I recently ordered and received a transcript of my college grades—this after over 30 years and so belated due to the fact that I still owed for a student loan that is now finally paid off.
I graduated from High School in 1970, so the transcript covered Fall Semester 1970 through Spring Semester of 1974—a full four years. Oh my, I spent the majority of my time on academic probation. My GPA was below 2.0, I don’t even want to admit how low it got at one point. My declared major was History, in Education at first, then I switched to Arts & Sciences. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I mostly partied. My Freshman year I lived in a traditional dorm. Sophomore year was in the first co-ed dorm on campus – hoo boy! Junior year was especially hard – I moved to a far-flung dorm that was sparsely populated; I had a two-person room all to myself! There I came closest to flunking out completely, but then I discovered yoga, and a young man who taught it.
I started doing yoga which triggered a better attitude towards my academic studies. I began to buckle down and take things more seriously, which was a good thing. I got a job on campus in one of the dining halls so I had spending money. I got more and more into the yoga too though, and went so far as to become a vegetarian. By my senior year, first semester I was in a woman’s studies dorm but second semester I had moved into the yoga ashram. My parents didn’t freak out, though; in fact, it was less money to live in the ashram off campus. But at the end of my senior year, the ashram packed up and moved to New Haven, CT. And I just dropped school completely and moved as well. Although not to New Haven but rather to Princeton, NJ.
After spending a year in Princeton’s ashram, where I cleaned houses for $20/day, I asked to spend some time at a larger ashram in Washington DC, where there was a restaurant that I could work in. The original plan was to go back to Princeton in a couple of months, but that didn’t work out. For a year or so, I just rolled with the plan, working in the restaurant and becoming a Sikh, but then I started having problems with my teeth and needed dental work, expensive and extensive dental work. I was scrambling to find a way to pay, but there was none. My parents weren’t wealthy and couldn’t lend me the money. Gradually, I re-assessed my situation and decided that I wasn’t meant to stay in the ashram, so I made plan to leave, which involved counseling with a social worker and finding an actual job, and did it. No one tried to stop me or persuade me to stay; that is how I came to be living in a furnished room, where I stayed for approximately 8 months until I could save up enough for an efficiency apartment.
This is a very shortened version, believe it or not! laughs So how was your transition to “adulthood?”
