In the fall of 1981, I began graduate studies at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. The mission was to fill in the gaps of my photographic education and to earn the degree of Master of Fine Arts in photography. I pretty much filled in the gaps in the first quarter I was there. After that my education was more about navigating the bullshit of academic politics. My faculty weren’t very helpful in advancing my photo knowledge, but I did learn a lot about academic buzz speak and using important sounding words to make people think you knew what you were talking about. And I did learn a lot from my classmates as we were all on the same journey and all strived to become better artists. But ultimately the mission became to get that piece of paper with MFA on and get out of Athens. That degree was the ticket to the possibility of teaching photography at the university level. It was fairly useless in the commercial world. So, I suppose, besides the piece of paper, my greatest achievement from my two years at OU, was to graduate debt free, which is practically impossible in today’s world of higher education.
