Michael Panke (photo by Will Dendis)
Michael Panke never finished college, though he got an early start. After taking some classes at the John Hopkins Center for Talented Youth when he was barely a teenager, colleges started calling. At sixteen, he left Saugerties High School to attend Bard College at Simon’s Rock, a unique, small “early college” in Great Barrington, Massachusetts that enrolls exceptional students in their junior and senior years of high school. Panke’s decision to attend was not entirely academic. “I was not a very happy kid,” he says. “Part of the reason I went away is because I was sort of misanthropic.”
Today, Panke is a far cry from the misanthrope he claims to have been. There seems always to be a smile on his face and a buoyancy in his demeanor, particularly when on the topics of music—he sings in a 90s-influenced rock n’ roll band, Funky Button, who played at the recent Farmageddon benefit concert—and the Society for Creative Anachronism, which (according to the SCA website) is “an international organization dedicated to researching and re-creating the arts and skills of pre-17th-century Europe.” Panke regularly dons armor, sword and shield, and spars with fellow members. “I come back from fight practices covered in bruises and armor pinches,” he says.
Long before he pursued glory in the heat of armed combat, Panke pursued an associate’s degree in liberal arts and humanities at Simon’s Rock. However, he “didn’t buckle down to take care of scholarships,” he says, and after a year he returned home, where he attended Ulster Community College part-time. “I came to UCC expecting it to be not as good of an education, but I had professors who were just as knowledgeable [as professors at Simon’s Rock, whom he felt were often ‘aloof’].” However, Michael soon left UCC as well.
“I’m sure that it would have been beneficial for me to continue school,” he says. “I didn’t stop going because I thought I’d learned everything already – if I was going to go back, I would want to know what I was going to do. At this point, I don’t think it is worth it to spend money to figure it out.”
Since their son had gone to college younger than most, Michael’s parents took on the bulk of his debt. Michael helps to pay when he can. It’s about $70 a month, and he’s got just under five years to go. “If I was more proactive and focused on dealing with it, it would not be as bad of a situation as it is,” he says. He works behind the counter at Dave’s Coffee House on Partition St., and supplements his income through a number of odd jobs. He shares a “modest” apartment in Woodstock with three roommates and commutes to Saugerties for work. “I have a space for my things, and that’s all I really need,” he says.
Asked if he regretted the time and money he spent at college, Panke was quick to respond, “No, I absolutely don’t.”
He acknowledges that his arrested education has little—if anything—to do with how he makes a living. Still, he considers it an invaluable experience, and one that has shaped the person he has become. He says “I was taught not to take things for granted, and to question my own beliefs and everything you hear everywhere. A lot of people are locked into their way of thinking and their perspectives.”
Iyla Shornstein agrees. She doesn’t assess the college experience on a strictly economic basis. “College completely changed the way I think,” she says. “I didn’t love Binghamton, it wasn’t a perfect school, but I would be so much more close-minded if I hadn’t gone.” She had something else in common with Panke: she did not enjoy high school, and notes, “I don’t think I’d be very happy if I hadn’t gone to college.”
She was inspired by Mr. Riley, an AP U.S. history teacher she had in her junior year at Saugerties High School, to attend SUNY Binghamton; Riley’s alma mater, as well as her uncle’s. The fact that, like most SUNY schools, it was relatively affordable made Binghamton all the more attractive.
However, she had “slacked” too much when it mattered and was deferred for spring admission. Shornstein was disappointed, but collected herself, accepting an invitation from her uncle to live with him in Binghamton and attend community college while waiting to matriculate. After a term, she transferred her community college credits and began studying at SUNY.
A summer program in Ghana and a semester abroad in Nepal, particularly the latter, helped Shornstein crystallize her ambitions. Shornstein graduated from Binghamton in 2011, earning a bachelor of arts in political science with a concentration in political affairs, and minors in sociology and global studies. “I tried to add every single thing I could onto my degree, just to make it sound better.”
Shornstein is now pursuing internships to gain experience in her field, while living at home and working at the Garden Café, which helps pay off her loans. She pays $260 a month, with a total debt of $22,000-23,000, taken out in her own name on a 10-year payment. She is currently trying to lower the payment. Grad school is somewhere down the road. Her “dream school” is New York University, which offers a master’s in development studies in relation to food systems.
“I’m resigned to the fact that I’m going to be an intern for a while,” she says, citing the general lack of entry-level positions. Yet she seems undaunted.
After graduating, she drove across the country to San Francisco and back. When she returned home in December, Iyla swore she would buckle down and apply for internships, hoping to move away, most likely to New York City, to pursue her career and educational goals. Then in February, she and some friends “found these plane tickets to Puerto Rico for 400 dollars,” and left in May. When she came home, she decided the area was too beautiful to leave right away—she would stay through the summer. “I’m really spontaneous sometimes, and it’s become an issue,” she muses.
She set a new deadline for herself: the end of September, and this time she insists she will stick to it. “I’m getting really frustrated because I haven’t been mentally stimulated in over a year, or close to it.”
“I have the mentality of ‘my job will be my life,’” she says. She sees education as the bridge to fulfilling work.
