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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Looking back on the following journal entry, I guess this is when the decision was made:
9/10/14
The entire thesis process has become a malignant tumor in my life and I believe that time away from it will allow me to replace the futile struggle with something positive and more fulfilling. Time away has been glorious. I still feel behind in many facets of my life and I know that I have numerous loose ends, which I have neglected, but I can work on them. I now understand how completely exhausted I was with the situation at Hunter and that it was transforming me into a person I don't want to be. It is so pleasant to have time to work and still enjoy life some without my duties at Hunter hanging over my head.
By October I still had not heard anything from Professor Rosencrass about my third chapter, which he'd said he would get back to me on in June. Obviously he had a minuscule amount of interest in my situation compared to everything that I had invested in this degree and what it meant for me to finish. It was at this time that I began realize that he really didn't care whether I finished or not.
My cousin was living in Palermo, Sicily, at the time and she said that if I wanted to take a chance, I could move in with her and she could find me some work as an ESL tutor. For more than six years I had shaped my life around my education at Hunter College and eschewed many other opportunities due to my commitment to my graduate studies. I kept operating under the belief that if I just pushed a little harder, worked longer, I would be done. It was as if I was running a marathon and each time I could see the finish line it was pulled back from me until the finish line became nothing more than a mirage. I had given so much; I had nothing left to give. I realized that I was much happier away from the work and that this degree had come to dominate nearly every facet of my life.
It was in late October that I made the difficult decision to quit and I sent Professor Rosencrass a simple email telling him not to bother to look at the third chapter because I was suspending my studies indefinitely.
Professor Rodriguez never had the chance to read a word of my thesis. After more than six years and tens of thousands of dollars I had finally walked away. I decided that I needed to do something different and I didn't want to be a part of what the people at Hunter were trying to make me. The difficult decision then was what to do next. I had compiled hundreds of pages of notes and ramblings about my time at Hunter with the vague idea that I would perhaps publish it one day when I had received my degree. I decided that I did not want this to happen to anyone else and that I had a duty to at least inform future students with my story.
I also began drafting a letter. At this point I was not sure who to send this letter to, but I knew that it had to be sent to someone important at Hunter. After months of working on the letter, trying to strike the difficult balance between including what had happened to me and brevity, I produced a ten-page letter detailing my travails. I had several people close to the situation look at it until we agreed that it was the best I could do. In the letter I was as specific as I could be about the details of my experience, and at the end I demanded that they repay me every cent that I gave the institution, which I thought was the least they could do.
I wasn't sure where to send it so I asked Professor Harvey Lebowitz for advice. He recommended that I send it to Provost Morta Derewitz first. But "don't be surprised if you she doesn't answer you," he warned. On January 5, 2015, I sent her the letter via certified mail. On January 8 it was signed for by someone else in her office. By this time I had already been making arrangements to move to Sicily. I planned to stop in New York City on my way to Europe to meet with some people who I believed I could trust to get advice on the Hunter situation. By the time I had left I still had not heard back from Provost Derewitz.
