In August 1982, I was a Freshman at Star Valley High School in Afton, Wyoming. At the time, we did not have a computerized class registration system. On the first day of school, all Freshman and Sophomores attended school after lunch. The Juniors and Seniors attended the first day of school before lunch.
The students met in the gym and sat in the bleachers. The high school teachers were sitting at tables around the gym perimeter. The principal welcomed the students and then the school counselors talked about class registration.
Each student was given a card with spaces to enter seven classes (one for each class period). We also had a paper that listed the required classes (e.g., English I, Math, Science, and History) and the elective classes that were available. Because not all courses were available during each period, the paper also listed the period each class was available.
After receiving some instructions from the school counselors, the students were released to meet with each teacher and ask the teacher to sign the registration card for each class to indicate the teacher agreed for you to be in the class at that class period (i.e., first, second, third, etc. period). Because some classes would fill to capacity and then not be available, the students would rush to line up in front of the various teachers waiting to get permission for the chosen class.
As a freshman, I had three required courses: English, PE/Health, and Citizenship (history). Interesting Math and Science were not required for Freshmen because students only needed 2 math and 2 science units to graduate from high school. The Citizenship class we took was called Civics. I wanted to be in Honors English (it was called "accelerated" English in my school) not regulars. I was on the math fast track and wanted to take four math units to give me a college endorsement on my high school transcript which meant I would take Algebra II. For electives, I chose Mechanical Drawing, Orchestra (I played the violin), and Seminary (we had release time seminary which meant I could be released from the high school for one school period to take seminary in the building next door).
After all the students were released, I rushed with the other students to get in line for the classes I wanted.
Miss Reeves was the Freshman English teacher. I waited in line to meet Miss Reeves and get her signature on my class schedule. Finally, I was at the front of the line. I handed my schedule to Miss Reeves. She looked at the schedule and read my name.
We then had the following conversation.
Miss Reeves: "Jasperson. Are you related to Bryce Jasperson?"
Me: "Yes." (everyone knows each other in a small town)
Miss Reeves: "Are your siblings Kent, Kris, and Kelly Jasperson?"
Me: "Yes." (me wondering ... where is this going???)
Miss Reeves: (with raised eyebrows and a questioning look) "And you want to be in the Accelerated English class?"
Me: "Yes?"
Miss Reeves: "Okay, I will sign for you and we will see."
In the spring of my Freshman year, we did a unit on career planning in my Civics class. We completed a skills and interest survey. The survey had a self-scoring system. The scores from our survey could be compared to a list of job titles that would show potential job titles that match the scores.
This "Job Title Research" document shows the three job titles that I selected as the most interesting from my potential matches. At the time, I had only heard about the Architect job title. I had no idea what the Systems Analyst and Engineering Technician titles represented. However, based on the descriptions provided in the jobs manual, I selected Systems Analyst as the Job Title I liked best.
Note the "exellent" (apparently I had spelling issues in 1983) job outlook for the system analyst job.
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