![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Van-Allen.jpg\" "\\"Van")
<\/a>Now, as a heavy science fiction reader at the time I thought I would love this class.\u00a0 And I did!!\u00a0 But I loved it for all the wrong reasons.\u00a0 See, as a city girl from a huge metropolis like Los Angeles, I was NOT very familiar with the stars in my night sky.\u00a0 (having met stars growing up! Movie Stars, lol)\u00a0 And worse, I certainly wasn’t used to seeing the HUGE spectrum of stars in the night sky of Iowa City!<\/p>\nSo night after night I would try to see the patterns in the sky.\u00a0 And then try to see the patterns on a star chart.\u00a0 And well, needless to say I earned my first “F” by the end of the semester.\u00a0 For several reasons, but NOT being able to find a star on a map being the primary one!<\/p>\n
What I should have done was drop the class.\u00a0 But I was unfamiliar with the system enough to see that as a clear option. And damn if Professor Van Allen wasn’t the most hilarious lecturer!\u00a0 I loved going to his class.\u00a0 Could barely understand him with his accent, and what he was teaching was going completely over my head… but I just fell in love with his style.\u00a0 And he had a lot of it.<\/p>\n
I also met, in the back of that lecture hall, my first Iowan conquest.\u00a0 Tall, lean, blond and adorable.\u00a0 Also, bad in bed and dumb as a post, but, sadly, with gregarious swimmers which knocked me up.\u00a0 Apparently the move to Iowa threw off my, previously quite reliable, rhythm method of birth control.<\/p>\n
So needless to say I was dealing with a lot and enjoyed listening to something rare.\u00a0 A truly entertaining college lecture.\u00a0 Something that I’ve never had repeated since! lol<\/p>\n
Then again, what did I know… I was an 18 year old!<\/p>\n
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After high school I went to the University of Iowa.\u00a0 In that first semester took a freshman course in Astronomy.\u00a0 It was taught by a man named Van Allen.\u00a0 I was several weeks into the course before I realized that … Continue reading