What Should I Do with the Rest of My Life_ - Bruce Frankel [43]
Not long after, Robby was recruited to work in public affairs for the New York State education office in Albany.
He had always intended to continue his own education and get a graduate degree in psychology. But, as he likes to say, “a little thing called life intervened.” Year after year, he had put off graduate school during his first marriage, what with two sons, a mortgage, and an itinerant career as a scout executive. After that, starting a new marriage and the new job in the state capital got in the way.
But the idea of going to graduate school was never completely out of mind. Then, one day, after he had been notified that his job with the state would be eliminated, he was crossing the Hudson River Bridge to the state offices in Albany when it hit him. “I heard myself say out loud, ‘Why not?’ At that instant I knew, rather than continuing to look for a new job I was going to get my doctorate.”
At work, he asked some colleagues about the likelihood he could get admitted to a graduate studies program in psychology at the State University of New York at Albany at his age. The response was encouraging, and Robby moved swiftly. “I didn’t know how I was going to do it. I didn’t know how long it was going to take. I didn’t know the details. But I knew it was going to happen. I didn’t say I hope it’s going to happen. It will happen,” he said.
It helped that the state education commissioner to whom he had been reporting was Ewald Nyquist, a pioneering advocate of nontraditional education. Nyquist gave Robby his blessings. Not long after, Robby was granted free tuition and a $70-a-week stipend to serve as a staff writer for the SUNY alumni office. “I was on my way,” he would write years later in an article, “Grandpa Goes to School.” In it, he recounted some of the sillier obstacles he faced. Before he was officially admitted to graduate studies, for example, a woman working in the registrar’s office insisted that he answer every question on a registration form, including one that asked, “Do you declare emancipation from your parents?”
He would have welcomed the prospect of additional support if he had anywhere to claim it. But at fifty-three, with nothing to fall back on, going ahead with his plan would mean “no more fine dining, no more expensive clothes, no more movies. Instant gratification had to give way to long-term gratification. Money was spent on food and time was spent on studying. I had no idea how many years it would take. I knew only the destination, not the mileage.” Robby told Betsy, who had two teenage daughters Robby helped to raise, of his bold, new plans and the austere budget that would come with it. According to Robby, she was fully supportive. “We were poor as church mice, but we found ways to have fun on little money,” he said.
After he had been taking courses and doing well in them, Robby applied for admission to the Ph.D. program in psychology at SUNY Albany. His first application got no response. When he applied a second time, he was rejected. “This time word came back to me that I was refused because I was too old. They felt I couldn’t handle it. This got me mad, so I sat down with a catalog and listed all the universities across the nation that had a good graduate program in life-span psychology. I sent applications to all of them.” As a result, Syracuse University invited Robby to visit and meet with the heads of the developmental psychology program and the All University Gerontology Center. They took him to lunch, and “as the discussion progressed, I realized they were interviewing me. I was exactly the person they were looking for—older in years and yet capable of obtaining a doctorate.”