In my program at Milton Roy and especially Morgan Yacht Buildings, there were an awful lot of 3rd and 4th phasers that wore various patches on their arms. I myself never did, but others may remember. This was lightyears before the Nicotene patch hit the market. Were we guinea pigs for that? I remember quite a few kids with the patch and they wore them for various reasons, but us lower phasers were never really let in on the whole thing.
One thing I remember is that my schoolwork was closely monitored. Whereas my parents showed rank indifference to my grades at school, Mrs. Pete, Liz Cassidy, Marnie Sykes, and Chris Casselor all knew intimate details of my school day. Mrs. Pete even asked me one day, how I felt having a girl help me get caught up in American Literature. How in the hell could anyone know about that? It was my first period class, and the door was always closed. As far as I know, there was noone affiliated with the program in that area. There were alot of rats though, and maybe someone saw me talking to Diane in the halls or something.
All I know about school is that I simply flew through it and devoured my assignments with ease. After spending a summer in hell at the program I was eager to learn and accomplish something. My talent for Geometry was astounding, and I picked up on my artwork really well too. Another thing was my sense of direction. I could find addresses with uncanny accuracy and without needing a map. Other people from the program could do the same thing, it was really weird. Another thing I picked up was being able to take things apart and put them back together again really fast.
I guess the biggest thing we all got was our "Awareness." Mine was a curse for a really long time. It took me a good 10 years or so before I was finally able to "turn it off" and just go on with a normal life. It was a real drag to look at people and pretty much know what they were going through and feel empathy for people and then find out that pretty much nobody really gives a shit about you. My Awareness did'nt come back to me until I started working with children, and then it creeped back slowly with each passing day. Now it is more like a camera shutter, opening and closing very quickly so that I do not get caught up in other peoples problems, yet I still possess a clear picture of the situation. As far as spooks and black ops and all that shit, did'nt happen in the seventies, although we did set the ground work for all the others.