Tales of a graduate school dropout (no regrets)

I never open up this part of my life to just anyone, because some things I don't like to retell. The funny thing about it is that with time, you look at what you did with a bit of amusement, something like, "man, that was really dumb, but funny!"

I would consider dropping out the first semester of graduate school similar to not answering the $64,000 ($50,000 in the daytime half-hour version) question on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? You don't lose much money, but sometimes losing higher up in the game sets you up for a huge fall. You don't want to go back to $32,000 ($25,000 daytime) if you muff the $500,000 question...so sometimes you give up for your own good and to protect what self-respect you do have.

Let me begin my story in 1994, after I had graduated from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. I was well on my way to a fulfulling graduate career at the University of New Hampshire, where it would finally lead to a PhD in Mathematics Education ca. 1999-2000. My brother was already at St Anselm's college in Goffstown, so why not have two New Hampshire graduates?

Strike One came when my mother would have preferred me to stay in Massachusetts, or at least around the Boston area. Since UMass Dartmouth didn't have a graduate program, and I had already received a "thanks, but no thanks" from Boston University, I thought UNH would be a good fit. It wasn't. UNH was very, very expensive, and I can understand why my mother was displeased for being there; for an entire year, non-resident, it was $20,000. If I became a New Hampshire resident for a year, my tuition would go down to around $8500 or so. Not a good deal at all.

Strike Two was a corollary of Strike One. The UNH Financial offices were, to put it generously, hounded me for weeks for missing paperwork and payments. The second day full day I got moved in, I got a notice that I was to pay $209 in some kind of fee, or else they
would continue hounding me. Opening my mailbox was an exercise in terror sometimes, as I never knew I would be getting a card or a care package, or a UNH notice asking where my payment or paperwork was.

Strike Three came when my own graduate work suffered at the hands of Strike 2. In graduate school, you are to maintain a minimum B average, or else you go on academic probation, or get dismissed from the University. I had already taken a three course workload, but one particular professor (whose name I'm withholding because he's actually a good and well-respected professor) told me, without hesitation, "I can only hope you do better to make up for the poor effort this semester." That was it, and I was devastated. A week later, I filled out my papers to withdraw from UNH and handed them into the Admissions office. My final day at UNH ended appropriately on a snowy December day in 1994, giving my dead graduate and PhD career a proper burial.

(I also heard rumors that further along the path, you had to submit and pass an oral examination. If you didn't, your graduate career was finished, and you were escorted off the UNH campus. I knew with the two C's I had received at UNH, and one class I had withdrawn from was also a C, so the chance of getting a notice from UNH not to bother returning, or being put on immediate academic probation, was good enough reason to give up the ghost.)

Now we come to the present day, thirteen years later. My final payment to the loan company for this one-semester disaster will be paid off in full. I consider the thirteen years of $100 per month payments penance for making the wrong decision, similar to the young teenage girl who gets pregnant after a quick fling with her boyfriend or the Big Man On Campus, and then must endure nine months of pregnancy plus eighteen years living with the results. Some succeed and raise wonderful children, but others do not. To them, a screaming three year old child is enough to smack them into silence, scream in their faces, or neglect them completely.

Do I consider my actions selfish and capricious? Yes. As Willy Wonka said to Charlie Bucket and Grampa Joe in the original 1970 film, "perhaps they (the bad kids who got their poetic justice) will be wiser for the wear" as they were leaving; but not before getting a dose of anger from stealing Fizzy Lifting drinks. Charlie summoned his own honesty and returned the Everlasting Gobstopper to Wonka, who said "so shines a good deed in a weary, weary world." Wonka knew that Charlie was being honest all along.

My return of the Everlasting Gobstopper to Wonka is to say yes, I'm a graduate school dropout. To this day I have zero regrets leaving UNH, and furthermore, I have no regrets not going back to finish my PhD or Masters. I may go back and get an undergraduate degree in Music, but not until I actually save the money and find a good program.