24th May 2002
Heideeflower Power Spent Tuesday afternoon
Heideeflower Power
Spent Tuesday afternoon honored to watch my good friend Heideeflower Stoller graduate as valedictorian of my own alma mater, Columbia University’s School of General Studies. (Sorry to say GS’s site is lame, so I can’t find any place to link on Heidee’s name as valedictorian.)
GS, as the School of General Studies is affectionately know, is a remarkable college. It is part of the same university system that includes Columbia College and Barnard, and students from all the colleges mix among each other’s classes. What distinguishes GS, however, is that it focuses on giving second chances to adults students returning from lapsed college careers. Per the site stinking, I can’t link to the school’s history, but an assistant dean at Heidee’s party told me that GS was set up after World War II to accommodate soldiers who wanted to continue their educations on the GI bill but who didn’t feel they quite fit in with the general student body at most schools. They were older and richer in life experience, which still typifies most GS students today.
When I went to GS in ‘87-90, I think the average age of students was around 30 or 35 — dunno what the stat is today. Starting at age 22, after dropping out of college from the University of Montana for two years myself, I was younger than most of my GS peers. For me, the school was a life saver. Really. I guess I’m what you might call a late bloomer. I was a chronic screw-up in high school (constantly critiqued by teachers as “so bright, but he doesn’t apply himself”). I took the same attitude on with me to Montana, having a great time with my friends (including several life-long friendships), but not taking my classes seriously. In fact, when I left, I deliberately sabotaged my record, blowing off several final exams and incomplete classes. That stroke of brilliance left me with a 1.94 GPA.
As my story played out, I ended up working for a year and a half on a small newspaper in the British Virgin Islands, where I got my act together enough to realize I wanted to complete my degree. I applied to three colleges: The University of Washington, in Seattle, University of Missouri (in Columbia, MO), and Columbia’s GS. The two state schools rejected me. Only GS decided to take a chance on me. I can never be more grateful to any institution, because I took that second chance seriously. I ended up on the dean’s list (incredibly, although they transferred many credits from Montana, they gave me a clean GPA to start anew) and I left with a first-rate education and an Ivy League diploma for my resume.
I always have had a guilty feeling that they somehow made a mistake letting me in, but listening to the speeches from the dean, graduating seniors and alumna made me realize that my story is typical, or even tame. The college really does take life experience into account and goes out of it’s way to giving second chances to people it thinks will value it.
No one could embody the payoff of that mission better than my Heidee. I met Heidee when she first moved to NYC, and we became great bike buddies (she supported herself her first year in the city as a bike messenger) and running partners. I know all her secrets. The dean, in introducing her for her speech, mentioned that she had been a high school drop out, but they don’t know the half of it. First of all, her real name is Heideeflower, not Heidee Flower, as was printed in the program. Her parents were first-class hippies (wonderful people, both of whom I met this week), and for years the family lived out of a van, touring around the Northwest and Alaska. By her teens, she and her mom had settled in Seattle, and at age 15 Heidee decided to drop out of the flaky hippie school she had attended. The dean neglected to mention that she spent the next several years just hanging out as an urchin, punk, raver, etc.
To cut to the chase, in her mid/late 20s, she decided to move on, ended up in Tucson, AZ, worked at some environmental and women’s movement non-profits, got her GED and started school at the University of Arizona before transferring to GS. Once at GS, she seemed to have found her life’s mission, to dedicate herself to NGO policy work. Finally given the intellectual challenge she apparently craved, she aced virtually every class, ending up with an astonishing 4.16 GPA — i.e., she averaged A+s. And we’re talking Columbia. Needless to say, she was accepted all over the place for post-graduate work, including MIT for an PhD in Economics, but she decided on Yale Law School.
Best of luck, girl! And as for the rest of the world, get ready for Heideeflower Power!
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