WINTER 2012 - National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and ...

Kenneth Oldfield
operation, I qualified for a rehabilitation scholarship the state offered. The grant
would pay for all my undergraduate tuition and books at any public college
in West Virginia. All I had to finance was room and board. She also learned I
qualified for another government program that helped cover most of those costs.
It is a long story, but money from the government also paid for most of my
hospital bills.
Later that day after the meeting, almost in passing, my mother mentioned
what the rehab representative had said. My first thought was to reject the offer
outright, thinking, “College is just for smart people.” I knew if I went to college,
I would flunk out after one term, simple as that.
Because it was free money, I accepted the state’s offer. That one semester
would buy time while I decided what to do with my life. Unlike the sons of
many middle- and upper-class families, I did not shop for a higher education. I
reasoned it was best to flunk out of the nearest place, West Liberty State College.
WLSC, now West Liberty University, is about 25 miles from Moundsville,
my hometown.
UNDERGRADUATE YEARS
Because I acted like a goof-off on steroids in high school, I had gotten
most of that out of my system; and, as noted, my grandmother’s parenting
philosophy, if you want to call it that, taught me self-discipline. Thus the usual
college diversions—athletic events, partying, drinking, endlessly hanging out
in the student union, and the like—did not distract me. (See Arum & Roksa,
2011, p. 100, for research findings on how social activities can lower academic
performance.) I knew I would flunk out, but I wanted to go down swinging, so
I studied the assignments as best I knew how. My grades after the first semester
could have gone either way, depending on my final exams. To the befuddlement
of probably every authority figure at my high school, the people I graduated
with, all the other adults in Moundsville, and yours truly most of all, I earned a
2.4/4.0 GPA. That first term taught me that higher education is another maze,
and you have to learn to “play college,” such as knowing when to take certain
classes, studying several days before an exam instead of the night before, staying
up on the readings, how to use the library, and so forth. I really appreciated
that college is much less authoritarian and structured than grade or high school.
Professors never required attendance, and you were mostly on your own for
completing assignments. College was as free as you could be in a formal learning
environment. I almost made the dean’s list my second semester, and after that
I earned a B here and there, but received A’s in nearly all my courses. After that
first year, I made the dean’s list every semester. I finished undergraduate school as
a political science major with a 3.65/4.00 GPA overall, with “high honors” listed
on my diploma—and, most important, not on Double Secret Probation.
32 Journal of Public Affairs Education