I'm probably in the "slightly-above-middling" range when it comes to applying discipline to my own habits. (As compared to, say, someone like Joan Crawford---my role model in many ways, who was SUPRA, and way beyond her norm. Here's a link to her 1977 obit by George Cukor, who expresses her superiority as a person very well: https://www.joancrawfordbest.com/cukortribute.htm )
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Neither of my parents attended college right out of high school.
My dad, once he enlisted in the Air Force in 1959 or so, was tested as very bright and was offered free college courses to eventually advance to Officer status; he took a couple of courses, with some help from my mother when they were newlyweds, but didn't feel like working for them and so never pursued that government offer of advancement.
My mother's two older sisters both had advanced degrees in Germany: One sister in teaching, the other in Dentistry. (In the 1950s in Germany---UNLIKE today in any country, especially the US---teaching was considered an actual "learned" profession; and being a dentist was almost solely the province of men. My "Dentist Aunt" was the first female dentist in her city of Braunschweig.)
My mother was born late to her parents, in 1941, during WWII, when both parents were in their 40s. (Near the end of the war, her father, my then-40-something grandfather---who had served his country as a young man in WWI and had previously been too old to serve in WWII---was called up as a last-ditch effort on Germany's part.) In post-WWII Germany, I don't know that anyone was paying strict attention to my mother's upbringing! She never went to college, and instead pursued a young person's post-War, early-1960s idea of fun: She was an Au Pair Girl (a nanny of sorts for adventurous girls) in both London and Paris in the early '60s. Then met my father when she was working for a US military office in Frankfurt while he was stationed there.
After moving to Texas and marrying my father, then divorcing him in 1977, and subsequently working as a civil servant at the local Air Force base, she eventually obtained her own Associate degree in English Lit from a college that she had to commute over an hour to, several times a week.
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My father mistrusted a "college education." I think this was a result of paying attention to what happened in the 1950s in the US----when there was, rightly, a crackdown against the overtly Communist professors in both the university system and in various Federal Government departments, such as State. My schoolbooks in the '70s and '80s called this "McCarthyism" and portrayed it as terrible. I, at the time, thought it sounded "terrible"! But, today, I see the exact same Communism attempting to overtake our universities, for one: Where "Diversity" means only color, and not "diversity of thought." No one who disagrees with Left-Wing Communism is allowed to speak on college campuses today. (Charlie Kirk was assassinated in Orem, Utah, of all conservative places. Imagine someone like that trying to speak at Berkeley---the so-called "Home of Free Speech.")
My father once said: "I'll give my kid money NOT to attend college." OK. But he didn't contribute money to either!
My mother, on the other hand: Filled out my first college application and Financial Aid report. Sent me $100 a month in my early years of college. So I thank her for her help with that. But in truth, college, even at my State school in the 1980s, cost a lot more than that. After the first 3 years, I dropped out, in favor of working at a low-paying job at the university library.
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ETC ETC. I had a decent beginning. High SAT scores in high school (and leadership "activities" like "Editor of the school paper"); a parent who filled out my application and financial aid forms for me. (But then I loved working on my high-school paper, while the paper staff at the University of Texas mocked me for subscribing to "Time" magazine----today, "Time" is Commie-cool, but in the '80s, it was considered----previously unbeknownst to me---embarrassingly far-right. When I'd innocently, dumbly thought that reading "Time" as a high-schooler meant that I was someone who smartly kept up with the news...)
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My young story versus Academia went on from 1983 to 1993, when I finally decided to stop internally protesting and JUST GET MY FUCKING DEGREE. Which I did. And then went on to encounter even more stupid Academics at San Fran State for my Master's in Creative Writing. Why go on to a more-advanced degree when I distrusted any Academic system so? Because I thought I was such a great writer! I thought that being in San Francisco, home of the Beats, would unveil my "great talent" to the world! Oh yeah: And I had nothing else to do with myself. (As it turned out, all "Beats" were long-gone from SF. The SFSU writing department was filled with bloodless "literary theories" of writing. When I first arrived, we in a class were all asked by a gay male professor who we'd been reading over the summer: When I answered "Norman Mailer," he literally sneered at me. Later, when he discovered I was gay, he---phonily----started liking my poems in class.)
My experience at SFSU went on to include the program head, Frances Mayes, who, when I told her that my mother was German, then immediately asked me if my family were Nazis. (Who asks that? And this, from a Professor at a University. Mayes was my thesis advisor, so I didn't "dare" reveal: "And my dad was a recruiter during the Vietnam War!" Imagine THAT in her Leftist Universe!)
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40 years after all of this bullshit, I'm OK. I have a decent-paying job, which is the most important thing. I was lower-middle-class, I was personally mocked at the colleges I went to; I dropped out multiple times, then went back---just to force myself to achieve some basic goals that I knew I was capable of, despite the idiots in charge: A Bachelor's Degree and a Master's Degree. I did it.
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Oh, as for the original "Discipline" theme: In the Summer after my Sophomore year in college, I'd gone home, as I did after my Freshman year. In the Sophomore Summer, me, Mom, and Brother were eating dinner. The one house phone was right next to the dinner table. Brother got a call, and he talked and talked. After a few minutes, I finally told him to hang up the phone. He didn't. I finally yelled "Get off the phone while we're eating!" He hung up, ran to the living room and got a letter-opener knife, then came back to the dinner table and pointed it at me, then tossed some food at me. Before running into the bathroom to lock himself in. I was kind of laughing at the stupid drama----until my mother went to HIM to see if HE was OK! Good lord! I hung around for a couple of days, picked up my last pay-check at the K-Mart where I'd been working, then packed up my few things into my Ford Pinto and drove back to Austin, where I was attending school.
Once I got to Austin, sans any place to live, one kindly old land-lady took me in (even allowing me to stay in another property of hers because the first property wasn't yet ready). I immediately went to the University department where I'd been working part-time for the past year; miraculously, they hired me for a full-time job during this summer.
The "Discipline" part: I was very upset with everything in my life, and---for the first time in my life---bought gallons of wine by the box. And drank profusely every night. ONLY up until 10pm. I actually stopped every night at 10pm. My happily new-found job was from 8 to 5, and I had to wake up by 6:30am to get there by 8. I did it every single day because I HAD to do it.
No subsequent job that I've ever had has been so important to me. In later years, I was always in a position to "take it or leave it." But this Summer, I had no choice and had to be 100% on point.
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My minor early "problems" are nothing compared to Joan Crawford's problems, for example. I made it to a "middle class" that I was semi (though not totally) expected to make it to. Despite the various creeps at University, I made it.
And, as I write this, it's only 10:39pm. But I'm pretty sure I'll be up long past then, making stupid posts.
