Palin, 'Average' Student at 5 Schools, Prayed, Planned for TV
By Peter Robison
Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Sarah Palin started in Hawaii, stayed longest in Idaho and ended an almost five-year academic journey through five colleges as a student many professors forgot.
Roy Atwood, her academic adviser at the University of Idaho, said the Republican vice presidential candidate was one of dozens of students he helped process through the journalism program that year. A North Idaho College instructor discovered he taught Palin in a government class after checking his gradebooks, school spokeswoman Stacy Hudson said.
Interviews with classmates paint a similar picture of Palin as an anonymous, though motivated and hard-working, student who earned a Bachelor of Science degree in journalism from the University of Idaho in 1987. She later told a campus publication that one of her best semesters was spent learning about broadcasting at a student-run Idaho television studio.
``My sense from people is that she was an average student,'' said Kaylene Johnson, author of a biography, ``Sarah'' (Epicenter Press, 2008). ``I don't know that she distinguished herself in college in any particular way.''
Palin, 44, made an impression on one college friend, Stacia Hagerty, who credits her conversion to Catholicism in part to discussions the two had as dorm mates at the University of Idaho's Neely Hall. As a teenager, Palin had attended the Assembly of God Church in Wasilla, Alaska, and she encouraged her friend to commit time to church.
`Strong Relationship'
``She just had a strong relationship with the Lord,'' said Hagerty, now an Idaho lawyer.
Hagerty shared a dating dilemma with Palin one day. ``I'm going to go back to my room and say a prayer for you,'' Hagerty recalled Palin saying. When Hagerty felt better the next day, Palin credited the prayer.
Then known as Sarah Heath, Palin was the third of four children of Chuck Heath, a school teacher, and Sally, a school secretary. Palin crisscrossed from Hawaii to northern Idaho and back to Alaska before graduating from the University of Idaho.
Palin's rival on the Democratic ticket, Senator Joe Biden, graduated from the University of Delaware in 1965 and from Syracuse University College of Law in 1968. Senator Barack Obama attended Occidental College, in Los Angeles, and received a B.A. in 1983 from Columbia University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1991. Senator John McCain graduated from the Naval Academy in 1958.
Palin's first stop, at the University of Hawaii in Hilo in 1982, didn't last long, according to Johnson. Palin and three Wasilla friends who expected sunny skies were dismayed at Hilo's rainy climate, Johnson said.
Hawaii Pacific
Palin then shifted to Hawaii Pacific College in sunnier Honolulu. She was enrolled full-time for a semester, school spokeswoman Crystale Lopez said.
Missing home, Palin transferred again to North Idaho College, a community college in Coeur d'Alene, near Sandpoint, where Palin was born.
She studied two semesters there in 1983 as a general studies major, according to school spokeswoman Hudson. She said she couldn't find any professors who remembered Palin.
Federal privacy laws prevent universities from disclosing grades, and Palin hasn't released them.
Palin moved in 1984 to the University of Idaho, where her brother Chuck Jr. played for the football team, Johnson said. She went to dormitory dance parties, rarely drank and never had boys in her room, according to Hagerty. She spoke often about her high- school sweetheart, now her husband, Todd Palin, and fishing in Alaska during the summer.
`So Not Sarah'
``I was sort of shocked to find that her daughter was pregnant out of wedlock, because that was so not Sarah,'' Hagerty said, referring to the news that Palin's unwed 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is five months pregnant and plans to marry the father.
Palin took courses in news writing, the history of mass communication, interviewing, psychology, political science and communications ethics, according to Atwood.
For one semester, in fall 1985, she attended Matanuska- Susitna Community College in Palmer, Alaska, according to school spokeswoman Sandy Gravley. ``It looks like she may have taken a few classes there,'' Palin spokeswoman Maria Comella said in an e- mail.
Journalism was a natural major for her because she grew up discussing current events with her family, Palin told an alumni publication last year. ``I was always asking everyone the questions, and I still am today,'' she said.
As a student, Palin sat near the front of class and rarely spoke up, recalled Brian Long, a fellow journalism major who is now a lawyer in Coeur d'Alene. ``She was pretty quiet in school,'' he said.
`Blended In'
``I remember her face,'' said former classmate Larry Richardson, who was struck by the beauty of the one-time Miss Wasilla. As a student, ``she kind of blended in,'' said Richardson, now a real estate agent in Eagle, Idaho.
The University of Idaho's communications department had no record of Palin writing for the school's newspaper.
Palin knew she wanted ``to be a newscaster on TV,'' Hagerty said. ``And to have a family.''
After earning her journalism degree in 1987, she got a job as a sportscaster at KTUU-TV in Anchorage. Politics came as a surprise, even to her family, said biographer Johnson.
``What was talked about around the kitchen table was sports, it wasn't politics,'' Johnson said. ``When she went into politics, everyone went, `Oh, really?'''
To contact the reporter on this story: Peter Robison in Seattle at robison@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: September 7, 2008 00:01 EDT |
