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Post-mortem: How my family reacted to frequent interruptions of college life

Karl B. Hille

Ah, the sweet sound of buyer’s remorse. When the thrill and glow of cash flowing toward a new purchase fades and you are left with the product and the cold light of reason.

The product can be found here:

And the reasoning:

My family is still together, and I got an A, which means full reimbursement if I can straighten out a few paperwork issues with my employer. I figured out I can take about three courses per year and get maximum benefits from my company. It’s the most generous offer I’ve had, and the most encouragement I’ve had from an employer to seek a higher degree. Still, it will cost about $1,200 a year in fees it does not reimburse – if I continue to bicycle into campus instead of paying another $500-plus in parking.

I took the summer off to reflect and to work on full enrollment – yeah, I’m still a “non-degree” student while I work on details like the GRE and getting at least three Philip Merrill teachers to endorse my enrollment with letters of recommendation.

Then there are the less-tangible costs, time, energy and emotional investment. I’d worked out a deal with my outfit to do some work-related social media in the evenings and weekends in exchange for my Monday afternoons at school (and took several “vacation” days). Now I just need to convince my better half that by holding up all of the Facebooks and twitters for our family I’m somehow doing the same to compensate for time away from my family.

Although the deal with work meant I really didn’t have to take much time away from my home life (except, somehow, even more time on Facebook in the evening), it did nothing for her natural worrying tendencies, or the times she felt bad that I was cooking or doing some home project rather than reporting my class work.

Even my mom is starting to show signs of worry – but in other directions. You see, my wife and I come from different worlds. She made straight “A”s through high school and college. Hell, she even went back in for a second bachelor’s on an off-hand comment about the supposed easy life accountants have (not counting tax season). Perfect grades were something of an expectation/obsession in her family. Barb is, in fact, the only child not to get a graduate degree.

My mom’s concern – that I not work myself too hard. For my professors and editors who wonder where I picked up my underachiever tendencies, there you go. Actually most of that influence was paternal, so when she started talking about my quest for a master’s, I thought I was going to hear something like, “Make sure it’s something really relevant and meaningful to you.”

Instead it was more along the lines of, “get the easiest degree you can so you don’t overwhelm yourself – you’re also a father and an employee.”

I told her not to worry, according to a fellow grad student, that Carnegie seminar this spring was the hardest journalism course I’ll be taking over the next three years.

Her specific suggestion was not to bother too much with the computer/Internet side of things and just take the easy journalism classes.

I didn’t say that would really defeat the purpose of wanting to remain relevant in the future of online news.

The kids mostly thought it was cool that I was going to school too, and Jonathan makes his best “slapped by a herring” face when I tell him I used to earn a living by writing news.