However, Hubbard's extensive teenage diaries—used as evidence in a California court case—show no interest in psychological or philosophical ideas.
Hubbard told his followers that he spent five years between the ages of fourteen and nineteen—travelling alone in China, Mongolia, India and Tibet, and studying with holy men.He did not actually visit Mongolia, India nor Tibet. His two visits to China were short excursions in the company of his mother. Hubbard confessed the brevity of his Chinese stay in an interview with Adventure magazine in 1935.
Hubbard was nineteen when he entered George Washington University, where he intended to major in Civil Engineering. He failed to qualify for the third year of the course, because his grades were too low. It would later be claimed that Hubbard had degrees in both civil engineering and mathematics. He graduated in neither, and his grades in mathematics were very poor. While at University, Hubbard also failed a short course in "molecular and atomic physics", which prompted his ludicrous assertion that he was "one of America's first Nuclear Physicists".
EXPEDITIONS
During his last semester at University, Hubbard arranged the "Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition". It was later asserted that this expedition provided "invaluable data" to the University of Michigan and the Hydrographic Office, neither of which have any record of it. In fact, the trip was announced in the University newspaper under the heading "L. Ron Hubbard Heads Movie Cruise Among Old American Piratical Haunts".
In the event, the expedition reached only three of its sixteen proposed ports of call, failing to take any Film. In a 1950 interview, Hubbard dismissed it as "a two-bit expedition and a financial bust".
Hubbard's second supposed expedition was described by him as the "first complete mineralogical survey" of Puerto Rico. Again, there are no records of such a survey, because Hubbard seems to have spent most of his time in Puerto Rico prospecting unsuccessfully for gold. He worked briefly as a civil engineer's assistant before returning to the U.S.
In February 1940, Hubbard talked his way into membership of the Explorers' Club of New York and was awarded an expedition flag for his proposed "Alaskan Radio Experimental Expedition". Hubbard was trying out a new system of radio navigation, and used the "expedition" to beg equipment to refit his 32-foot ketch, the Magician.