Blast from the Past…
Source
by Retired Prof
I decided to drop out of Ambassador College sometime during my second semester there, but didn’t tell anybody. I intended to keep my grades up and finish the semester, hoping I might be able to transfer the credits to another school. Some credits, of course, would never transfer, including ones from the religion class taught by Rod Meredith. I kept attending it and smiling and nodding because I didn’t want to call attention to myself. Anyone who showed signs of a bad attitude would be counseled by a minister, and I wanted to avoid such a scene at all costs. But I didn’t do much else connected to the class, because it bored me and the grade no longer mattered. Figuring nobody would call me on the carpet merely for low grades, I quit studying the readings, so of course performed poorly on tests. I was running a risk here, because Meredith (as his nickname “Rod of Iron” implies) had high standards and enforced them sternly. If he did call me in for counseling, it was almost guaranteed he would inflict deep humiliation. Fortunately I guessed right about how much I could afford to slack off without attracting attention. Meredith didn’t counsel me, nor did anyone else, for the whole second half of the semester.
Thus I was able to get out of Pasadena and go home to Arkansas with no awkward encounters. Almost.
Our big final out-of-class assignment was to turn in an outline of Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I couldn’t stand to do it. If we had been required to focus on one event or character in it and do an analysis, I might have felt intrigued and challenged, but the requirement just to spit the whole thing back in outline form turned me right off. I made up my mind not to mess around with mediocre performance in Meredith’s class; I would shoot for the lowest grade possible. I would flunk that sucker. So I didn’t even read Decline and Fall. Still haven’t, after all these years. I know it’s a monument of Western culture and all that, but no. Willful ignorance.
(To all you young people reading this page I hereby offer myself as a bad example—but not bad in all respects. Learn from my mistake. Don’t revel in your ignorance. Read Gibbon. Ponder its implications. Outline the book if it helps you understand it. Just don’t let anybody force you to.)
Anyway, after final tests were over and I was packing for the trip home on a Greyhound Bus, I got a telephone call from Meredith’s paper grader, one of the top senior students. I forget his name, but he always struck me as a decent fellow, and this call strengthened that impression. He was doing his job conscientiously, and he seemed sincerely concerned.
Politely, he said, “I was grading the Gibbon outlines, and I couldn’t find yours.”
Politely, I said, “No. That’s because I didn’t turn one in.”
“Oh . . . . Well, how soon did you plan to do that?”
“Actually, I didn’t plan to do it at all.” I kept my voice matter-of-fact. I offered no explanations.
His exact words after that I do not recall—he didn’t say much—but I clearly remember his tone. The poor guy was totally nonplussed. He quickly hung up. I figured my F was in the bag, because I had (politely) demonstrated that I deserved it.
Imagine my disappointment back in Arkansas when grades finally came in the mail, and I saw that Meredith had given me a D!
Postscript
Some ten years later I began my career as a college English teacher. Over the next thirty-five years I regularly told this story to students, always reassuring them that I would never award them a grade they had not earned. I would conclude by saying, “I don’t want you to lose respect for me the way I lost respect for Roderick Meredith.”
Some of my English teacher colleagues who heard this story over the years believed I was too hard on Meredith. One of them said, “You don’t know what he was thinking. You kept on going to class; maybe he thought you were really trying.” Another said, “or maybe he counted attendance as a bigger part of your grade than you thought.” Another pointed out that the outline assignment, even though it was a requirement, might not have counted for a very high percentage of the total points in the course. Well, maybe they’re right. Also I sometimes guess that he gave me a D because he thought an F might cause me to drop out. Ironic, hunh?
The weakest defense any of my colleagues offered was, “He was just being kind to you.” I entirely discounted that explanation.
Here’s the thing about Rod Meredith. He appeared to be a clone of the HWA/WCG/AC bourg, literally a creation of or product of that system and to a greater extent than anyone else whom I ever met, or to whom I ever listened from the administration. By the time I attended AC, students openly mocked the veneer which Rod presented to the public. Eccentric would have been a kind word to use to describe it.
We have joked in the past about the U.A.P. (universal Ambassador personality). I often wondered what Rod’s real personality night have been like, growing up as a young boy there in Joplin, Mo. What motivated him into his passion for Golden Gloves boxing, and what kind of student might he have been in high school? Was he some sort of nerdy misfit, or was he popular and well liked by his peers? What type of relationship did he have with his parents, as opposed to with his uncle the veterinarian? What was the catalyst for his attending a start-up college with no accreditation? What were his dreams, his aspirations?
Also, as he looks back on his lifetime in Armstrongism, what does he think of the fact that nothing we were all taught was imminent happened on original schedule, or frankly at all? How does he regard himself vis a vis all of the students who passed through the classes he taught at AC? Can he take any pride in his mentorship? How does he regard the successful ones who left the org? Does he have regrets about the way in which he conducted his life?
You also have to wonder about the student paper grader. Did he actually consider his job as being “real”, to be taken seriously? Or was he able to see things that somehow did not compute? What did he go on to do in life or become?
I was a conflicted student. On one hand, I believed what they were teaching us would happen in 1972-75. Their “facts” (the three math equations) seemed incontrovertible. If there were more knowledgable authorities who could counter or refute these equations, they certainly were not speaking up at that point in time. On the other hand, the prevailing environment at Ambassador College, and most of those one would meet there seemed surreal. In a way, it was a good protected environment for one’s first few years away from home. I can’t imagine making it a permanent fixture in one’s life as did Rod Meredith and others.
BB
His wasted abusive life is nearly at an end.
In more ways than one.
Bob,
If Rod is honest with himself, he knows he wasted his life on Armstrongism. But I believe there is more to this. His personality. The power and control he could wield over others was UN-resistable. Perhaps this is the reason he stayed in the ministry.
One question for you. Why would you attend Ambassador College if you believed it to be a waste of your time? One would think that if one is going to invest their time and energy, then at least they would think that what they were doing is worth the effort.
I will let Bob answer that. I suppose it has to do with being a church kid with expectations of ones parents.
With the iron fist WCG parents wielded back in the 1960s, if there was even the remotest chance that you could be accepted by Ambassador College, that was the only college option you had in which you would have the support of your parents and family members who were members, your friends in the local church area, and your pastor.
The problem is, due to the pressures of that era, you had to go to college. Reason one, the draft and Viet Nam. Reason two, even at age 18 you were still receiving daily beatings if your parents lived by the childrearing booklet, and these would continue until you left home. AC put some distance between self and the parental figures, and gave you a place to live, and a means of support without your necessarily having a job skill. And, I got to get rid of the callouses on my butt!
Most of us local church kids didn’t even apply for another college. The acceptance letters from AC were not mailed out in a timely fashion as from other colleges and universities. You didn’t even know if you had been accepted until late July, if you were fortunate. They may have done this deliberately, as one of their manipulation techniques, I don’t know. But if you happened to be rejected, there was a mad scramble to get into a junior college or community college, with the purpose of getting the grades up, and another year of ingratiating yourself with your local pastor, so that you could reapply to AC the following year.
I never had the slightest inclination towards becoming a WCG minister. As goes AC, basically, I took what was available to me at that time and exploited it for my own purposes and advantage. And, I really stuck out as a very memorable sore thumb while doing that! Fortunately, I survived that era, got past the dates we had been falsely threatened and manipulated with, and have managed to have a pretty darned good life for the most part.
Hope that helps.
BB
Bob writes: “I took what was available to me at that time and exploited it for my own purposes and advantage.”
As well you should have. Vietnam was not I choice I was going to take. I would expect nothing more from anyone who has a problem with invading another’s land and killing the people thereof.