Miss Fit: Confessions and Lessons from a College Dropout

By John Gordon

In September of 1964, as my family’s green Chevy pulled away from campus, I choked up. I wondered what the heck am I doing? I know NOBODY here, and I am seven hundred miles from home.

I had been a popular and capable student-athlete during high school. However, as a naïve eighteen-year-old, I wasn’t ready for my new situation. To varying degrees, the young men in my dormitory who became my best friends were unprepared as well. Though we were from different states (more like different worlds) we shared common frustrations. We were homesick and we didn’t fit Baylor University’s upbeat-but-sometimes-uptight Southern Baptist model.

We tried to integrate. We attended classes, we studied, we took exams, and we went to some of Baylor’s sporting events. However, none of us dated or was involved in campus social life. None of us had much money. We often felt very isolated and bored. Those factors and our flawed group-think led us to some unwise choices. Though we tried to spend our free time creating harmless fun. As you will read, a LOT of it wasn’t harmless.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9781483593487

John Gordon

John Gordon has written and illustrated many children's books as well as worked extensively in most areas of illustration. When he's not writing or illustrating, he gives talks in schools and libraries and plays squash.

Book preview

University.

CHAPTER ONE – THE CREW

When they my folks departed Waco, I was standing at the fence of the Baylor University bear pit. Yup, they had real bears down there. We were the Baylor Bears. After a few tears, I composed myself, and then I looked to the bears for some distraction. Rusty, the biggest bear, was not in the pit. I found him behind the concrete chasm in his ground-level, chain-link cage. He was leaning against the fence with his back toward me. I’ll just touch his fur to show kindness. Maybe I’ll bond with the big guy. I quietly poked my right forefinger through the fence to touch his thick fur.

As if he had eyes in the back of his massive skull, he swiveled his head at light speed and snapped his powerful jaws at the spot where my finger had penetrated his space. I extracted the vulnerable digit just before his maul crashed shut. I stood motionless for some seconds, my finger curled just outside the cage. My heart pounded and my breathing quickened. When I left the cage area, I tried to imagine explaining, for the rest of my life, that my missing forefinger had been eaten by a bear in Waco, Texas. This day-one event was to portend my less-than-glorious stint at Baylor.

***

When it was time to consider college, I wanted to pursue what is now called sports medicine. I played baseball at Omaha, Nebraska’s North High School, but I was merely a student manager for the football team. I was too small, unskilled, and squeamish to be a football jock. However, I took a mail-order first aid course, and I learned to enjoy wrapping ankles, patching up minor gridiron wounds, and splinting broken bones.

In the mid-sixties, sports medicine was not yet a college major. The closest program of study was physical therapy. Our family had been attending a Baptist church, and we heard that Baylor University in Waco, Texas, had an outstanding physical therapy program. In spite of the significant cost of a private university, my parents enabled me to attend Baylor to study physical therapy-cum-sports medicine.

For underclassmen, the physical therapy program was the same as for pre-med’ students. Unfortunately, that was even further from my actual goal. The curriculum was intended for those wanting to become medical doctors. My scholastic destiny at Baylor became biology, chemistry, botany, and physics classes plus associated labs at night. It was a curriculum designed to weed out the not-so-dedicated students like me. Accordingly, I was miserable in my classes, and I struggled