In 1980 a 13 year old rounding out 7th grade discovered a mysterious video display and keyboard the teacher's desk. A TRS-80 Model II (Level I) had found its way into the Cerro Gordo unit 100 school district.
In High School, TRS-80s turned into Apple IIs, and BASIC became 6502 assembly.
RCC non-credit classes were swapped for computer camps at Western Illinois University, and then a new world: PDP-8's and PDP-11's...Minicomputers! At Millikin University there was a VAX 11/750 and VMS and finally, a real computer language...Pascal!