selected from the top ten-percent performers in their respective rating.

[1] Gagne, Robert (1971). Learning hierarchies . NJ: Prentice Hall. pp. 63–84.

There was a lot of math involved in my classes, particularly the first several weeks, and I was a historically poor math student. But students were allowed slide rules and even the then newly-popular electronic devices called “calculators.” My first weekend in Great Lakes I convinced a classmate to drive me to the nearest mall where I purchased a “hand-held scientific calculator” at a price equivalent to two week’s pay. That calculator, which had the same computing power as a calculator app on present-day Smart Phones, got me through the math requirements.

I now believe my issues with ADHD-I had an impact on my decreasing academic performance during the last part of my Navy “A” and “C” schools.

What I believe enabled me to ultimately succeed in my navy training that I didn’t have in high school, was the framework of academic support within the navy schools. Evening study was mandatory for any student not maintaining a certain grade point average, but the instructors who facilitated evening study weren’t there to reprimand; they were there to assist the students in succeeding.

Bullying wasn’t an issue at any time in my training programs.

From the very beginning of the navy’s submarine service, submarine crews were required to know the operation of their boats far better than crews manning surface ships. The early subs were dangerous, and each crew member had to have equal knowledge of operations and casualty control. It is still a truism today that on a submarine, each crew member’s life depends on everyone else doing their job correctly.

As submarines evolved into more complex warfighting systems, the crew’s training evolved into a formal submarine qualification program. A person who successfully completes their submarine qualifications earns the right to wear the submarine warfare insignia on their uniforms, simply called “Dolphins” by submariners. Enlisted crew members wear silver, commissioned officers wear gold, the colors chosen because in the military silver is senior to gold and it’s the enlisted crews that run the boats.

A new crew member is normally given up to one year to finish their qualifications, nine months being the norm. Although a crew member is expected to qualify on their own initiative and own time they receive weekly progress checks. If they fall behind in their progress they’re considered delinquent (“dink”) in their qualifications and assigned remedial training conducted after normal working hours (“dink hours”). People that fail to qualify within one year are usually transferred to a surface ship.

One feature unique to submarine qualifications is that a person must re-qualify every time they transfer to a new submarine, but these re-qualifications are not as rigorous as the initial qualification. For re-qualifications a new crew member must gain a working knowledge of the submarine’s systems to the same level as initial qualifications, but there is no walk-through or oral board exams. A previously qualified crew member is given a nominal six months to re-qualify and normally not monitored for re-qualification progress, but they can be removed from the submarine if they fail to qualify in the required time frame. However, failing to re-qualify is an almost unheard-of event.

The surface navy adopted a qualification program for ships, modeled on the submarine qualification program, in the early 1980s. However, the program is currently not as rigorous nor carries the same prestige as submarine qualifications. The surface navy program does not require qualified personnel to re-qualify and qualifications are largely voluntary, although qualification does count towards promotions.

Within the training world, submarine training programs would be categorized as on-the-job training using the social cognitive learning model. Experienced crew members are expected to mentor and train newer crew members. New crew members learn their jobs through socializing with the experienced crew, living the routines, and performing self-paced study.

Submarine qualification is more than just training, it is also a rite of passage. A non-qualified crew member is referred to as a “nub” and must defer to any qualified crew member even if the nub outranks the qualified crew member. Once qualified, a person is immediately accepted by the rest of the crew and then expected to properly train the next generation of nubs.

Successfully completing submarine qualifications earns that person a lifetime membership in an exclusive fraternity of submariners.

National University is a San Diego-based nonprofit founded in 1971 by retired U.S. Navy Captain David Chigos. As a director of employee training for General Dynamics Corporation in San Diego, David saw a need for a non-traditional university education format with degree programs to serve working adults.

The first campus was in San Diego, California, and the school quickly expanded to multiple locations. It was one of the very first schools in southern California to focus exclusively on higher education for working adults.

Courses are normally four weeks with on-campus classes scheduled for weeknights and occasional Saturday sessions. Classes start year-round and taken one course at a time. At the time I attended the school catered heavily to active-duty military students.

This education model was very effective for me in earning my AAS Business Degree but did have some shortcomings. My biggest issue was completing class projects and writing term papers within the four-week time frame. On the other hand, although each class had a required textbook, the teachers rarely assigned us any reading. The lack of textbook reading was a plus for me, given my personal difficulties reading technical material.

National University is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). Their business school is accredited by the International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education (IACBE).

Although navy courses did not (and still do not today) directly cross over to civilian industry-recognized certifications or college degrees, the American Council of Education (ACE) periodically reviews all navy “A” and “C” school training courses and does recommend some amount of equivalent college credit for many of them.

At the time I had my navy training reviewed, I was recommended for a total fifty-one semester hours college credit. This included 45 semester-hour credits in electronic technology, three semester hours in management, and four semester hours in instructional methods. Regents college accepted all credits as recommended by the ACE evaluation.

Regents College was founded in 1971 by the New York State Board of Regents as its external degree program, known as The Regents External Degree Program (REX). In April 1998, the Board of Regents granted the school an absolute charter to operate as a private, nonprofit, independent institution. On January 1, 2001, Regents College, required to change its name under the terms of the separation, became Excelsior College.

The college is exceptionally liberal in accepting transfer credit from other institutions. Essentially, any credit from a regionally accredited institution will be accepted, if the course(s) falls within one of Excelsior’s degree programs. In fact, the College was founded in part to address the issue of non-transfer-ability of credit between colleges.

Sources of college credit that can be used towards an Excelsior College degree program, and to which advisers will refer an Excelsior student, include Excelsior College distance learning courses, courses from other regionally accredited institutions, college-level subject-matter examinations (including CLEP exams, and DSST/DANTES exams), non-collegiate training (including corporate, governmental, and military training) that has been evaluated for college-level credit by the American Council on Education (ACE), and assessments of prior learning portfolios. Excelsior College sets no limitations on the amount of allowable transfer credit.

In practice, I enrolled in Regents college and was provided a list of required courses by the college that were needed to complete my chosen degree program, and a list of schools around the United States offering classes that met the course requirements. Once I completed a course the transcripts were forwarded to the college and applied toward their degree program. Once all coursework was satisfied, I was awarded my diploma.

Excelsior College is a member of the Service members Opportunity Colleges (SOC) Consortium of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. SOC institutions are dedicated to helping service members and their families earn college degrees. Military students can take courses in their off-duty hours at or near military installations in the United States, overseas, and on navy ships. Excelsior College has repeatedly been nominated as a top military-friendly school by multiple organizations.

– Commissioned: 5 June 1961 – Decommissioned: 28 April 1988 – Length: 232 ft – Beam (Diameter): 32 ft – Speed: 31 knots (36 mph) – Complement: 83 officers & men

Scamp was the second boat of the Skipjack class, the first class of tear-drop-shaped nuclear submarines. From the time Scamp was commissioned until the early 1970s, Scamp was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the fastest submarine in the world. Scamp was also the sister ship to the ill-fated USS Scorpion (SSN 589) which was lost on May 22, 1968, with all-hands.

During my tour on Scamp we completed a six-month deployment to the Western Pacific, a UNITAS [1] deployment around South America (UNITAS XIX) and changed homeports from San Diego, California, to New London, Connecticut. In between deployments we conducted Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) training exercises with surface ships and ASW aircraft, attempting to teach them how to find submarines.

[1] UNITAS is an annual good-will naval exercise conducted by the US Navy in coordination with host nations of South America. Navy ships generally work with the navies of all South American nations and circumnavigate the continent.

– Commissioned: 17 August 1968 – Decommissioned: 15 January 2007 – Length: 151 ft 11 in – Beam (Diameter): 19 ft 8 in – Speed: – – 10 knots (12 mph; 19 km/h) surfaced – – 7.5 knots (8.6 mph; 13.9 km/h) submerged – Complement: 3 officers, 20 men, 4 scientists – Test depth: 3,000 ft (unclassified) – Notes: fitted with a 20-ton keel section to be jettisoned by explosive bolts for surfacing under emergency conditions

Dolphin was a US Navy diesel-electric deep-diving research and development submarine. She was the deepest diving submarine in the world (as opposed to submersibles, which could dive deeper but have extremely limited underwater endurance and require a surface support ship for operations). Built strictly for marine research and as an equipment test platform, she had unique capabilities unmatched by any other submarine or surface vessel. Her 38-year career was the longest service life for any US Navy submarine and she was the Navy’s last operational diesel-electric powered submarine

Her operations normally involved a team composed of scientists, engineers, and technicians bringing aboard a load of special equipment that was installed in the interior mission bay and external to the pressure hull. We would go out to sea and run a set of experiments as the team directed, then return to port and remove the equipment, ready for the next operation.

During my tour the most notable experiment performed was the first successful submarine-to-aircraft two-way laser communication, using optical equipment. We also spent several months off Northern California plotting bio-luminescence levels created by plankton.

Crew members who qualified (or re-qualified) on board Dolphin were awarded the Deep Submergence Vehicle (DSV) Program insignia. The Deep Submergence community is even today a relatively small community within the submarine service.

– Commissioned: 7 August 1971 – Decommissioned: 15 December 1995 – Length: 644 ft – Beam: (width): 85 – Speed: 20 knots – Complement: 1,338 officers and enlisted

Dixon was a submarine tender, designed to provide repair and resupply support to submarines. Submarines generally do not have the ability to carry large amounts of food, fuel, torpedoes, and other supplies, and have limited maintenance capability due to their small size and small crews. Tenders are designed to either meet submarines at sea to replenish them or provides these services while docked at a port near the area where the submarines are operating. A tender can provide all necessary resupply and is equipped with a full range of workshops for repairs more complex than what the submarine can do for herself.

Of the Dixon’s 1,338 crew members, about 600 were part of the repair department working in the various shops. Dixon’s shops could do anything from reupholster furniture, fix binoculars, overhaul engines, calibrate and repair electronic equipment, weld, cast metal, build fiberglass components, and work on nuclear reactors. The Dixon also carried three cranes with lift capacity of up to 10 tons.

At the time I was assigned to Dixon , the ship was assigned to provide all maintenance and supply support to eight submarines, all nearing the end of their service life, while home ported in San Diego, California. We made one deployment to Alaska where we provided maintenance and resupply support to a Fleet Ballistic Missile submarine performing a crew change-over.

– Commissioned: 9 July 1994 – Still in commission – Length: 567 feet – Beam (Width): 55 feet – Speed: 32.5 knots (37.4 mph) – Complement: 30 officers and 300 enlisted

Port Royal is a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser, the 27th and final ship in the class. She is fitted out with 122 vertical missile launchers that can be configured to carry a varying mix of surface-to-air missiles, Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles, and strategic-defense anti-ballistic missile weapons. She is also equipped with two 5″ guns, eight Harpoon missile launchers, two torpedo tubes, two Phalanx anti-cruise missile defense systems, and can be equipped with a variety of small weapons mounts as her missions dictate. Port Royal is equipped with the SPY-1A Air Search radar and several smaller air search and navigation radars; equipped with anti-submarine warfare sonar; and capable of carrying two Sikorsky SH-60B or MH-60R Seahawk helicopters and their support crews.

I was part of the ship’s commissioning crew and so referred to as a “Plankowner”. After commissioning the Port Royal transited to Hawaii, spent 18 months in shakedown testing and crew certifications training, then deployed to the western Pacific. I retired from active duty and left Port Royal while she was on patrol in the Persian Gulf.

During my tour with NATO Southern Forces, stationed in Naples, Italy (1989 – 1993), NATO was comprised of 12 nations. Notable events during my tour included the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, with the former East Germany reunifying with western Germany, and military interventions in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995.

Other significant events during my tour included the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in 1989–1991 which led to a strategic re-evaluation of NATO’s purpose, formalized in the 1990 signing in Paris of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe between NATO and the Soviet Union, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Operation Desert Storm also took place during my tour but NATO was not directly involved.

The European Union was officially established in 1993.

A modern submarine is designed to run under water and can stay submerged for weeks or even months, but still needs to come to the surface for communications and observation of surface contacts. As with surface ships, submarines use radio communications and radar for navigation. They also use periscopes for visual observation.

Submarines are designed for underwater streamlining. Antennas and periscopes would cause water flow problems if permanently extended while submerged, so all modern submarines use antennas that can be housed in the submarines sail (the tower-like structure) when not in use, then extended (raised) when needed. Antennas may be raised and operated while the submarine is still submerged, just below the surface (called “periscope depth”). To maximize the possible extended length of a raised antenna while minimizing the height of the submarine sail, some antennas have multiple telescoping sections.

Australian Submarine HMAS Onslow Sail with Raised Masts

Multi-section masts need a complex raising and lowering mechanism that uses hydraulics and mechanical cable linkages. Many antennas contain complex electronics packages which requires power and control signals. They must be waterproof and able to withstand the same sea pressures the rest of the boat does, and still able to send and receive radio signals.

While being used when the submarine is submerged at periscope depth, antennas are subjected to the force of water flow against them, so they need a certain amount of tensile strength. The main structures of a submarine antenna are largely constructed of fiberglass to cut weight, with a minimal core of non-corrosive metal for strength. The fiberglass structures are painted in a grey-and-black marine camouflage pattern to help reduce visual detection when raised.

Most submarines also use a pair of optical periscopes, raised above the water while in use, for visual observations while submerged. U.S. Virginia-class submarines are equipped with a photonics mast instead of optical periscope which has television cameras mounted in top of the mast with the signals transmitted to television screens inside the submarine control room. A photonics mast has simpler maintenance than optical periscopes but otherwise has the same maintenance requirements of any other mast.

Maintenance of submarine masts are too complex for submarine crews to manage, and need special equipment that an operational submarine normally does not carry. Maintenance of these masts are normally performed by a specialized submarine tender repair shop or specialized shore-based maintenance facility.

Military logistics is composed of twelve “elements,” 12 different functions that together are needed to provide integrated support for a given weapon system throughout the systems entire life-cycle. Also called “sustainment,” the goal is to keep a system operating at it’s designed limits over the designed useful life.

– Logistics Support Management : On-going management support for sustainment – Design Interface : How a given piece of equipment interfaces with other related equipment. – Sustaining Engineering : on-going engineering work needed for sustainment. For electronic systems, obsolescence is a major part of this sustainment effort. – Supply Support : Spare parts and consumable resources (fuel, lubricants, etc.) – Support Equipment : Tools and equipment required for support – Packaging, Handling, Storage and Transportation : Transporting equipment itself, and the storage and shipment of spare parts and consumables. – Computer Resources : All computer hardware and software resources needed – Manpower and Personnel – Maintenance Planning and Management : Planning out all scheduled and corrective maintenance (repairs). – Training and Training Support – Facilities and Infrastructure : Repair shops, roads, fixed installations required. – Technical Data Management : Technical manuals, engineering drawings, operational procedures, etc.

For navy ships, the life cycle is typically 25 years (for smaller ships) to 50 years (for aircraft carriers). This extended life cycle creates a number of management challenges.

Working with NATO was my first introduction to the full range of military logistics. Prior to this, I had worked extensively in Maintenance, Training and Training Support, Supply Support and Support Equipment, but never put the pieces together as “Logistics.”

Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. (informally referred to as “Booz Allen”) is an American management and information technology consulting firm, headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in Greater Washington, D.C., with 80 other offices around the globe. The company’s stated core business is to provide consulting, analysis and engineering services to public and private sector organizations and nonprofits.

The firm was was founded in 1914, in Evanston, Illinois, by Mr. Edwin G. Booz as Business Research Service . The service was based on Booz’s theory that companies would be more successful if they could call on someone outside their own organizations for expert, impartial advice. Booz’s service attracted a number of clients, such as Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, Chicago’s Union Stockyards and Transit Company, and the Canadian Pacific Railway. In effect, the firm created the concept of management consulting.

The firm later attracted other partners and finalized the name Booz Allen Hamilton in 1942. During World war II, Booz Allen started consulting to the US Navy and expanded their scope of support to the Department of Defense (DoD), then winning contracts with every federal agency. Among with their other federal support, Booz Allen has almost 1000 people supporting US intelligence agencies and has been nicknamed the “world’s largest intelligence agency.”

In 2013 Booz Allen split their government consulting business from their commercial business, with “Booz and Company” taking all commercial work. Since then, Booz Allen has expanded their foreign business and is currently providing program management support to Saudi Arabia for the Saudi Navy’s acquisition of four frigates being built in Wisconsin.

Booz Allen has been credited with developing several business concepts. In 1957, Sam Johnson, great grandson of the S.C. Johnson & Son founder, and Booz Allen’s Conrad Jones published “How to Organize for New Products” which discussed theories on product life-cycle management . In 1958, Gordon Pehrson, deputy director of U.S. Navy Special Projects Office, and Bill Pocock of Booz Allen Hamilton developed the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT). In 1982, Booz Allen’s Keith Oliver coined the term “ supply chain management “. In 2013, Booz Allen’s Mark Herman, Stephanie Rivera, Steven Mills, and Michael Kim published the “Field Guide to Data Science . ” A second edition was published in 2015. In 2017, Booz Allen’s Josh Sullivan and Angela Zutavern published “The Mathematical Corporation”.

Booz Allen Hamilton celebrated their 100th year of continued operation in 2014.

Corporate statement from the About Us – Booz Allen Hamilton Corporate website: [1]

“ We are a global firm of 24,225 diverse, passionate, and exceptional people driven to excel, do right, and realize positive change in everything we do. We bring bold thinking and a desire to be the best in our work in consulting, analytics, digital solutions, engineering, and cyber, and with industries ranging from defense to health to energy to international development.

We celebrate and value diversity in all its forms; it’s something we truly value as a multicultural community of problem solvers. We believe in corporate and individual citizenship that make our communities better places for all.

We have one guiding purpose—to empower people to change the world. Our founder, Edwin Booz said it best: “Start with character… and fear not the future.” We bring a ferocious integrity to not only train our clients to tackle the problems they face today, but to help them change the status quo for tomorrow. Each day, we imagine, invent, and deliver new ways to better serve our employees, our clients, and the world. ”

[1] About Us, Booz Allen Hamilton Corporate website, https://www.boozallen.com/

I worked in and around electronics for my entire 22-year navy career and was very much hooked into the way computers and the Internet were reshaping the world. Once I returned to Pascagoula, Mississippi, as a civilian, I had a lot of free time while job hunting and acclimatizing to a very different way of life. So, I started teaching myself how to write HTML code and build websites.

In 1997 I launched and operated a home-built commercial website that ran until 2001. I was one of the very early Amazon.com Affiliate Resellers. Until 2000 I ran my website using a dial-up phone connection because DSL and cable Internet was not available in my part of southern Mississippi. My website was initially hand-coded HTML, and I also taught myself how to code Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript, and the PHP scripting language.

I learned a lot working with that website and had a front-row seat watching technologies grow into what the Internet has become today. In 2002 I launched a personal hobby website using my family name as the domain (charest.net). I’ve worked with this website ever since, using it as a place to blog my personal stories and political rants, post photographs, and generally keep up with Internet technologies.

My current iteration of personal website, which is the site this Educational Autobiography is running on, is built within the WordPress environment using a number of plugins to expand functionality. This particular Education Autobiography page was built using the “Elementor” page builder plugin, which offers an exceptional range of options for designing attractive and useful web pages.

In addition to my charest.net website, I also run a family genealogy site ( genealogy.charest.net ), and a group of practice websites I’ve built for tutoring and as demos to explore possibilities of the WordPress environment.

My present wife is native Chinese, and only immigrated to the United States in 2005. She started learning English while still in China as an adult, and continued with English lessons as she has been able since arriving in the United States. It was through her that I became interested in adult English as Second language (ESL) education.

In 2008 I worked one year as a volunteer ESL teacher for Catholic Charities Hogar Hispano program which includes ESL education among their offerings (they also help with citizenship preparation). I discovered I enjoyed being back in a classroom again, and I discovered that working with adults who were highly motivated to learn inspired me. Regrettably, my Booz Allen duties required me to do a lot of traveling and I had to stop teaching. I played road warrior for the next seven years, which precluded any volunteer work that required sticking to a schedule.

In 2015 my road warrior traveling days ended and I decided I needed to get back into part time teaching. I enrolled in the “Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)” certification program offered by Northern Virginia Community College Workforce Development program, and earned my TESOL certification in June 2016. A TESOL certification is a highly desirable certification for teachers working in the field of ESL.

Since then I’ve taught part-time for two ESL programs, with the most recent being Prince William County Adult Workforce Development Program. The classes are conducted in public schools throughout Prince William County and at the county learning center. It only took a brief period of time teaching before I decided I needed to get back into education, specifically Adult Education. I now plan on making Adult education my third and presumably final career after retiring from consulting.

From public information sources [1] :

Ingalls Shipbuilding is located in Pascagoula, Mississippi on 800 acres of the most important real estate in America. With 11,500 employees, Ingalls is the largest manufacturing employer in Mississippi and a major contributor to the economic growth of both Mississippi and Alabama. Their 81-year legacy of shipbuilding has proven they have the talent, experience and facilities to simultaneously build more classes of ships than any other shipyard in America.

Ingalls is the builder-of-record for 35 Aegis DDG 51 class guided missile destroyers, LHA 6 class large deck amphibious ships, National Security Cutters for the U.S. Coast Guard, and the sole builder of the Navy’s fleet of San Antonio (LPD 17) class amphibious assault ships.

Originally established in 1938, the shipyard merged with Newport News shipyard in Virginia on March 31, 2011, and now forms the largest military shipbuilder in the United States. During World War Ingalls built commercial and Liberty Ships. In 1957 the shipyard won a contract to build 12 nuclear submarines, but today all nuclear submarines are built by either General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut, or Newport News shipyard with is part of Huntington Ingalls.

[1] Ingalls Shipyard About Us page, https://ingalls.huntingtoningalls.com/

The navy recognizes that training is expensive and critical to maintaining force readiness. The process for developing and gaining approval of a training program for new system is grueling and time-consuming. It’s not unusual for a training program implemented to support a new system to take five years of development. Final approval for a navy course is with the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Manpower Personnel and Training (DCNO), who is the second most senior naval officer.

To gain DCNO course approval, the navy program office managing acquisition of the new system must account for all training aids including the classroom facilities needed to support those training aids, do front-end and job task analysis, develop the curriculum, pilot the course at least once and capture all review comments (red-lining), and develop a manpower analysis of the number of instructors, support personnel required to support the course, and a five-year projection of students expected to attend the new course.

At the time I attended Instructor Training School and taught at SubTrafac the navy surface training program used the “110” standard. This standard defined the curriculum requirements for gaining formal navy approval of a training program. The submarine service of that era used the OD45519 standard, which was similar to the 110 but had more rigorous requirements for learning objectives and curriculum materials. Both standards specified format requirements for all training material such as visual learning aids, proctor guides, test banks, student training handouts, and the curriculum along with a train-the-trainer curriculum.

The 110 and OD45519 standards were paper-based systems. When I was teaching at SubTraFac in the mid-1980s micro – computer-based word processors were just becoming commercialized.

In the 1980s the navy began development of the Authoring Instructional Materials (AIM), a software management system consisting of a set of commercial and government software for the development and design of training curricula and instructional content. Today AIM is the standard tool for managing and archiving all navy instructional materials. AIM comprises the toolsets AIM I, developed for the Personal Performance Profile training approach and AIM II, developed for the Task-Based training approach. In practice, AIM I is commonly used for the surface navy training and AIM II is used for submarine training. At some point in the future the navy expects to standardize on AIM II.

AIM I and AIM II were first released between 1987 and 1997. An updated version of AIM was developed between 2006 and 2012. According to the Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division (NAWCTSD), which manages AIM, the system has been able to reduce the “number of hours spent for development of new training materials by as much as 25%, and reduce maintenance of existing materials by as much as 50%” over the former paper-based curriculum systems [1] .

One major benefit of AIM II is its capacity to store training content on a SQL server, serving as a relational database for managing the relationships between instructional material elements. Training material content is available as PDF, XML and HTML, which improves the ability to cross-utilize information in a variety of technical material (maintenance manuals, operational manuals, etc.). In 2009, Silber and Foshay estimated there was 30,000 hours of navy instructional material archived in AIM. [2]

[1] “ Authoring Instructional Materials (AIM) “. Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division,Retrieved 30 April 2013, https://www.navair.navy.mil/nawctsd/ . As cited in the Wikipedia entry for “Authoring Instructional Materials.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoring_Instructional_Materials

[2] Kenneth H. Silber; Wellesley R. Foshay (19 November 2009). Handbook of Improving Performance in the Workplace, Instructional Design and Training Delivery , John Wiley & Sons. p. 216. ISBN 978-0-470-52506-7. As cited in the Wikipedia entry for “Authoring Instructional Materials.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoring_Instructional_Materials

Over the past ten years I’ve worked to formalize my logistics experience through formal certifications recognized by the military and industry. After working in Washington, D.C. for several years, I recognized that having a skill was not nearly as important as advertising that skill to clients and potential employers. So, I put effort into learning which logistics-related certifications were meaningful as a logistician, and then put effort into earning those certifications.

To date, I’ve earned the following certifications, all awarded by organizations recognized by both the military and civilian industry.

This particular certification has three levels, with Level III being the highest and almost exclusively held by senior government acquisition specialists. The Level I certification is earned through completing a set of seven DAU online courses.

Classic RCM maintenance tasks maintain inherent equipment reliability and are proven to be cost-effective. Certification is earned though successful completion of a five-day training program and passing a certification exam. Re-certification through a written exam is required every five years to maintain this designation.

This certification is earned though successful completion of a one-day training program and passing a certification exam. Re-certification through a written exam is required every five years to maintain this designation.

This certification is earned through gaining 3 years of related business experience, or a Bachelor’s degree or the international equivalent in commercial logistics, and passing a certification exam. Re-certification is required every five years through proof of earning a minimum 75 CEUs during the five-year period.

The basic CMPIC certification is awarded through completion of four two-day core classes and passing exams after each class. The Master’s certification is awarded through completing an additional two three-day elective classes and passing the exams. There is presently no periodic re-certification requirement.

This certification is awarded through completion of 102 hours of classroom training, completion of three practicums, and submission of three sample English Second Language (ESL) lesson plans and a training philosophy statement.

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50 Eye-Catching Autobiography Titles (+ How to Write Your Own)

You’ve written your life story.

You’ve laid your heart bare before the world

So, what’s the best title for your one-of-a-kind masterpiece?

“____________: An Autobiography”?

Seriously, unless you’re a household name, using “autobiography” as part of your title might not work in your favor, but not to worry. You don’t have to be famous to write an autobiography , but you do need a title that will grab a buyer's attention, so they know your book is worth a second look.

Don't like it?

The purpose of this article is to break down what makes a standout autobiography title and the process for creating your own.

Need autobiography titles? Let’s dive in!

The secret sauce for writing an amazing book title.

The process of creating an autobiography book title that gets noticed starts with a marketer's mindset.

Yes, it all boils down to strategic book positioning in the marketplace. Creativity is a big part of it, but that’s a small part of the bigger picture. After all, if your book doesn't get in front of the people who would be most likely to read it, you can't change lives with the content inside!

Unlike fiction books or other types of nonfiction books (e.g. business books or textbooks) where there’s a specific category or genre expectation, autobiographies play by their own set of rules—the more creative the better.

How to think like a marketer when creating your title

If you are self-publishing your book, then you’re probably already aware that marketing is a key component of your book’s success, but what is marketing exactly?

The American Marketing Association defines marketing as

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

When marketing your book, knowing how to write a good book title matters, because, along with your cover, it’s the first thing a potential buyer sees (reads) before making a buying decision. A casual search for “autobiography” on Amazon pulled up over 700,000 results. This doesn’t mean that every book belongs in the category, but it’s still a lot of books.

You might be asking how you get your book to rise to the top of search results.

Start with a great title.

Here are some best practices:

Make your title relevant – You can never go wrong with a title that reflects the theme of your book . This will clue buyers into what to expect. You can also go with a significant statement or quote drawn directly from your story. Clever titles also work, but try to stay away from the cheesy ones that confuse buyers.
Appeal to your ideal audience’s needs – Every book is not for everyone. Target a specific reader type when creating your title. For example, meteorologist and television personality Ginger Zee titled her book Natural Disasters. This title works well for her because her book’s content is about the unpredictable “storms” of life she has faced and she also covers storms in her reporting.
Stay away from clickbait – Or anything that leads readers to believe your book is about one thing but it’s something else. This only frustrates readers and could potentially lead to bad reviews.
Use a primary keyword in your title if it fits – First Gen by Alejandra Campoverdi and Cooked by Jeff Henderson include keyword(s) that are relevant to buyer searches.
Invite the reader into your story – This can be done by asking a question like the autobiography title What Are You Doing Here? by Baroness Floella Benjamin. Or, create an image in their mind like The Ugly Cry by Danielle Henderson or The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish.

Hint: Keep it short. According to Amazon, “Customers are more likely to skim past long titles (over 60 characters). There are exceptions to the rules. You’ll see some in the list that follows.

Don’t forget about writing a subtitle for your book . They are optional but a great way to add a splash of flavor.

50 eye-catching autobiography titles that inspire

After an exhaustive search in the autobiography categories of the top online book retailers, I selected 50 incredible autobiography titles as a starting point for creating an amazing title for your autobiography. Note: Memoir titles listed under the autobiography category are included in the list.

Autobiography titles about celebrities

What Are You Doing Here? – Baronness Floella Benjamin
Tis Herself – Maureen O’Hara
F inding Me by Viola Davis
Not That Fancy: Simple Lessons on Living, Loving, Eating, and Dusting Off Your Boots By Reba McEntire
Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories by Kelly Ripa
Thicker than Water by Kerry Washington
We Were Dreamers by Simu Liu
Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I Am Today by Valerie Bertinelli
Just as I am by Cicely Tyson
A Promised Land by Barack Obama
Making It So by Patrick Stewart
Inside Out by Demi Moore
In Pieces by Sally Field
The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish
Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder by William Shatner
Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology by Leah Remini
Look Out for the Little Guy! By Scott Lang
I Can’t Make This Up: Life Lessons by Kevin Hart, Neil Strauss
No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality by Michael J. Fox
Scenes from My Life by Michael K. Williams
The Way I Heard It by Mike Rowe
I Came as a Shadow – John Thompson

Autobiography titles about authors

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Lit by Mary Karr

Autobiography titles about family

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Mott Street by Ava Chin
The Girl in the Middle by Anais Granofsky
All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
The Ugly Cry by Danielle Henderson

Autobiography titles about immigration, culture, and race

Good Morning, Hope: A True Story of Refugee Twin Sisters and Their Triumph over War, Poverty, and Heartbreak by Argita Zalli, and Detina Zalli
Negroland by Margo Jefferson
First Gen by Alejandra Campoverdi
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
Heart of Fire: An Immigrant Daughter’s Story – Mazie K. Hirono
The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clementine Wamariya, Elizabeth Weil

Autobiography titles about beating the odds

Cooked by Jeff Henderson
The Pale-Faced Lie by David Crow
Thunder Dog: The True Story of a Blind Mann, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust by Michael Hingson and Susy Flory
When the Tears Dry by Meredith Hawkins
Reaching for the Moon by Katherine Johnson
80 Percent Luck, 20 Percent Skill: My Life as a WWII Navy Ferry Pilot by Ralph T. Alshouse

Autobiography titles about faith

Like a River: Finding the Faith and Strength to Move Forward After Loss and Heartache by Granger Smith
The Barn by David Hill
All My Knotted-Up Life by Beth Moore

Autobiography titles about journalists, reporters, and media

Natural Disaster: I Cover Them. I am One by Ginger Zee
Going There by Katie Couric
Rough Draft by Kati Tur
The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day

Use a free tool to generate your own autobiography title

You obviously can't use these published autobiography titles for your own book – but you can use our free book title generator to come up with suggestions that you could use.

It's really easy to use, and instantly gives you an unlimited amount of working titles – or even final titles – to use for your book!

1. Select nonfiction for the book’s genre in the drop-down menu

2. Fill in the details

For the next question, if you have a book description, type “yes” and add your description in the text box.

If you don’t have a description yet, answer “no” and fill out the questions. Eventually, you will need to write a book description , but this is often something our authors do after they complete their manuscript .

Incredible Biography Titles - Book Title Generator Description Question Section

3. Click “generate”

That's it! Get ready for some unique autobiography book title suggestions. Remember, if you don't like the one that you see, you can continue to generate as many as you'd like.

Final thoughts

Your autobiography title can be the difference between someone scrolling past your book on Amazon or stopping to read a sample. Whatever title you choose, remember that it’s just as much about you as your reader. Make them want to read your story by giving them something unique that piques their interest.

You can also look for inspiration in other genres. For example, some memoir book titles could also lend well to an autobiography – like What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo. Intriguing, isn't it? Don't limit yourself!

Are you ready to take the next steps with your autobiography? We have a professional publishing team ready to guide you through the book development process.

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COMMENTS

My Educational Autobiography
My Educational Autobiography. By Lance Eaton - January 16, 2017. In my recent course on teaching and learning in my program, we were asked to write an educational autobiography. I have done such activities previously and always found them insightful to who I am at the moment and as a means of seeing what differences influence me each time I re ...
Educational Autobiography: a Way of Growth and Development
The purpose of the educational autobiography is to reflect upon one's educational journey and how it has influenced their life. I was born and raised in a small town in the Midwest, coming from a family of working-class parents who instilled the value of education in me from a young age. Education is important for personal and professional ...
PDF My Educational Autobiography
An educational autobiography Gary Zhang I was born in the state of Washington, but my connection to the state remains nothing more than a blur to me. My parents whisked me away to Indiana when I was only a few months old, and it's from Indy that I have my most important childhood memories.
11 Autobiography Examples For All Academic Levels
The educational autobiography is a way to tell your life story. This type of autobiography includes what you did in school and how it affected other parts of your life. Take a look at this example to see how to write a good educational autobiography. Educational Autobiography Examples.
How to Write an Educational Autobiography
Step 1. Examine educational documents. Thoroughly review report cards, transcripts, résumé, certificates and any other important papers for special dates and honors. Highlight or earmark any details to include in the autobiography.
How To Write An Educational Autobiography
An educational autobiography is a personal narrative that focuses on your educational experiences and journey. It allows you to reflect on how your educational background has shaped your beliefs, values, and goals. Unlike a traditional biography, an educational autobiography focuses specifically on your educational experiences, both inside and ...
PDF Education 100 Educational Autobiography Guidelines/1
Introduction: Write in first person and present tense. Set up key event or experience as the heart of the educational autobiography. Identify specific time, setting or context of the key event. "Show" don't "tell" the experience; use descriptive, precise language. Use related event examples to illustrate the main story (optional)
PDF How to Write an Educational Autobiography
and reach his/her goals. There are no hard and fast rules for writing an educational autobiography, but a good educational autobiography may be written through the following steps: 1. Planning During planning one should define the purpose and goals, choose a topic, and make a draft.
Writing an Educational Autobiography as a Way to Become a Reflective
This dissertation presents my educational autobiography, the result of my reflection on experiences during my school life, my teaching life, and my life as a mother to reveal who I am personally and professionally in my journey to become a reflective teacher, a teacher who takes her students' wellbeing into her mind in the everyday life of classrooms and schools.
(PDF) Life Histories, Educational Autobiographies and Experiential
Educational autobiography is a suitable instrument to explore the deep roots of learning carried out throughout life. The genealogical tree, the analysis of the family group, the commentary on the local environment, the lifeline, the personal shield or coat of arms and the learning narratives in different contexts (family and couple, school ...
Educational Autobiography Essay
1436 Words. 6 Pages. Open Document. Miguel Huerta. Period 1. September 8, 2010. Educational Autobiography A lot of people think education is just something you get in school, but in reality education comes from different places and people not just school and teachers. For example, way before I started school I was already being educated by my ...
My Educational Autobiography
My Educational Autobiography. Chandler Holland ... Since my education focused on mastery rather than testing, and since my "time blindness" was uncovered early, the tests I did take were ...
My Educational Autobiography
Satisfactory Essays. 1039 Words. 5 Pages. Open Document. My Educational Autobiography Our experiences in life shape who we become. Experiences are all around us. Sometimes, things that seem so insignificant at the time become part of who we are and who we want to be. It is not always just the good experiences that shape us, but also the bad.
My Educational Autobiography
My Educational Autobiography. Author's Note: This was a paper I wrote for one of my graduate classes working towards a degree in Instructional Design. The assignment was to write our educational autobiography that discussed our lifetime learning experiences with context of the social events, technology, and cultural factors that influenced ...
PDF EDUCATIONAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF NICHOLAS BAKER
EDUCATIONAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF NICHOLAS BAKER. My name is Nicholas Baker. I was born and raised in Roanoke, VA. I went to public. school for a little while and then I was homeschooled up until high school. I went to William. Fleming High School in Roanoke, VA and graduated with honors including IB credit. I then.
My Educational Autobiography Essay
1106 Words. 5 Pages. Open Document. My educational autobiography consists of my time from my early days in elementary school until the day I graduated from the University of Southern California. I had many great experiences as well as some dreadful ones. The experiences from my educational career will mold the teacher I will become in the future.
My Educational Autobiography
My Educational Autobiography. As the first child of parents who never graduated from high school, I was also told graduating high school and going to college was going to be a major part of my life. Growing up the theme of every conversation would always lead to "What do you want to be when you grow up?". There were several individuals and ...
Educational Autobiography
Educational Autobiography. Categories: Biography Education. Download. Essay, Pages 2 (439 words) Views. 2952. The journey through my educational history consists of mixed up issues. The encounter that I have had at the beginning, in the course, and towards the end has shaped me and prepared for both good and bad.
Educational Autobiography Essay.docx
My Educational Autobiography Jean Anyon wrote about "Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work" although she made an important awareness to wealthy communities having a better curriculum than middle class and poor communities and that there may be difference in the teaching. I disagree with a multitude of this because a great deal of schools has different guidelines and rules for how ...
My Educational Autobiography #2
My Educational Autobiography. Albert Einstein once said, "The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think." Not everyone has had someone to help them during hard times at college. But for me, my family has always there for me when I had a difficult time in college.
My Primary School Autobiography (From When I Was 7 Years Old)
My Primary School Autobiography (From When I Was 7 Years Old) Lifestyle Design. Glasgow, Scotland, UK • February 1998 • Length of Read: 12 Minutes. Whilst cleaning out my room this week I came across a box of old assignments I'd completed when in primary school. Most of it was rubbish, but amongst the scribbled jotters and scrunched paper ...
My Educational Autobiography
936 Words. 4 Pages. Open Document. Essay Sample Check Writing Quality. Show More. My Autobiographical Essay. I Attend elementary school at George Washington Carver. My post-secondary School was Cloverdale and May -Vack was the school I took a Trade All three (3) schools is in Montgomery Alabama. My current level of education is I have an ...
50 Eye-Catching Autobiography Titles (+ How to Write Your Own)
1. Select nonfiction for the book's genre in the drop-down menu. 2. Fill in the details. For the next question, if you have a book description, type "yes" and add your description in the text box. If you don't have a description yet, answer "no" and fill out the questions.