Daily writing prompt

What colleges have you attended?

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I attended college the hard way.
By attended, I mean entered buildings, paid tuition, and occasionally went to class. The last part turned out to be fairly important.

Out of high school, I was accepted to three colleges. Not one of them was the school I wanted to attend — the University of Florida — because my dad decided it would be “too much” for me. In fairness, my older brother had flopped there, and Dad didn’t want a sequel. So UF was taken off the table before I could even apply. Parental veto. Final.

Instead, I applied to:

• Averett, because I knew a girl who lived nearby (a time-honored academic strategy),
• Western Carolina, because I saw pictures and thought, Ooo, mountains, and
• Stetson, because my sister went there and my stepdad had graduated from there — which seemed like a sensible reason at the time.

I chose Stetson.

Turns out, it’s not the size of a school that gets you bounced. It’s not showing up to class and failing everything. After my first (and only) year, I received a letter politely explaining that I was no longer invited to attend. Colleges call this “academic dismissal.” I call it “being broken up with via mail.”

Then came the phone call to my dad. He responded with three quick points:

1. He would not give me a job at the newspaper.
2. He would not let me live at home while I “figured things out.”
3. He would absolutely not pay for me to attend another school.

“If I were you,” he said, “I’d consider the military.”

Funny thing — I already had.

As it turned out, he did give me a job at the newspaper that summer, but only because I agreed to enlist in the Air Force. A deal is a deal. I shipped out in August and spent the next three years as property of the United States Government. During that time, I managed to knock out exactly one college course — an English class at a community college in Louisiana. Baby steps.

When I got out, I moved to Jacksonville to live with my mom and stepdad. My dad agreed to pay for school again, with one condition: I had to start small. Very small. So I enrolled at Florida Community College at Jacksonville and took four classes. Three were humanities courses, including Movies as Art, taught by the legendary Dr. James R. Cobb.

That semester changed my life.

I fell in love with classic film. I rediscovered writing. And for the first time ever, I got straight As. I repeated the feat the next semester, became the student newspaper editor, and even landed in Who’s Who in American Junior Colleges — which sounds impressive until you realize it’s mostly a reward for not lighting anything on fire.

With my AA complete, I still wanted to go to Florida, but I learned the School of Journalism would likely toss out about a year of credits. The University of North Florida, on the other hand, would take everything.

“Sounds like a plan,” my dad said.

So I became an Osprey.

Two more years, a major in Communications/Journalism, a brief flirtation with Student Government, two tennis classes (including one back at community college), and one near-disastrous final semester later, I graduated — thanks to hard work, dumb luck, and the kindness of a professor or two.

Since then, my only “college” has been teacher certification coursework. But I’ve been thinking lately about going back for a master’s degree. Journalism. Creative writing. Something like that.

After all, if I’m going to tell my students education matters, I probably ought to keep proving it.

Besides — I’ve already flunked college once.
I feel oddly qualified to try again.

Copyright © 2025 Doug DeBolt.