Fueled by a desire to become a teacher, Loren Mayshark entered Hunter College in 2008, with the intention of gaining a master's degree in two years. Six years and tens of thousands of dollars later, he abandoned his studies without attaining the deg...
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After the first couple of classes in that semester I arranged a meeting with Professor Regresso to discuss my future at Hunter. Professor Regresso told me that she was sympathetic to my situation and was unsure why they would have accepted me as a student in Latin American history without adequate faculty to offer the requisite classes to prepare me for a comprehensive exam in the subject. I told her that this was beyond my comprehension, and it was a reality that was slowly coming to light for me. But I insisted that after investing so much time and money I had to finish. She explained that she would not feel comfortable endorsing my degree in Latin American history and putting her credentials on the line without me being properly prepared. I found that statement shocking, but did my best to conceal my surprise. She was more concerned about her credentials than my education.
In the email correspondence she asserted that since Hunter did not require candidates to state their field of study in the application I could not assume there was a comprehensive exam in the field of Latin American history. I remember thinking that this woman had already become an expert on Hunter policy in her first semester at the college. She would fit in well here. I understood her point, but found it dubious that their course catalogue clearly stated that "The student is required to pass an examination in one field of history chosen from the following: ancient, medieval, early modern (to 1815), modern Western European (from 1789), British, Eastern European, American, Latin American, Jewish, East Asian, African, or Middle Eastern history." This feat was to be completed in conjunction with the other degree requirements, one of which was a comprehensive exam. Therefore, I applied and continued to apply to the school in a field that did not actually exist. The entire time I worked with my advisors, they never told me that I couldn't get a degree in Latin American history. I was being told this by a new member of the faculty.
The meeting was after my first couple of classes with her and she didn't know me as a student. She would not make up a Latin American history comprehensive exam for me without my having taken a series of courses that she listed, but that Hunter College didn't offer. I told her that I couldn't take the US exam and wondered aloud why she wouldn't be able to make a booklist for me to study in preparation for a Latin American history exam. She responded by pointing out that the US comprehensive exam covers four hundred years of a single country and that Latin America is a region with more than twenty countries, each with a unique history spanning more than five hundred years of recorded history. This, I must concede, was a good point. Why didn't Hunter consider this? I wondered. She said that it would be difficult to offer a Latin American history degree with a single professor as full-time faculty, which Hunter had not had since I applied to the program in 2008. At this point I realized that at Hunter everyone had a piece of the answer I sought but no one had the entire answer. The fact was that I needed to pass a comprehensive exam (in addition to the one I had passed in Spanish) and write a thesis. As I left her office I realized that I was in the final semester of coursework without a comprehensive exam or an advisor for the thesis.
I had done preliminary work for my thesis in the Historical Methods class and was passionate about the topic. All I needed was an advisor for the project. After consulting one another, Professor Regresso and Professor Rosencrass concluded that Professor Regresso was not the right person to help me so they suggested I consult another new member of the Hunter faculty, Enrique Caraja. Professor Caraja had joined Hunter from the University of Houston to anchor their history program in Latino histories. According to the Hunter website, he also has an interest in US political history and the burgeoning field of the history of sexuality. Since he was new, he had never offered a graduate class in a semester when I was eligible to take one, making us unknown entities to each other. I had an email exchange with Professor Caraja but was not able to meet with him until the second half of the semester. If he were to write me a comprehensive exam it would be in the field of US Latino labor history, which would be a perfect precursor to my thesis on Latino migrant labor in western New York (after changing the focus of the thesis from Latino labor on the east end of Long Island).
Enrique Caraja was my lifeline to a degree, and I was rapidly running out of options. When I walked into his corner office I was immediately struck by the man who sat across from me. He was slender, and appeared young for a professor, maybe in his mid-thirties. A wisp of white cut through the front of his tightly cropped hair and made me think of a skunk. He sported a tightly groomed goatee on his serious face, and he spoke carefully and with a slight lisp. I remember feeling uneasy around him. He informed me that he would prepare an exam for me but would not commit to overseeing my thesis. I was initially disheartened by the fact that he would not commit to a thesis but I didn't betray the brief disappointment to him because I was focused on the matter at hand, which was the comprehensive exam. He told me that he would send me a comprehensive booklist related to the history of Latino labor in the United States. Once again, the end of this fiasco at Hunter College seemed at hand, but at the same time I knew that I would have to expend a tremendous amount of effort to obtain the degree.
