Don’t Tell Anyone This, But ...

The spring semester of my first year at college, I failed all my classes. Yes, five F’s lined my report card. My parents rejected my plea of temporary insanity, but that’s the only way I could explain it. At a most pivotal juncture in my life, I lost all sense.

I always dreamed of going to college. My parents didn’t graduate high school, and they didn’t have much money. Two of my three siblings didn’t go, and the one who did went after a divorce and paid for it himself. I figured at best, I’d end up at the local community college.

But my Mom surprised me by attending all my school’s financial aid meetings. My guidance counselor surprised me by suggesting a college that would accept me and that my parents could finance. And I surprised me by going through all the motions, right up to that day when I left the tree-lined suburbs north of Boston for the picturesque pastures of Pioneer Valley.

On Labor Day, my brother, his fiancée and my parents drove me the 2 ½ hours to UMass at Amherst. We stood around my dorm room with tears streaming down our faces, my Dad and brother included. My excitement had turned to angst as I realized that “coed living” meant parading myself down a hallway of male contemporaries to shower or use the bathroom. I’d lost all semblance of privacy and familiarity in my life.

Minutes after my family left, my neighbor Linda invited me to a party. By the time my family got back on the highway, I was standing with a herd of frat-boy wannabes on the front lawn of a green ranch by the Southwest dorms, holding a plastic cup of icy keg beer. By the time my parents pulled into their driveway back home, I was struggling to unlock the door of a dorm room, one located at the opposite end of the hallway and up a floor from my own. Cindy’s sad eyes informed me that, No this isn’t your room, and, Wow, you’re hammered! By the time my mom placed her first call to her daughter at college, I was lying on my new, unmade bed, trying to stop the spins.

So began my illustrious first year at UMass.

My first semester was a blur of Domino’s pizzas, four-page papers typed at midnight, missed math classes and trips the area’s pathetic excuse for a mall. I muddled through, earning a 2.3 grade point average. The drinking and drug use (about which I plead the fifth) didn’t panfry all my egg yolks until my second semester.

My fall-semester grades landed me on academic probation, however. I passed it off to my disgusted parents as an adjustment period and, undaunted, headed back in January to continue my triple major in sleep, frat parties and reality avoidance.

Then, one of the best events of my life also helped do me in. I met my future husband.

Brian caught my eye in the fall, but my drunken scene at our dorm’s hayride (don’t ask) and his fiancée of three years meant I had no chance. But right before spring break, Brian and his fiancée broke up, and we started dating. Turns out I, a directionless lush, was just what he needed.

At the end of his junior year, Brian had just changed his major, requiring several course withdrawals and leaving him with just one class to worry about that semester. “Nothing to do but party, dude!” I believe he actually said that, more than once.

Having my first real boyfriend, one with limitless time on his hands, compounded other distractions students encounter in spring at UMass: gorgeous weather; Frisbee, sunbathing and people watching on the quad; the spring concerts. For me, though, spring also brought the paralyzing realization that I could not possibly pass several of my courses. As is the case with insanity, I didn’t know I’d lost it until it was too late.

I started having this nightmare, one that recurs even to this day. In it, I realize I haven’t been to English 360 since the first class, and it’s the day before finals, and, oh, I never did write that paper, and – WHAT?! – what’s that history class doing on my schedule? Did I ever even GO to that class?

One cool evening in early May, as Brian and I sat on his futon gazing out at the hot-pink valley sunset, I lit a cigarette and mentioned that I was, um, a little behind.

“How bad?” he asked.

“Bad.”

“How bad.”

“I’m failing. Everything.”

“Failing everything?”

Brian suggested I withdraw from my classes. Withdrawing couldn’t change the fact that I flushed my parent’s money down the toilet, but it could spare my GPA from a big fat 0.0. Instead of withdrawing, I recoiled further into panic and distraction. Watch the Simpsons? Sure, why not? Go to the all-you-can-eat spaghetti feast at Papa Gino’s? Count me in! Everyone’s tripping and going to Bear Mountain? Wouldn’t miss it!

By the end of it all, I learned about the freshman 15, altered mental states, men, and the trauma caused by shirking one’s responsibilities. But I didn’t learn much in the academic sense. Most embarrassing? I failed Math 010, a remedial recap of decimals and fractions for incoming freshman with no discernable math pulse. Also most embarrassing? I got suspended from college.

Driving home with my Dad at the end of the year, he talked about ruts and how hard they can be to overcome. Perhaps my sallow complexion and the dark circles under my glassy eyes gave me away. Like a strung-out heroin addict with a secret debt, I listened, knowing that “rut” was just the tip of the pencil, knowing he would never again stick his neck out financially to send me back to UMass.

That summer, my parents resented my explanations and suggested I figure out how to get myself a car and commuter status at a local college. Desperate to somehow undo the damage, I lobbied UMass for immediate reinstatement, and won. Then in August, I received a letter announcing the cancellation of my $2,000 in state aid due to budget cuts. “Oh well,” my mother said. “Have you applied to North Shore Community College yet?”

In his first act of husband-like chivalry, Brian helped me find a bank-financed student loan that deferred my payments until after graduation. Still, I needed my parents to pay the interest in the meantime. Loan details in hand, I approached my Dad as he read the evening paper and pled my case. He stared grim-faced at his paper as I talked. Then, he agreed to sign. “This is your last chance,” he barked, and I scampered away to my room, heaving sighs of relief. In my next four years at UMass, I never again earned less than a 3.25 GPA. Within my major and minor, I graduated with a 3.75.

Years later, in my first mom’s group, someone asked, “When did you first feel like an adult?” I talked about that fateful semester, yet, the other mom’s didn’t quite get it. How could such a juvenile failure make me feel like an adult? Well, it didn’t, not right away. But it served as a giant, lead-filled backpack thumping me across the forehead, knocking me from childhood into adulthood. It shamed me, enough that I stopped going crazy and took charge of my life. And it taught me that, after losing my mind and everything I worked for in the process, I had the grit to fight my way back.