MY MEMORIES

Charles Glenn Petersen

1974 - College Years IV

Second Summer

The second summer I rented a trailer in a mobile home park north of Ames, Iowa. The plan was that I would use the trailer that summer and then an employee in the Computer Center at Northwest Missouri State University would take it over in the Fall as she began work on her Master's degree in Computer Science at Iowa State University.

During that second summer I still had 18 credit hours of class work left, so I enrolled in 9 credit for the first session and 9 more for the second session. Then I got called into the Dean of the Graduate College’s office and told I could only take 15 credit hours during any summer semester. I said if I could survive 9 credits in the first session why did they think I couldn’t survive 9 more in the second session. I was told that the rules only allowed 15 credits during any summer semester. When I pressed the issue I was basically told that if students were allowed to take more than 15 credit during the summer that it would look bad for the Graduate College because people would think it was too easy. I explained that if I had to wait another summer to take only one 3-credit class that it would cost me another year before I could start my research for my dissertation. I eventually prevailed but I was instructed by the dean to not discuss this arrangement with anyone.