Win or lose: a tie is like kissing your sister (unless you're from Kentucky, in which case a tie is like kissing someone more than one relative away)

I was able to overcome the damage that Spanish class and (what I believe to be) a less-than-stellar professor did to my undergraduate record. I am a graduate student.

This has been a pain in the ass.

The Master in Public Administration program at the college in question requires a 3.0 in your last 60 ours in order to gain admission to the program. Exceptions are made based on career aspirations, work experience, and letters of recommendation.

I have a 2.85 in my last 60 hours. In my next-to-last semester I had a C- in Spanish. In my last semester, a D- in Spanish. 8 credit hours out of the last 60 with a sub 2.0. Ouch.

Take out those 8 hours and add in 8 hours that didn't get counted otherwise? 8 hours that happen to be a 4.0? Over 3.0.

Here's the pain in the ass.

The folks at the university stopped at the printed GPA. I got my letter of declination based on a sub-standard GPA.

So I called. And I emailed. And I called again a week later after my email was never answered.

"What's the process for appealing a decision?"

What follows here is an approximation of what that conversation sounded like to me:

Let me get your email.

I think I...oh...I guess I didn't reply...

Let me get your file.

Basically you don't have a high enough GPA.

Let me look here.

Really you just, you need to have a 3.0 in your last hours.

Let me look.

I see here a D- in Spanish.

And a C- before that. And a C in Biblical Literature.

Oh, those are 8 Spanish credits, but let's look farther back.

Oh here is an F........oh wait, that was retaken and replaced with an A.

Well, if we go farther back...oh...well that semester was a 4.0...3.7...4.0...but...um...well..

Here is....

(sound of tearing paper)

hm...hm...um...well you're letters of recommendation are very impressive...I just..well...

There's really no process...but...well there's definitely an argument here...

Let me do a transcript analysis and I'll call you back.

They guy repeated that same outloud thought process twice after telling me he'd look into it and call me back. I shit you not. Unimpressive.

He said he'd call me back the next morning.

No call.

I just about wrote them off.

Today I got an email from the very VERY helpful administrative assistant informing me that I'd been admitted to the program.

You're damn right I have been. Dumbasses.

Some perspective for those of you who are doing the math: My first 24 hours of college credit attempted (1995-6) resulted in 24 hours attempted, 9 hours credit, 1.0 GPA, and an invitation not to come back to college. Those hours obviously affected the final outcome of my GPA.

But let's analyze my conversation with the guy at the grad school. I don't think my letter of intent was even read, because in it I laid out the whole Spanish thing and it's effects and my performance if you ignore those classes, etc. No one had even opened my letters of recommendation, based on the sound of opening envelopes I heard right before he commented on them. He was going through my transcript piece by piece to show me how I was not good enough, but surprise to him, my grades were great!

Tirade over.

That was poor customer service, but I advocated for myself and I got results.

So despite that bad experience, I'm still going to become a part of the program because it's convenient, it's a good price, and my plan from the beginning was to depend on myself to get everything I need from the program. They only underscored my need to depend on me, and not them.

So I'm a grad student. I'm excited. I'm happy.

(Longest post ever.)

11 years ago today, we were pregnant, unmarried, and completely lost. 6 months before that we weren't even together. The four years before that were filled with the most dysfunctional dating experience you've ever heard of, and you wouldn't have bet your hard-earned money that in 2011 Toby Tyner and Megan Upton would be together and in love.

So there we were trying to figure out how to make a go of it. Megan dropped out of college. I was a college failure trying to figure out what kind of job I could get to support a family. I had no family network to lean on, and Megan's folks were feeling the strain of being our only safety net. Three weeks later we'd be newlyweds. Some of the most downtrodden newlyweds you've ever seen. JOP marriage so that the baby could be covered by the insurance from my job.

In the 11 years since that time, Megan has finished her undergrad and is now 12 hours from finishing her Master's Degree. Megan is a college professor. Somewhere deep in me, though I've seen the imperfections of those humans, that is still a damned impressive job-title. We created a marriage and a family from something that was destined to be a statistic in the decline of American values. We had another baby. They're both beautiful pains in the ass. We fixed my terrible credit and bought a house.

Then we crapped on our credit for the sake of getting me a degree. A degree that, if I stop and appreciate it, I'm still very proud to have completed. Now we're fixing our credit again. Hopefully for the last time.

11 years ago we were pretty much alone. Now, we have a robust, wide net of deep friendships and meaningful acquaintances. We lost Jim. We lost Grandma. We lost Aunt Kay. We gained a modicum of adulthood.

And now I'm going to prove that Megan believing in me, and Jim suggesting that she should all those years ago, was the right decision.

It ain't perfect, but it's more than I deserve.