Bad Advice...Maybe

Midway through my sophomore year of college, I sat in a professor’s office and listened to some of the strangest, if not the worst, advice that I have ever received.

I was a business major. Thirteen years have passed since that decision was made, and I’m still not entirely sure what made me think I would be a good businessman. It was probably a movie or something – we watched “The Godfather” in my Latin class either junior or senior year, so it’s entirely possible that my teenage brain saw that and thought, “Money, power, success – yes, yes, yes.” Good thing we didn’t watch “Scarface”.

Funny thing is, I think I picked a major before I picked a school. (To say this whole process was not well thought out would be a huge understatement.) When the time came for that, I operated with two considerations in mind: one, I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere “far away” (so said my older sister in response to a mailing I received from USC; she refused to bid adieu to her “comic relief”) and I wasn’t to let money stand in the way of my decision. My father was a firefighter, my parents by no means wealthy, but it was understood that if I wanted to go somewhere, they would make it work.

As has become the standard in my life, I procrastinated, and am fairly certain that the only school I ended up gracing with an application was Western New England College in Springfield, Massachusetts. WNEC was three hours from home (two if my brother was driving; he took it as a personal challenge to get me down there as quickly as possible) and within minutes of extended family: my godmother and her family lived in Springfield, and other cousins, aunts and uncles were in Windsor Locks and Enfield, Connecticut. Had I treated it as such, WNEC could have been like a second home.

It never worked out that way, mainly because I discovered that I’m not good at establishing and maintaining connections with people, even family members. I suspect that my godmother and her husband have always been slightly offended by the fact that I rarely sought them out during my time in Springfield, much like my in-laws are often unhappy that I appear to not want to spend “quality time” with them. Honestly, in both instances, it’s not them, it’s me. I just tend to be happy when I’m alone, probably because I wasn’t hugged enough as a child.

Still, the idea of home held a powerful allure - my family was still on the New Hampshire Seacoast (that shouldn’t be past tense – my family IS still on the New Hampshire Seacoast) and my closest friends still lived in the area and went to school at Plymouth State - so I decided to leave WNEC and transfer. The plan at first was to join Jason and Meredith at Plymouth, but that became complicated when I met my future wife just before the semester break my sophomore year. After much bumbling on my part, I decided that instead of transferring to Plymouth, I would be taking my talents to the University of New Hampshire (even that didn’t go smoothly – I originally transferred to UNH’s Manchester campus, then to the main campus in Durham). As part of the deal, I also planned on changing majors from General Business (code for, “I’m a business major but have no idea what I actually want to do”) to History. It eventually included a concentration in Religious Studies, though I wish I’d gone with something more relevant to my interest in sports, such as 20th century American history. But that part is neither here nor there.

All of this brought me to that professor’s office in...oh, it must’ve been in February 2000. The second semester of my sophomore year had just started and because I hadn’t actually finalized my plan to transfer (actually, this suggests that I actually had some semblance of a plan; my general modus operandi has always been, “Fail to plan, plan to…wait, what was I saying?”) when I chose my spring classes, and so I ended up with some 300-level business class that was required for business majors, but wasn’t a core class and wasn’t useful for my post-transfer major. It really didn’t matter at all for the future, so when I realized how much work was involved – we had to do, like, a BUSINESS PLAN and stuff - I arranged to speak with the professor during his office hours.

We sat in his office and I explained why I wanted to drop his class. He looked at me for a moment, then said, “You know, generally when someone gets two years into a degree program, we recommend that they see it through to the end.”

‘Scuse me? Not sure I caught that. Did you just say that even though I decided I don’t want to study business anymore, that even though it doesn’t hold the slightest interest for me, that even though I’ve come to the sudden and sad realization that I will never be an honest version of Michael Corleone, I should continue working toward a business degree just because I’ve already put in two years (most of which were core classes that people in any major had to take, incidentally)? Did I understand that right? Because that’s pretty much the worst advice anyone has ever given me. Here’s the drop form. I think you’re supposed to sign on this line right here.

I didn’t say that of course. I only thought it. But the sentiment still holds true a decade later. Sure, he was probably trying to say that once you get two years into something – anything, really – you want to think long and hard before you throw it away on a whim. Maybe he was just testing my resolve; in that case, I can dig it. Or maybe he was trying to keep the business school from losing its most promising student*; in that case, ‘twas a valiant attempt, Professor So-and-So. But not this time. The combined lure of history and New Hampshire were simply too great.

*My first semester GPA my sophomore year was 2.46, so this might not be true.

Of course, the rest of the story should be obvious. I transferred, took a semester off, changed my major, and graduated from UNH in 2 ½ years. In the eight years since, I have used my degree for…well…okay, not much. It’s helped me land a few jobs (including an internship at the Baseball Hall of Fame – one of the directors noticed Religious Studies on my resume and, having studied that in college herself, decided I was worth a phone interview) and probably made people think I’m somewhat smarter than I really am, when all it really does is show that common sense is not required to obtain a bachelor’s degree. So maybe that professor was right – I could’ve stuck with business, earned my degree a year earlier, and followed the exact same professional path (which is roughly equivalent to that “Bridge to Nowhere” up in Alaska, but I digress). Brilliant!