Editor’s note: The IJ is reprinting some of the late Beth Ashley’s columns. This is from 2017.

My husband and I have just read a book about Harvard Law School, which prompted conversations about different schools we’ve attended.

My list was long: In my pre-college years, I changed schools 17 times.

My dad had lost his money and his job in the financial crash of 1929, and sought for the rest of his life to put his professional life back together.

As a result, we moved hither and yon and from coast to coast, never settling in one place for long.

My life was a succession of first days of school in never-before-seen towns, meeting kids I would never see again. In fifth grade, I went to four schools. In three years of high school, I started over five times.

Was it awful? I don’t think so. But it certainly had its challenges.

For one thing, I never stayed any place long enough to make any friends.

When I got to college, I found I didn’t know how to make them. How do you get close to people when you don’t expect to see them next week?

I learned a few interesting things from my oddball childhood. For one thing, the schools back East were always ahead of the schools in California. When we moved West, I could count on getting good grades because I already knew all the answers. I got good grades anyhow because I had no social life to get in the way.

Only one move paid any sort of social dividend: When we left Southern California for Laconia, New Hampshire, my new classmates thought me a tad glamorous because I was somewhat connected to Hollywood and all that. The boys expected me to be a bit racy, I think, which gave me problems I didn’t know how to handle.

My school life began in a Waban, Massachusetts, kindergarten, and twirled westward from there. I entered Redondo Union High School in Southern California three times. That’s where I finished, though I never got a diploma. My last high school was Tam in Mill Valley; I think I went there about four months altogether, and it was from there that I was admitted to Stanford. Wonderful school, Tam High. There I met two terrific girls — Mellon and Helen, who became lasting friends after college.

People tell me now that going to so many different schools was probably a lesson in how to meet new people, how not to freeze up when talking with strangers. I’m not sure that’s true. You just do what you have to do, given the circumstances.

Attending so many schools, in such disparate towns, certainly gave me a love for variety. It seems odd now that I have lived for more than 50 years in one place, Greenbrae, and have no wish to move.

On the other hand, I have an addiction to travel: Give me a passport and a plane ticket, and I’m out of here. My mind is always reaching out to new places. Who’s out there whom I haven’t met? How much more about the world can I learn?

Some people are amazed when they hear about my checkered schoolgirl career. Moving so much must have scarred you plenty, they say. Hasn’t it left you somewhat adrift? Hasn’t it crippled your social skills?

I don’t know. What would you say?