A Mangled Affair - Part I
I was disappointed to learn that I’d need a science credit to earn my degree at Boston University, but the lady in the registrar’s office assured me that I’d be in for a big surprise if I enrolled in a specific Geology class. I had no idea what she meant until a week later, when I met my professor.
THIS IS PART 1 of a SIX-PART STORY
Image: Reynaldo Rivera
I had a crazy college history, going to three different schools before I finally graduated as a “mature student” many years after most of my peers had their degrees. Part of the reason for this is that I got sick with hepatitus on a junior year abroad program, had to go home and quarantine for a month, and lost an entire semester. The other reason is I fell in love and basically dropped out of school. For most of my twenties, I traveled around the world with my then husband, an arts photographer, and the lack of a degree didn’t seem to matter very much. But now I was on my own, a single mother and writer, and I needed that very important credential to move forward in life.
I was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the time, so obviously Boston University would be the easiest place to go. They had a decent writing program and I decided to put in an application. However, I neglected to say I’d never actually graduated college; I hoped, perhaps, we might skip that little detail.
At that point, I’d already written quite a number of short stories and had had several poems published in quarterlies and journals. I was confident. I’d been trained for a profession as a writer for years and I knew I was good. So I sent my portfolio over to George Starbuck, a poet who was then head of the writing program, and almost immediately heard back with a request to come see him.
He was a kind, witty, uncomfortable sort of person. “Well, Nicole,” he said, beaming at me, “I love your work and we have room for another fiction writer on the program, so you could start right away.” It was early September, beginning of the term.
“Great, wonderful!” I said, truly thrilled.
But then it came out that I didn’t have a bachelor’s degree. “You can take every course you want on the program,” Starbuck said, “but we can’t make it official unless you get your B.A.”
I was disappointed, but not surprised. Starbuck spoke to the powers-that-be and I went straight to the registrar to enroll for my missing semester. However, when they looked at my transcript, there was another problem. All the credits from my last college (Barnard), transferred, but I needed one additional course, and, to my dismay, it had to be a science course. I was no good at math. (On the top of my college transcript, it said WITHOUT MATH PREP in big red letters.) And I stank at science, not numerate enough to function well in a lab. And why would a wannabe writer need a science course anyway?
The registrar smiled understandingly. She jabbed her finger at a course in the catalogue, and said: “Here’s what you take. It’s perfect for people like you.”
I looked where she pointed: Geology. My face must’ve fallen a mile.
“Uh huh,” she said. “Just you wait. You’re in for a big surprise.”
It wasn’t till I entered the lecture hall a week later that I understood what she meant.
Image: Joshua Hoehne