Thomas B.
Yelp
Flagler College as seen through the story of 3 graduates:
1. My ex-roommate from my sophomore year, who had graduated in the early 2000's: when I met him he was working at a nearby hotel as a bellhop after graduating with a business degree. He still had pictures of his college girlfriend around the house several years after they had broken up. He was largely alone in the area - as a Texan his family was still there and it didn't appear he had maintained any contacts from college. He spent most of his time on the computer in the living room, doing I'm not sure what. He liked to adopt new hobbies (biking, for example) in which he'd spend lots of money on equipment, use it once and twice and then never touch them again.
A few years later he developed Crohn's disease and started dividing his time between the computer and preparing specialized food that helped manage the disease. Last I talked to him in 2017 he was still suffering - often quite badly to the point of stays at the hospital - from the disease, still worked as a bellhop and I'd be surprised if he didn't still have pictures of his ex-girlfriend up.
2. My girlfriend from college. I met her early in my freshman year, when she was a junior. She was a single mom who lived with her mom, and was a business major. We broke up 2 years later when she graduated and I transferred out for a year. I tried to get back together with her when I returned for my senior year, but she was stressed and miserable trying to figure out what to do with her life - as was I - and it just didn't work out. This was 2009 and it was hard to find work, and neither of us did. I just got through the year and graduated and then moved home to New Jersey where the only job I could find was as a grocery store clerk. Rosie just lived off the money her grandfather gave her.
I had on and off contact with her over the years. She started a few blogs, updating them near daily for a few months and then apparently gave up. Then she got pregnant - I was on the phone with her shortly after she found out - and said she felt like she had to marry the guy.
We didn't talk much after that. She had 3 more kids, became a full time mom and in the 2010's started an Etsy business selling flower crowns and bags and knick-knacks. It didn't appear to do any better than the blogs, and after a few years she stopped posting about it. And whereas for a while she was posting pictures of her whole family all over her social media accounts, at some point perhaps mid-2010's all that disappeared. In 2020 she filed a paternity claim with the county, according to documents that I found recently and was involved in what appears to have been a contentious legal battle. She was also subscribing to lots of experts on narcissism and domestic abuse on Medium.
Why do I know all this latter information? Because in August of 2021 she died. I have no idea how. The family put up a spare website memorial that I just so happened to catch on a late night Google, with no explanation. She was a few months past her 36th birthday. I talked to the family briefly, but they provided no explanation and I felt it rude to ask. So I searched and searched, to try to wrap my head around it.
I don't have her picture on my wall, but for the number of times she crosses my lips, I may as well have.
3. Me: I went on to get a trio of masters degrees, from a large state school and a few obscure private online ones. I jumped from job to job. When the pandemic came I lived in my car for a while. I still don't have a proper occupation, or place in the world. When I contacted career services once as an alumni they sounded annoyed and did next to nothing.
What does all of this say about Flagler? I'll let you decide.
What should we expect from our institutes of higher learning, and to what extent should they be held to account for the guidance and help or lack therefore they provide? Obviously at the end of the day we are responsible for our own fates. But what exactly is it that we pay colleges for, particularly when they are small liberal arts institutions with no name cache?
In the book "Colleges that Save Lives", Loren Pope writes that the benefit of a liberal arts education is "student-teacher dialogue, the close sense of community, the collaborative learning, the emphasis on values and student growth, or student involvement in his own education."
At Flagler most classes had little more (and often less) dialogue than the 200 student lecture hall courses I assistant taught at a large state school. As for community, I was the only Flagler person that either my roommate or girlfriend still spoke with even a few years after their graduation, and while we attended it was little better. I don't recall a single time my own growth or values was given even token attendance to. We did group projects, but most of my peers seemed to care little for their studies and my girlfriends experience was the same.
