It was 2002, a hot summer afternoon at the beach in North Carolina. Bruce and I were lounging on the upstairs deck of the beach house he rented for a week every July 4th. I told him about the project management course that many of my co-workers had signed up for the previous January and dropped out because it was so much work.
The course was one of the first offerings in a new graduate program offered by my company in conjunction with Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. The program, I explained to Bruce, included five professional certificates and, ultimately, a masters degree. To get there required ten courses like the one that so many of my co-workers had found too challenging to complete. But for all the drop-outs, there was a group who had completed it, and who were signing up for more courses in the fall. Everything – tuition, textbooks, and visits by the professors every three weeks – was paid for by my company.
“It seems to me that if my company was offering to pay for a masters degree, I wouldn’t hesitate to sign up,” Bruce said. He could sometimes be a master of understatement.
Four years later as I accepted my diploma on a stage in an auditorium in Dallas, I silently thanked my brother who did not live long enough to see me see it through for giving me the right perspective at the right moment.
Four years later as I accepted my diploma on a stage in an auditorium in Dallas, I silently thanked my brother who did not live long enough to see me see it through for giving me the right perspective
Forget the four years in between. Suffice it to say that earning a masters degree, even one or two courses at a time, while working full time does not leave time for very much else. Let’s cut to the big finish: May 20, 2006.
By the spring semester of 2006, enrollment in the SMU graduate certificate program at my company was down to two students: myself and Ming. About eight of our fellow students had graduated in May 2005, but Ming and I had started a semester later and, unlike many of that first class, had never taken more than two courses at once.
The last several semesters had been all on DVD — with so few students the company would not fly in the professors. Distance learning has many pros and a few cons. One important pro for SMU engineering students is the staff in Dallas who work with the distance students. Debra, center above, was our lifeline. Ming and I made a point of finding her in her office when we got to SMU the day before graduation.
Her warm Texas welcome confirmed that we’d each made the right choice by coming to the ceremony. In fact, all of the professors and staff who we met during our visit expressed great pleasure that we’d traveled to Texas for the event. And we were hardly in the minority – many of our fellow graduates were distance students who’d also travelled from all over the country.
As I accepted my diploma on a stage in an auditorium in Dallas, I silently thanked my brother–who did not live long enough to see me see it through–for giving me the right perspective
The graduates lined up by degree and school for the morning commencement ceremony. We learned that there were twice as many distance grads as on-campus students.
Ming and I and Ming’s wife Alice explored the SMU campus and stocked up on SMU logo items at the bookstore. On Friday night Ming wanted to try mechanical bull riding, so we asked at the hotel for a bar that offered it. We were directed to a club where the bulls had been retired, but the local FM rock station was having a party. The Violent Femmes rocked the house!
On Sunday morning before flying home I had time to visit a couple Dallas sites. I found a full-blown cattle drive, all done in bronze, in Pioneer Square.
A painted X marks the spot in the street where President John F. Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald. I visited The Sixth Floor Museum and the adjacent grassy knoll. Standing across Elm Street it’s apparent that it was an easy shot from that sixth floor window , and an equally easy shot from the grassy knoll,
I was unable to solve the mystery, if there is one, so I packed up my shiny new diploma and few home.
Mia's Mar Vista News 