Baccalaureate and student up to 50 years old

As my family’s needs grew, I managed to advance through exceptional examinations and merit-based pay raises. I was not granted the fifth professional category because of my limited formal education. Nevertheless, I applied to the Ministry and received permission to take the required equivalency examinations at the theoretical high school. Between 1968 and 1970, I completed two years of study in one, earning my baccalaureate in the spring of 1970, at the age of forty-eight.

I had thus outpaced the people of Oltenia who boasted of fulfilling the five-year plan in ten years. To qualify for the category, one had to complete both the second level of construction school and vocational school. Although I hesitated at first, I decided to pursue both. The second-level school took a single year, and for the professional qualification — having already passed my baccalaureate — I studied materials technology and the strength of materials.

This allowed me to sit for the fifth-category examination. At fifty years old, after so many years as a student, I finally became a true man among men — an OM, as we used to say.

In 1974, junior engineering colleges were established, and each company was required to send two workers with baccalaureates to sit for the entrance examinations for the evening courses. The program lasted five years. The first condition for admission was party membership, since those holding positions but lacking formal titles could not be promoted professionally.

After two weeks, this requirement was relaxed due to remaining vacancies. I was then permitted, through what I considered an act of clemency, to take the entrance examination. Yet I realised it was not worth becoming a junior engineer at the age of fifty-five — exhausting myself with the daily commute to Bucharest while still working on the construction site — merely for the sake of a title. Instead, I chose to remain head of formation, dedicating my time to ensuring my daughter’s education and future.

(Virgil Maxim, Hymn to the Cross Bearer. Abecedar duhovnicesc pentru un frate de cruce, 2nd edition, Antim Publishing House, Bucharest, 2002, pp. 436–437.)