I decided to interview my grandfather because he has been in the Marine Corps for three years. When I asked him what coming of age meant to him he said that coming of age is, “Being able to start functioning as an adult.” I already knew that he had been in the Marine Corps so I asked him if he ever went to college. In fact he did, he said that he went to two different colleges and that he studied for a total of one and a half years. He said that he spent one year at Portland State College and then went to Easter Oregon College of Education for six months. I wanted to know more so I asked what he was studying to be and he replied saying that he wanted to be a history teacher and a football coach. I later asked which experience contributed the most to his coming of age. Whether it was him being in the Marine Corps or his experience in …show more content…
He replied, “I came of age more so in the Marine Corps because having no control of what happened I learned to stick with it and tough it out. It taught me to grin and bear it because you had to move on. You had to mature faster mentally to be able to cope with the circumstances.” That being said I asked if college still had any impact on his coming of age. He said that college could have had a slight impact on his coming of age. “I feel that by the time I went to college I was already functioning as an adult.” He responded. By that time he was already married and had a child. Although he seemed pretty confident about what he had told me I asked him how his past effected his future and whether it was good or bad. He said that the discontinuation of college brought hardships on his family because he couldn’t get a steady job. He wasn’t able to become a history teacher because he didn’t finish his degree. As a result he did construction work which wasn’t always steady causing him to need to move the family to where there was work. This was hard as they had to move many