What an Awakening, Rude Awakening

by Bernard Tolbert

I tell this story when I'm speaking to kids: I got kicked out of school for one semester when I was at UB.

After my first year, I came back to school as a sophomore, and I can remember getting called to the Dean's office; he was Claude Welch. He said I hadn't done well. He told me I was being kicked out of school, because academically I just wasn't cutting it.

In grade school I was in special classes for the accelerated - classes for what I guess they now call gifted and talented. And in high school I was an honors student and always did well. As a senior I remember always competing to try to have the highest average in the school. Not only had I always been successful in school, I had really been the pride of my family. My mother used to always brag to family and friends about me.

But when I got to UB I kind of fell into that trap I think a lot of young kids fall into when all of a sudden you're off at school and the professor gives you the entire curriculum in the beginning of the semester and says, "This is it, and if you come to class you come, and if you don't you don't." No one questions you. But at the end of the year you pay the price. And that was a big adjustment for me. All of a sudden I was on my own, and like most young people, I didn't do as well without that guidance that I'd had before then.

I tried to convince Welch that I was a bright student, that I could do this stuff. And I can remember him saying to me, "Yeah, but so is everyone else here." And boy, what an eye opener. What an awakening, rude awakening. I didn't tell my mother for awhile. I got up every day for a couple of weeks, like I was going off to school. Then finally I told her.

I resolved right then that I would never ever fail at anything again in my life. And if I did it wouldn't be because I didn't try. It was a lesson that was a good one for me at the time. It certainly helped me say, "I'm only going to succeed. I'm going to work hard, and if I work hard I'll do well. It was clear that no one was going to just hand things to me."