Think You Can’t Graduate College?

So did I.

When I was a college freshman in 1993, I never dreamed this day would come. It certainly never crossed my mind at the end of that first semester when my GPA was 0.44.

I sat out the spring semester to earn some money and try to get my head right. Licking your wounds takes some time and a lot of introspection. I went back for summer school, actually did pretty well with the classes I had to retake from the previous fall, and all signs pointed to Frankie having grown up and moved into a new era of personal responsibility and achievement.

It would be another 16 years before I finally earned my Bachelor’s degree.

Becoming the first person in my family’s history to do that almost never happened. In those intervening years, I dropped out of college again, got married, went to war in Iraq, came home to an empty apartment and in absentia divorce papers, got married again, had a kid, and went back to Iraq to shut down the war I helped start six years earlier.

I remember the day my diploma came to my house. It traveled 17 years and halfway across the country from tiny Arkadelphia, AR to Fort Dix, NJ. I held it in my hands, speechless at first. Then came the tears. See, this was more than just the culmination of a personal journey to maturity. This was the dawning of a new era — a pathway hewn out for my descendants to improve upon. Thoughts of pursuing any further degrees did not immediately cross my mind.

All I could think of at the time was, “Now what?” This thing had consumed me for so much of my adult life that, once it was over, I had no idea what to do next. Ok, I mean I had an active duty job in the Army and a wife and kid to look after. I even found out two months later that another was on the way. The mix of emotions that day was strange: I was proud of what I had accomplished, but I also felt a sense of loss. The dragon had been slayed and I found myself wondering what to conquer next.

Three years later, I enrolled in a Masters program. I did not fall on my face in that one semester like I did when I started my undergraduate journey, but it was nonetheless obvious that I was forcing something I did not have the bandwidth to do at that time. I dropped out after taking two classes, deciding that the BA was my ceiling for academic achievement.

It would be another 10 years before I gave grad school another thought.

I didn’t want to get a Masters in counseling with an emphasis on military resilience so I could pad my resume. I didn’t do it to prove anything to anyone. I did it to become better at what I do for a living: minister to Soldiers and their families. It only took me a year and a half to finish this degree; this time I know what comes next.

The knowledge I gained from earning the Masters helps me be better at my job. The knowledge and experience I will gain from earning this doctorate will allow me to go to the next level in my ministry: preparing others to do the same.