Playing for Credit: How I Accidentally Graduated from UVM in Five Semesters

          

          It is December 2020 and I just graduated from the University of Vermont (UVM) in five semesters here in Burlington, Vermont, including a study abroad semester. I didn’t set out to complete this four-year degree in the efficient manner that I did. However, now that it happened, I want to share the story of how many little and seemingly incidental decisions along the way led up to this point. A significant part of how I completed a degree in five semesters at UVM was deeming any and all opportunities to accumulate credits as valuable and worth pursuing. For me, these random credits came prior to, and throughout my college experience.  

          The first college credits I gained came before any real college experience. During the winter of 2016, my junior year of high school, I embarked on a five-month long wilderness adventure program with 12 other students at Kroka Expeditions based in New Hampshire. The semester was a self-powered circumnavigation of Vermont via backcountry ski, white water canoe, rowboat, and mountain bike. We learned about places we moved through as we experienced them, while also learning about each other and building community. At the time of the wilderness semester in 2016, Kroka Expeditions partnered with Wheelock College and offered students four college credits for an ecology course. I chose to pay for those credits, with the logic that paying upfront for these credits might actually be cost-effective in the long run. Upon returning home from Kroka, I opted to enroll at Greenfield Community College via my high school’s dual enrollment program for what would’ve been my traditional senior year. This led to earning a full year’s worth of college credits, though at the time I wasn’t sure exactly how I would be able to use them.

          After graduating from high school in 2017, I took a “gap year” between high school and college. During the 2017-2018 academic year, I spent six months living with my cousin on Kosrae, a small island in Micronesia. While there, I took scuba diving courses and participated in coral reef conservation projects. The three college credits actually came from taking three different levels of official courses, and those courses enabled a few projects. One underwater project consisted of diving down to about 80 feet to collect a big commercial fishing net that was stuck on corals and disturbing the reef. Later, there was a focus on trying to eradicate the harmful Crown-of-Thorn Starfish (COTS) outbreak as described in this blog post from March 2018. Upon arriving at UVM, I realized the university offered scuba diving as an elective, so I submitted a form to PADI, the certifying body, requesting them to forward my information to UVM. Getting these credits to count at UVM took a few extra emails and visits to the Transfer Affairs office, but absolutely worth the effort.

          Between one year’s worth of community college during high school, PADI scuba diving credits, and the Kroka/Wheelock credits, I entered UVM with 34 credits. Graduating from a four-year university in five semesters is an accident because I opted for community college for the lifestyle compared to the option of high school for that year. Especially after the Kroka semester living with a small, tight-knit group outside in Vermont from January to June, a more independent lifestyle with plenty of room for apprenticeships and more hands-on learning was attractive to me. At the same time, the picture of being in school all day on a stricter regime was not compelling to me. When I submitted the transcript with my college application, I was unsure if and how UVM would receive the credits, and was pleasantly surprised to see all the credits show up. I do see an imbalance in how universities typically accept transfer credits, because although I found the courses at community college quite stimulating, I’m certain peers and other young people struggled much more to get a few AP courses to count in the university system. Regardless, I showed up with 34 credits having never completed any high school AP classes.

          While at UVM, I gained a couple of credits from being a member of the Women’s Ultimate Frisbee club team. All members of club sports are eligible to register for one credit in either semester, students just have to submit a form to request that credit. Team captains encourage players to complete the form and get credit, and I think many do, although many of my friends never did. As a club team, we practiced three to four times per week and dedicated many weekends in the fall and spring to playing at tournaments in New England and down the East coast as well. So, that was two more credits after two years of club frisbee. 

          Another unplanned source of credits at UVM came during an invitation to be a teaching assistant on a UVM travel course. Back in 2018, when I was scrolling through the UVM course offerings for the very first time, I found a class called “Sustainable Development on Small Island States.” Sitting at the kitchen table in Massachusetts fresh off the plane from Kosrae, Micronesia, I emailed the professors and found myself in their classroom a few months later. The course involved field work in Saint Lucia the following January. One of the professors agreed to be my academic advisor, and then the two professors kindly invited me back the following year as a teaching assistant. The “service-learning” designation required a course in itself to be a service-learning teaching assistant. The university offered either limited cash compensation or credits for that position, and I calculated that the credits were likely to be far more valuable to me in the long run. In fact, those credits are exactly what tipped me over the edge to graduate in five semesters instead of six. All in all, I gained eleven credits from two years of the Saint Lucia course plus the service-learning teaching assistant training. 

          The last part of the story is that in the spring of 2020 I made one last credit calculation and truly confirmed that I was quickly approaching graduation qualifications. Three ways of going about the final courses were possible: 1) take two light semesters and graduate in the spring of 2021; 2) take one extra-full semester and graduate in the fall of 2020; 3) take two courses during the summer of 2020 and have a normal-load semester in fall of 2020. Financially, doing two light semesters didn’t seem logical because my scholarship required full-time enrollment, and I didn’t want to over-schedule myself and get burnt out. Although there was a cost of two summer courses, I am satisfied with the overall experience and had a calm and enjoyable fall.

          This is all to show that paying attention and following up with opportunities to pick up credits here and there can lead to drastic measures. In my case, I saved a year and a half of out-of-state tuition. I considered accumulating these credits as an interesting way to navigate the bureaucracy of an educational institution such as the University of Vermont. Sometimes it felt like cheating, but all along I knew it was not that in the slightest way, rather strategically managing my college experience.

          All in all, graduating from a four-year university after five semesters of attendance is a complete accident. I opted for community college during high school for the lifestyle, not to get ahead in a degree. Financial savings was not my primary reason to collect all of these credits, either. One year at Greenfield Community College fulfilled the majority of UVM’s distribution requirements for a Bachelor’s degree in Community & International Development in the department of Community Development and Applied Economics, and I curiously navigated a shortened college career. I plan on living in Burlington with the community I’ve formed and continue to grow here at least through June, 2021, and likely for another year as well. Many of my closest friends have another year of school ahead, and I see great opportunity in living into this place even more. At the same time, there is a huge element of freedom to consider pursuing opportunities and not be tied to a place. It feels great to graduate from college, and satisfying to know I made it happen in the manner that it did. However, since college was a fast process for me, I am very content to not rush this phase and know that although I am done being a college student, I am not necessarily done with this phase of my life.