Charles P. Sedgwick, Author at Social Science Space

I am an octogenarian, born in an air raid shelter in England; basic education in England and Canada and tertiary education in United States, Canada and New Zealand. From 1959 my intellectual capacity or lack of it destined me for the working class first in Canada, then the UK and latterly the US - billboard painter, sandblaster, fiberglass worker, thorium plant worker, car window installer, office cleaner, pest exterminator, dishwasher, librarian, jet fighter electronics repairman (the USA prize for failing university), a cook in a Chinese restaurant (paying for university and research at the same time) and after a lapse in the vocation back to labour as a crab fisherman, journalist and legal clerk. I remember all my co-workers in every job – if you pulled your weight, did your job they were always supportive and caring. They all taught me something and I learned that bosses gave with one hand and took away with the other. In the early years it was your health and in university health and dignity. Why bore you with this biography? Because this is where I came from. This is the context that allowed me to survive. It took Dr Johns, a native American political science professor, to convince me a) that I had a brain, b) that university was a good place to develop and exercise one’s brain and that the ‘B’ I got on his first essay could be an ‘A’. That was 1968, (a year of student uprising that bypassed me) and the beginning of my association with university life that was both supportive and challenging, with mostly encouraging academics as workmates, but with unpredictable professors. Finally on the verge of finishing my PhD I was offered a job (New Zealand) when the preferred candidate turned down the offer!