Wichita State and Me

Or, How I Finally Learned to Stop Being a Dick and Accept the People Who Love Me

I believe it was Seneca or maybe Stephen Stills who wrote

Well there's a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love honey
Love the one you're with

I’ve found myself thinking about that refrain ever since I returned home from Kansas City.

Warning: what I’m about to tell you will not make me look good. But I want to tell you this anyway.

Let me start back at the beginning, or at least beginning enough. I enrolled at Murray State University in the Fall of 1995 and did so poorly that I was on academic probation within a semester. I flunked out soon after. After a family friend who happened to be married to the university president pulled some strings, I got back into school…and flunked out. Again.

That’s right, folks. Your friendly neighborhood Jason Herbert, Ph.D. flunked out of college twice. Let’s continue.

I simply was not prepared for a real academic education. I lacked the discipline. And there was a part of me that didn’t take Murray State seriously because it was in my hometown (so how good could it be) and wasn’t a real school like the University of Kentucky, a place I’d dreamed of but knew was out of my reach because only the smart kids went there. And I was ignorant. But already my trademark combination of self doubt, denial, and arrogance was on full display.

I like to think that I grew a bit over time. And to a degree that is true. I was lucky to have a second third chance at a degree, and this time it stuck. I enrolled at Tallahassee Community College in 2008 and determined to make up for the wasted years of my youth, went to work.

Folks, I worked my ass off. I was terrified that I’d fail all over again. So I developed a strategy that I employed until I finished my Ph.D.: I’d bust my ass. I’d get so far ahead on work that I could focus on harder stuff (math, sciences) while I triaged easy stuff (history, writing), all the while determined never to let my grade get anywhere near a 95. I lived in my professors’ offices. God bless Kalynda Holton, now a dean at the school, for bearing with me. What an educator she is. I was also selective in my courses. I went back and retook every class I’d failed at Murray State, determined to replace those Fs with As. It worked. My GPA skyrocketed from around 1 to somewhere around 3.7 before I left. I even made it into a “real” school, getting accepted into Florida State University, where I took a total of nine credits part time while I worked full time for the state.

But life happens. And my wife at the time got a job offer in Kansas. Feeling up to a challenge, we packed up and headed west.

I remember arriving in Wichita and going immediately to the university. What the heck is a Shocker? I asked. And why is the mascot so weird? The school was small. The buildings run down. This was no Florida State. I began to worry.

My real problems began when I found that Wichita State would not replace my Fs with As as Florida State had, but only merely average them, which sent my beloved GPA plummeting through the floor, I think nearly to a 2.85. I was devastated. Further, they would not honor all the courses I had taken at FSU, meaning in order to graduate, I’d have to take a bunch of courses there. I’m not going to lie—I’m still pissed about this, and rightfully so because the net effect was that there was no lie way to bring my GPA high enough to get into a decent graduate program after I finished my B.A. at the university. I’d be damned to stay there.

I let things fester as I tend to do. I’m stuck here, I thought, I will show you all. I will beat every last one of you.

I saw everyone as competition. I was older and stuck at school who in my mind only accepted the rejects from other programs. I had to outperform them. What decent graduate program would accept someone from Wichita State? I had to win everything. And I be damned if I didn’t. I don’t know that there is an award at that university I didn’t end up winning. Best undergraduate paper. Best graduate paper. Best graduate paper. Travel grants. John L. Rydjord Award for Academic Achievement. Doris Wallace Hodgson Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award. All of them. I wish I could say it was from a love history alone that drove me to these things, but it wasn’t. It was desperation. It was my desire to prove myself worthy of something bigger.

And in the end, it was my own damn lack of self worth and fear of judgment from others that pushed me. Fucking hubris.

Now let me step back for a second.

Because here’s a crazy thought that has solidified in my head over the last few years. No disrespect to any of the programs I attended, but the best history educators I had were at Wichita State University.

I was blessed to have as an instructor Robert Owens, a kind and good man who writes about the frontier. It was in his classes that I came to love Native American history and ask questions about Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Seminole history. Those questions ended up allowing me to have the great honor of serving the Seminole Tribe of Florida for three years and then eventually coming to serve the many tribes who call Colorado home. I had George Dehner, who first introduced me to environmental history, created a Cuban history readings course because I asked him to, and who remains in my mind the finest lecturer I’ve ever witnessed. I had Robert Weems in an African American history course. My goodness was I terrified I’d take an A-. Man, he was tough in the best way. Because he held you to a standard. John Dreifort was my instructor in a history through film class. I guess he made an impression. And Jay Price was this wonderful force of positivity and goodness. He as chair made the place sing.

And it was these people who encouraged my writing. Who withstood the guy on the front row with all the answers. And wrote those letters of support that won all those awards.

It was those people who, when I found out I was getting divorced, welcomed me home to Kansas from Florida and found a position for me so I’d have some money. Who nurtured me back from the brink. It was Robert Owens who arranged an intervention when I was so suicidal that I probably wasn’t going to make it through.

And yet, I still couldn’t quite accept that. I was so angry from the GPA issue, along with a couple truly awful instructors in other departments in those “extra” classes that I could not separate the History Department from the university.

I remember when I went to conclude all my paperwork, the nice woman behind the counter asked if I could wait a second while she grabbed my diploma. “Why?” I asked. “Why would I be proud to go here?”

Looking back, what needed to be separated was my head from my own ass.

Minnesota was tough. No longer was I top dog. And, going through that divorce, I didn’t have the strength to be anyway. I limped to the finish line. Jason Herbert, Ph.D.

But nobody gets their doctorate on their own. I remember emailing Robert Owens when things got tough. You got this, he’d say. Remember your strengths. Find a couple close friends, and stick to it. You will come out the other side.

I did.

I ended up going back to Florida. I’d get messages every now and then from faculty at WSU. I’d see Jay Price on Facebook. But the cool thing was that every now and then you’d find yourself at the same conferences. And my professors sought me out. They’d buy me a beer. Hell, George Dehner came on the podcast.

Wichita State had been on my mind a lot leading up to the Kansas City conference. I saw that Jay Price was going to be there. I reached. Jay? I messaged sheepishly on Facebook. Do we have any shirts for the Department? “What size,” he asked immediately. XXL. “I’ll see you in Kansas City,” he replied.

Jay wasn’t the only one there. Sitting nearby was a gentleman I hadn’t seen in a long while. I didn’t even know if he’d recognize me. But his face told me that was never in doubt. It was Robert Weems. And I think that if I’ve ever felt like a real actual grown up historian who had in fact made it, it was in that moment. He was so proud of me. I’m fighting tears just writing about it. I asked for a picture because god I was proud to be with him in that moment.

But this story wouldn’t be complete without George Dehner. “Your beer is getting warm,” is what his text read. I sprinted to the other hotel to find my dude there. We hung for a while. Talked bullshit. Nothing and everything all at once. And then he bought my beer, because I was his student this was the way it was, he said. But of course I grabbed a selfie.

I have had a LOT to think about since I returned, and much of it I can’t share with you. The point here is that I think there are parts of us that we’d sometimes rather not admit exist. I look at my relationships with these people who continually show up. They don’t quit. Because they see something in you and are willing to help you see it too. There are things about ourselves that we are constantly trying to overcome. And if we are lucky, and god knows I have been, there will be people in your life who will tell you that they love you any damn way.

And if you’re smart, you’ll let them.

JWH