There’s No Business Like School Business
By Roberta Beach Jacobson
Without question, my parents assumed I’d be going away to college. They bugged me about it all the time and took me to see various campuses, but I had no interest. I was an average high school student, looking forward to graduating with the class of 1970, but most of my thoughts were about love. My boyfriend and I wanted to get married. He was my number one priority. I was 18 when he and I tied the knot. My parents, very upset, refused to attend the wedding.
My Mr. Right turned out to be Mr. Wrong and a divorce followed. Not knowing what to do with my life, I joined the army and left for assignment in Europe. I was 21. Living in Germany was an adventure and I traveled across the near by borders every chance I could. Weekends I would be in Paris or Amsterdam. As luck would have it, I met up with another boyfriend, a fellow soldier. Things went fine until one day he got shipped to the states, to the Pentagon of all places. I felt abandoned. So I signed up for a night course with the University of Maryland. I didn’t even care much what the subject was, I just wanted something to keep me busy in the evenings.
Starting college was not in my plans or something I had put much thought into doing. It just sort of happened. One day I saw a UMD poster and it happened to be registration time and so I just filled out the forms and suddenly I found myself in a sociology course.
Not along after my course ended, I was shipped to the States myself. My boyfriend and I met up in Virginia and we got married in Maryland. Just like that.
The education center was one of the places I had to stop by to get signed into my new post and I somehow met up with a very enthusiastic guidance counselor. She explained how I could get credit for my military schooling aqnd earn a quick degree – an accredited degree.
I went for it. She was right. The deal was, all I had to do was to complete seven courses (21 quarter hours) to meet the residence requirement of the college. In between I took all sorts of no-cost tests (such as CLEPs) for even more credits. Was it a stroke of luck? In the part of Illinois where I grew up, we started foreign language classes in fifth grade. I was pretty good in my seven years of studying Spanish, which I had through 11th grade, and was able to test out at college level via CLEP tests. Go figure.
The First Degree.
Once my military schools were figured in, I found out I would have enough quarter hours to graduate. By day, I was a soldier in an engineering unit. Evenings, I rushed through my course work in just three quarters (pregnant the whole time). The commencement ceremony for Northern Virginia Community College was conveniently scheduled a day before my due date. It was 1976, a full six years after my high school graduation, and I had an A.S. (Associate of Science).
And the Second Degree?
With a baby, a full-time military job and a husband, you’d think I would have had enough going on in my life. Hard as it was to fathom, I found I missed the challenges of my night courses. I missed the interaction with fellow students. I was ready to study! So I signed up for a weekend course schedule on base and slowly completed a dozen courses (36 semester hours) in human resources management. Soon after that we found out we were headed back to Germany. I had made the exact residency requirement and was told my degree would be mailed to me overseas come commencement time. Yippee! So off we went across the pond, baby in tow, the start of another European adventure. Nobody could suggest my life was boring and routine.
The Third and Fourth Degrees.
It helped a lot that my GI Bill was paying for it all, because I had no costs other than my books (averaging $100 per course). I proudly marched down the aisle to accept a Master of Education degree in 1982 and then again for a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study in 1986. Each degree was 36 semester hours of no-nonsense work.
My life had changed by degrees! At my high school commencement, it was the furthest thing from my mind that I might wish to go on to study nights and/or weekends and earn four degrees. I remember high school as boring, at least the classes. I enjoyed the plays and concerts, the fun stuff.
Nobody was more astounded at my academic turn-around than my parents. I always mailed them photocopies of my grade reports and they remained my steadfast cheerleaders. With each degree completion, they sent cards and gifts and called to congratulate me. They, who had saved so hard for my college tuition, had never used a cent of it. I encouraged them to go on a cruise, enjoy the money, have fun being retired.
I had used up almost every penny of my GI Bill benefits, but after a while I was itching for a doctorate. I missed the excitement of going to classes. Also, it seemed I had too much free time on my hands. My full-time job was a guidance counselor, but I delivered pizzas a couple of nights a week and did some tour guiding on weekends. I did some volunteer work and I enrolled in several semesters of German language classes in an adult education program and that kept me busy for a while. There were no credits involved, but improving my German was a plus, considering I was living and working in Germany.
It was a bit scary, but I started classes for the only doctoral program available on base. It was an Ed.D., though a doctor in education degree was not really my cup of tea. New students could take three courses before formal acceptance, so there I was, sitting in class with assistant principals and well-seasoned teachers at the other desks. I felt pushed up against a brick wall at times and also looming in front of me was the strict requirement that overseas students had to spend two summers on campus in the U.S. I knew I could never afford that. True, my tuition would be covered, but I’d be on leave-without-pay for those months and would have to pay for a place to stay those summers.
I dropped out. It was the biggest bump in the road in my long educational journey. My grades were dismal. I was miserable. I wasn’t even sure I wanted or needed a doctorate, but if so, certainly not one in education.
Since living abroad was a permanent situation for me, I decided I had to opt for my old stand-by – a non-traditional method. Getting a doctorate actually was not half as intimidating as I had thought. Basically one needs 60 semester hours beyond the master level. I already had an additional advanced degree (beyond my Master degree) under my belt, plus the few credits from my short gig with trying for an Ed.D., so was more than half way there at the starting gate.
I enrolled with Pacific Western University by mail and awaited their evaluation of my credits. This time I was paying my own way and, if all went well, I’d be awarded a Ph.D. in Behavioral Science.
The news was great! I would need to do a couple of small research projects on my own and write up papers of 10 pages or so for each. My transfer credits looked fine. Not only did they come from accredited institutions, but I had maintained a decent GPA. I faced doing a research proposal, which went well because I’d learned a lot about that – perhaps the sole benefit of suffering through those Ed.D. classes. The final credits would come from the completed dissertation, which had to be at least 100 pages.
I remember laughing when I found out I had six years to complete it. Who needs six years? But the library research (back in the days of microfiche, not Internet), the questionnaires, the crunching of numbers, the writing to a specific format, it all took time. Lots of time -as in years. I wasn’t laughing anymore.
I felt alone in the world. It would have been easier to finish a dissertation with fellow students and professors ready to answer questions. I tried not to panic and I didn’t rush myself. I examined a number of completed dissertations. Even though the subjects were not at all similar to mine, I was concentrating on the format, the presentation, everything. I wanted my research project to be worry-free and the dissertation as close to perfect as I could manage. I knew if I found any errors in my basic calculations, I’d have to start over.
Work was strenuous and the hours long. By then I was a junior platoon sergeant and had to be at the barracks at 5:30 in the morning to wake up my troops. I was burning the candle at both ends to attend evening classes. Graduate school. My son was barely two years old.
Less than a year after our arrival back in Germany, it was time for me to leave the military. What a relief. Working a 9-5 civilian job on base left me more time to continue my education and by this time I was getting serious about it. Earlier it hadn’t mattered much. I just signed up for whatever courses were offered, did the work the best I could manage, didn’t spend too much time studying or worrying about grades.
Luckily, my GI Bill was covering my education expenses, everything except the books. My graduate work was in human services and counseling (under the department of education) and I loved every second of it. It was in no way easy. I had tons of homework and term papers. My husband complained I was gone too much. I let his comments roll off my back. I was loving school.
Then my four-year degree just didn’t happen – and there I was already deeply involved in graduate school studies! I had sent off for my official B.S. transcripts, a very routine matter. I was totally unaware I hadn’t quite met the requirements to graduate with a Bachelor of Science. It was a fluke. Although I’d completed the university’s residence requirement and had all the right credits for a bachelor degree with them, the small print had eluded me. The rules stated the last 36 semester hours had to be done with that university and I had innocently taken a single evening course with another university because philosophy was a requirement for graduation and my main university didn’t have philosophy in their upcoming schedule. I hadn’t a clue that anything was amiss. Nobody ever said anything about it to me and I was fully expecting to graduate.
When it became evident to everybody that my B.S. transcripts were not to appear, I had to save face and scramble to find a new plan – and fast! My fellow students were aghast I had the nerve to enroll in graduate school without even holding a four-year degree. Why had I enrolled in Boston University’s graduate program, they wanted to know? I was humiliated beyond words.
I no longer attended my graduate courses. I met with several guidance counselors and was lucky enough to find out abut a non-traditional four-year degree program with no residency requirement. It sounded perfect for somebody like me.
I collected all my transcripts and mailed them to the University of the State of New York (USNY). For a fee, they did an initial evaluation and it appeared I more than met their degree requirements. So I ordered official transcripts to be sent to them for an official calculation of my credits.
Finally – the Second Degree.
Everything clicked. In 1980, I had earned a Bachelor of Science! Because of being in Germany, I was not able to attend the commencement in Albany, New York. But they mailed me my degree certification and I was thrilled to have the green light to get back to graduate school – legally. I missed the thrill of looking at posted course schedules for the next semester, of opening each new textbook, of making the first impression on the professor with the first exam, of seeing which friends were in which classes.
Graduate school was never boring for me. The professors worked us hard, expecting letter-perfect papers. It was a given we were not only to show up for every lecture, but were to participate in class discussions. In graduate school, earning a “C” is akin to being at the bottom of the class, so we had a lot of friendly competition. The hours in the library seemed endless and no excuse was given that we had families and full-time jobs and were exhausted at the end of each day. We just plugged away at it, even if the odds were against us. We sort of held each other up.
The Fifth Degree.
From start to finish, it took me just over five years. For weeks I waited for my educational advisors to evaluate my research and dissertation. They had a few minor questions for me, but all went smoothly. I was elated – I did it! As before, I could not attend the commencement ceremony. My degree arrived in the mail, along with a hardbound copy of my dissertation.
A 20 Year Journey.
From start to finish, my college “career” lasted almost 20 years. I consider it a journey of learning unlike no other. My milestones along the way:
High school graduation – 1970
Associate of Science in General Studies – 1978
Bachelor of Science – 1980
Master of Education – 1982
Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study – 1986
Doctor of Philosophy in Behavioral Science – 1993
I’m not so sure the story is over. The family saga continues. My son was 24 when he enrolled in his first evening junior college class. Who knows? Give him another couple of decades and he just might be the next doctor in the family.
Roberta Beach Jacobson, 52, currently lives in Karpathos, Greece. For more information and a list of writing credits see RobertaBeachJacobson.com.
