What? Me Graduate? Perpetual UW-Whitewater Student Says No

WHITEWATER, WI (AP) -- His 12 years as an undergraduate have made Johnny Lechner a celebrity of sorts, so why not go for 13?

Lechner was expected to graduate at last from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater this spring, but instead he withdrew his application for graduation five days before commencement.

"I realized that if I went one more year, I could study abroad," Lechner said. "That's one thing I haven't done."

Lechner has had his story told in newspapers and network television shows, not to mention campus publications across the nation that have picked up stories from UW-Whitewater's student newspaper, The Royal Purple.

By this spring he had completed 234 college credits, or about 100 more than needed to graduate, and was taking seven more.

That qualified him for the so-called "slacker tax," instituted this school year by the UW Board of Regents to help cover the state subsidy for students who stay long past the usual four of five years to earn an undergraduate degree.

It calls for students who exceed 165 total credit hours or 30 more than their degree programs require - whichever is higher - to pay double tuition.

The 29-year-old Lechner, a Waukesha native, said he didn't start out to be a long-term student, but it just developed once he realized how much fun he was having at college.

Michelle Eigenberger, an editor at The Royal Purple, said Lechner may have achieved celebrity status, but most students are tired of it.

"It's getting old," she said. "For the sanity of the rest of the campus, we want him to get out of here."

I read this today at work, while eating a rushed lunch so that I could finish my patients before midnight.

I'm 58 years old, I'm a failed college football player, a Viet Nam Veteran (101st Army Ranger medic), a pre-med college student (after that war), honors graduate, post grad medical school, subsequent graduate of that, and a medical doctor. I did that in a little less that 9 years. I had no time to fart around like this zero. I had a goal, I had a dream, and (as the old Jerry Reid song says) I had a long way to go, and a short time to get there. That took sacrifice and dedication. It also took focus and maturity. War, and the military will give you plenty of that, the dedication and sacrifice you'll have to come up with on your own. I've seen these zeros before, they make me ill.

They treat an education like a license to be lazy. Lazy, yes I said lazy. You chose a goal and you love it like nothing you've ever loved and you put you're whole being around it, and then you go for it with all the love you have in your soul. Focus, dedication, and sacrifice and accomplishment.

This guy will never know the felling of accomplishment that I have. Reason; he can't take those ideas and concepts that are learned and turn them into real practice, he just doesn't have the intuitiveness, or the raw intelligence. Forget confidence, this kid will never have that, he's a zero.

This kid has 200 and some odd credit hours of "do you want fries with that"?

Walk a mile in MY shoes, you little a$$hole, and you may find enlightenment in education, and not the next kegger.

Oh, by the way you paid for my education, not all of it, but you paid for my undergraduate education. I thank you for that, but I made a deal. I fight for my country in Viet Nam and you pay for my education. I promised I'd make it worth your while, and I did. My post graduate education was paid for by grants and loans, they have been paid back for a long time. I wasted nobody's money. As precious and as expensive as an education is I would never, ever waste that money as this piece of human dung is doing.

God knows, he just may be a roll model. Today, you never know. I sure as he!! won't, not on "Sixty Minutes".

I look at the education system today and I shudder. I can't retire, cause there is no one out there to take my place. They can't add, subtract, multiply, or divide. If they can't do that then abstract mathematics is totally out of the question. They can't use logistics, they can't make a logical decision on their own. Hell, they can't think! If you can't think you can't work, and in my line of work that's fatal. They can't write a logical sentence, if nobody can understand you you will never be heard, and in my profession that means somebody dies.

Well, I had my rant. This guy is the personification of "lazy college bum". He will never amount to anything near what he sucked up getting his "education" and he will probably be a ward of the socialist state that he loves so much, costing good working men and women a portion of their hard earned money to feed the little s$it. And life goes on in our glorious country, because this is possible.

When I was in my mid-20's I was taking an airplane trip. I was fortunate to be seated next to an older man and we struck up a conversation. He was a neurologist, returning from a conference. I told him that I'd always been interested in medicine, but I'd quit college to be a mother. I felt that it was too late and, by the time the kids were grown and I was in my 40's, I would be too old to go back to school.

Well, he found that to be the funniest thing he'd heard all year. See, he was right around 80. When he retired in his early 60's he decided to go back to school to study what *really* interested him - medicine. At the time we spoke he'd only been a practicing neurologist for a couple of years. His fiance went back in her late 50's and almost had her PhD in psychology.

After he told me this, he placed his hand over mine, looked me sternly in the eyes, and said, "It's never too late, young lady."

Of all the people I've encountered in my life, he made one of the strongest impressions. I'll never forget him. I ain't quittin' 'til I'm dead an' I ain't dead yet! :-)

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