An ongoing series about how and why I persisted in college
Me, in the bright blue dorm room at Ball State the summer of 1993 for 2 weeks of journalism camp (and before duck lips and selfies were invented so there was no way to perfect mine)
What made you select the college you selected?
What was the decision-making process like?
I was fortunate enough to visit many colleges throughout my high school years. It started with team basketball camps in the summer which later led to individual basketball camps, journalism camps, and visiting my older brother when he went away to college. I stayed at small private colleges, mid-sized MAC universities, and larger BIG 10 universities. These experiences gave me the opportunity to live in a dorm with roommates (slumber party!), eat at the cafeteria (unlimited soft serve ice cream!), and navigate campus (with zero sense of direction!) in a fun, non-threatening environment. Once it came time for my oldest son to choose a college, I was shocked to realize he didn’t have the same opportunities to experience different college campuses as I had. However, he also spent his middle and high school years in a public school connected to a university on a college campus, so he was actually pretty immersed in the college environment, just in a different way. Anyway, I suppose that’s his story to write, this is mine.
Up until my freshman year of high school, I was convinced I was going to be a first-grade teacher when I grew up. My mom was a high school teacher, and I have vivid memories of her bringing me to her classroom and watching her teach. The best gifts were the leftover teacher supplies she brought home to me so I could accurately keep track of my students’ attendance and grades. Those students being my stuffed animals and Cabbage Patch Kids lined up on my bedroom floor memorizing their math facts (which I personally hated) and learning how to read.
The career shift from elementary school teacher happened during the summer after 8th grade. It was then that I received an invitation to join the high school yearbook staff as a freshman when historically it was a class only for grade 10 and above. Granted the invitation presented itself because I was the owner of the coveted tiny box-of-a-computer called a Macintosh Classic II. Regardless, after the staff loaded Aldus PageMaker onto it, I began designing yearbook spreads with a new future goal: graphic design. By my senior year, I was the yearbook editor and on my way to Ball State University after graduation to study journalism graphics. But why Ball State? Well, I have a story about that.
Honestly, there were really only two college contenders in my mind. Ball State—four hours south in Indiana. A plus was it had the exact program I was interested in, journalism graphics (as opposed to straight graphic design). A negative is it was out of state and far away from family and friends. Michigan State—the other contender—was one hour west of my small hometown. Plusses for MSU included my friends going there and having a solid journalism program. Negatives included what felt like most of my school heading to college there and not having my exact program. As you'll soon find out there was one other factor that played into my final consideration.
I attended both Ball State and Michigan State for journalism camps during high school. I hung out with friends at Michigan State for a week living in the dorms and attending workshops the summer heading into my junior year of high school—and the memory that stands out the most? The dorm floor I stayed on had only three bathroom stalls. Okay, so this small peek into my psyche probably says more about me than I’d like it to. But there it is. I was anxious about there only being three stalls available for a floor full of students. This memory sticks with me, yes, but mainly because of my experience the next summer at Ball State.
The summer heading into my senior year of high school was filled with best friends, parties, boys ... and a two-week-long journalism camp in Muncie, Indiana. Thankfully my three best friends came along too! We stayed in what I would later find out was one of the oldest and most outdated dorms on campus, LaFollette Complex ... and I LOVED it! Two of my best friends were in the room across the hall from me and my other best friend, and we thought we were so cool by simultaneously blaring Simon & Garfunkel’s Cecilia out our 8th story windows to the sand volleyball players below. (Don’t worry, this was the 90s, not the 70s, we also boomed out Pearl Jam too). The concrete slab walls were painted a bright blue in our room and a totally different color in our friends’ room across the hall. I remember thinking how cool it was to be able to paint the walls whatever color you choose. However, the cherry on top was the restroom. I don’t know how many stalls there were—too many to count! I was apparently in bathroom heaven. (This would be the perfect placement for the *shrug* emoji, because ... real life? You asked. I answered.)
Now did I know right then upon entering the LaFollette bathrooms that I was going to Ball State? Sadly, no. At camp over the next two weeks, I laughed with friends, made new friends, met a boy, went on a field trip to Ivanhoe’s and the James Dean Museum (if you’re going to sell Ball State to students in the 90s those are solid starts I guess), I won some design awards and was interviewed for a Ball State scholarship. When the interviewer asked me if Ball State was my first choice school, I said, I would likely go to ... Michigan State. (This would be the perfect place to insert the *sad clown* emoji and the *womp-womp loser* sound because, WHERE WERE MY INTERVIEW SKILLS?! Seriously.)
I know you’re shocked to hear I didn’t get the scholarship. Would you be just as shocked to know that I didn’t even apply to Michigan State? When it came time to apply I only sent my application to Ball State. I’d like to say it was because of the endless bathroom stalls alone, but ultimately these were the deal breakers:
Program: Ball State had the exact program I wanted to major in. I couldn’t find any other schools in the country at that time that had a graphics program focussed on journalism.
Location: By the time my senior year rolled around, my one-hundred-student class, one-stop-light town was really starting to grate on me. Almost like an annoying little sibling constantly tapping on my shoulder. I remember feeling trapped and wanting to experience something new. I had a feeling if I went to Michigan State I would never break free of the small-town life because while I’d be at a BIG 10 university, I’d be close to home and friends I’d known most of my life.
Okay, yes, the bathrooms.
I was fortunate enough to have upper-middle-class parents who paid for my education in full. In fact, it was never a discussion. Even with out-of-state tuition (though I’m sure my parents would have appreciated I’d said Ball State was my first choice during that interview). I know not everyone is so fortunate (even my own son). I also know there are studies on college choice that found through the decades that depending on students race, gender, and social class, factors such as cost, proximity to home, and academic reputation ranked differently but were all three consistently near the top (Kinzie et al., 2004). For me, growing up upper-middle class, I fit the study’s conclusions about not needing to consider cost when choosing a college. However, in their studies, I often felt like they were discussing elite schools which I would not consider BSU to be. Also, while academic reputation didn’t play a factor in my decision-making, having the right program was ultimately the number one criteria. Ball State’s proximity to my home being farther away (where I believe students in the studies saw proximity closer to home as a positive) was actually a positive point in my book.
So when I read about how educators spoke out about the poor decisions students and families were making when it came to college choices in the mid-1940s like when Tunis wrote “Boys and girls and their parents too often choose an educational institution for strange reasons: because it has lots of outdoor life; a good football team; a lovely campus; because the president or the dean or some professor is such a nice man" (1939, p. 7, as cited in Kinzie et al., 2004, p. 7), I wondered what Tunis would have had to say about bathrooms as a top consideration for my college choice. At least it wasn’t the football team.
Read on: Persistence 1 • Persistence 2
References:
Kinzie, J., Palmer, M., Hayek, J., Hossler, D., Jacob, S. A., Cummings, H. (2004, September). Fifty years of college choice: Social, political and institutional influences on the decision-making process (EDED484237). ERIC. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED484237.pdf
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