The Transition From Athlete to Scholar

I’ve been talking about my transition from athlete to scholar in the early 1990s while at Gettysburg College (see my earlier post follow along here). As it turned out, I did not get accepted to any of the Ph.D. programs largely due to my low GRE scores, low undergraduate GPA, and not having an undergraduate degree in history. My year as an interim dean at Gettysburg College signaled the start of my identity transformation from athlete to scholar and it would take almost 15 years! You see even though I graduated from a major university and recently completed a master degree, I had a history of academic failure that would not stop messing with my mind. Psychological I felt so inferior to colleagues at Gettysburg and culturally I had little in common with them. More on becoming an intellectual during my time at Gettysburg College.