This is the seventh part of a series. Click here to catch up on previous entries.
“People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.”
—W. B. Yeats
May 6, 1968
Undergraduate Division
Office of the Dean
Dear Mr. Smorra,
In your letter of April 10 you have asked about the possibilities of your being readmitted to Georgia Tech. As you know you were dropped for academic deficiencies at the end of your last quarter here (March 1968)… Your grades here at Georgia Tech have in general been unsatisfactory with only one quarter meeting the minimum requirement for graduation and in that seventeen hour quarter you dropped one course and were repeating two courses you previously failed. Your present overall average is only a 1.6. It appears from the record you are not in the least headed toward graduation here…”
Sincerely yours,
Rocker T. Staton
Dean
The Long Road Home
I drove home to my parent’s house in Ft. Lauderdale as a broken college dropout. I explained what happened to my folks and my father’s disappointed look said all there was to say: I was a disgrace. I had made a half-hearted attempt at college and got what I deserved.
At the end of the week my father and I drove to Atlanta and packed my belongings into a small U-Haul trailer, which we then drove 750 miles back to Ft. Lauderdale. It was a quiet trip up and back that culminated in me promising to get into school again somewhere, or to get a job. My plan was met with more silence. Continue reading
