Keep trying the appeal route and go the $15k route if it fails. Enjoy the party. Win a few heads up tourneys in your offtime and you are set.

Do it for your mother.

And one more thing about going back to college, you can be this guy:

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wait until you are ready, the time will come. everyone is unique, if going back to school scares you right now, don't do it, wait. this isn't something someone can really give you advice on

Do you need/want the degree? Seems like a pain in the ass for a 30 year old to move across the country, spend a big chunk on tuition and expenses, do the work, and put whatever life you had going on on hold to appease your mom.

online classes are great because you save the time of having to drive to class a few times a week and usually just go in to take exams. the only problem is if you procrastinate since some online classes just let you do it at your own pace as long as you take the exams when they want you to.

Well heres the story...my last year in 2000 i had 35 credits left but i really wasn't feeling school all that much. My living situation was pretty shitty. I had two roommates and one of us was always late on the rent so we were constantly avoiding eviction every month and one of the roommates was just plain filthy. Just for context he got a foreman's grill for christmas and he vowed never to empty out the grease pan so once the 2nd pan was filled to the rim it just started overflowing on the kitchen countertops and went all the way down to the floor. Me and my other roommate weren't the neatest people on earth but after a month or two you just get tired of cleaning up after a grown man's shit, esp since a) he didn't give a shit b) he never cleaned up after himself so forgot the idea of bringing girls back to the apartment and so forth.

I ended up coming up with the grand plan of trying to take 18 credits in the fall and then 17 credits in the winter and then i'd be done. Well I got a delivery job at Jimmy Johns :))) but unfortunetly work and 6 classes don't mix too well, esp when you skip class to go to work. I ended up passing 4 classes and failing the other two and for the first time was put on Academic Probation. I only took 3 classes in the winter for 12 credits to make sure I got off AP(had to get a 2.0 to avoid getting kicked out)and ended up getting off AP but only ended up with 24 credits for the year, hence 11 short. The electives part of it came because i ended up switching from a B.A. to a B.G.S. but my 8 credits for foreign language from freshmen year didn't count towards that degree.

Well like i said my whole family is really into education so i had about 30 or so relatives from all over the country make plans to attend the winter graduation in May and had a big party planned after the graduation and I was allowed to walk and participate in the ceremonies(if you had 12 or less credits to go they let u walk and put your name in the program) and I pussied out and just acted like I graduated. My brother had a job at First Union and their headquaters are in charlotte and they were just merging with Wachovia at that time so he hooked me up with a Temporary gig with FU/Wachovia to work in their Securities department transitioning clients from FU's website to Wachovia's new website. It was a good paying job but it was only supposed to last for the summer so my tentative plan was to work there, save some $$$ (I still owed U of M $4000 for the last semester which was the reason i told my parents that I didn't receive a diploma since they put a hold credit on my account.) and then go and finish up in the fall semester and I felt that the work experience would be a good thing on my resume after i did finish up. Well the conversion took longer than expected and I was making $20/hr so I stayed on the job which went well into the next year and put school on hold. While i was at the job I posted my resume on Monster.com(lying and saying I was a graduate) and got a job at LendingTree.com as a mortgage/refinance consultant and worked there for 3 years.....

My 3nd year at LendingTree was right when the whole Moneymaker/Online poker phenomenon occured so I got into it. I always was a recreational sportsbetter in college and esp. out of college when i was making money so I had an account at Bodog for sports but I would lose maybe 2-4K a year on sports but when they opened their poker room I finally started making money on bodog. I got trapped into thinking I was a better player than what I really was because the players esp in the beginning days of Bodog were just so bad. Well I worked the Thu-Sunday shift at LendingTree so on the weekends it would be pretty dead except for an occasional rush of people calling about their loans in the afternoon. I got into my head that I could play poker online and make that much more money while working at LendingTree. Our shift leader was a cool boss who had had dreams of being a musician so he didn't really care that I played poker as long as I wasn't neglecting clients or work but our team leader was a dickhead who I really didn't respect or show any respect to. Well halfway through the year my boss ended up leaving to tour with his band and my team leader ended up being promoted to shift leader :(( I ended up getting fired because usually when he would come around and I was playing poker I would just close out the session and it wouldn't be too big a deal even if I lost 20 or so dollars but I was playing 3/6 which was higher than i normally would play and I ended up having top set in a huge 3 way pot and I just wasn't going to time out and forfeit the pot so the screen ended up popping up right while he was lecturing me and to make it worse I started playing in front of him by going all in. I ended up winning a $2000 pot as I filled up on the river and tried to play it off to my boss by saying it was play money poker but ended up being fired the next week.

At the time I didn't really care as i thought I was well on my way to being a poker superstar but Ive played poker since 2004 and made 30k the first year, 40K in 2005 and only 27k in 2006 so Im realizing that a)probably not going to get rich from playing poker b)it really isn't worth the grind/stress/agony/strain on relationships/lack of benefits and health insurance to play poker and make less than 50K or even 75k a year as your sole source of income. This is why I looked into going back and finishing up my degree but I really don't know what I want to do with my degree if i get it (thinking about going to grad school but not even sure if I can be accepted into any program) and I do have bartending skills as I was a part time bartender for about a year while working for LendingTree before I got into poker but really didn't see that as my career goal when I entered college.....

Right now Im just confused, kind of angry at myself for not finishing when it was the easiest/most convienient thing to do in 2000 and really thinking im having some sort of mid life crisis at the age of 30. I am definitely the poster boy for staying in school if your thinking about dropping out but now Im dealing with issues of do i want to go in major debt to finish my degree, do i want to move back to NorthCarolina after uprooting myself and leasing out an apartment in michigan which i would have to break the lease + I would have to get admitted into UNC charlotte which is a lot harder than getting readmitted into U of M to do in state residency tuition......Ugggg sorry this is way too long and boring I just feel like its gg me for any type of good career :((.....but you guys advice has at least helped me out from just saying fuck it and forgetting about the whole idea of finishing up school...I just don't know how I'm going to do it....

cliffs notes:

30 person graduation party (pulled a fast one)
grew a moustache with Wachovia
lied again to get a job
played poker while a company paid you and got canned

do yourself a favor Sparks (besides deleting the names of the companies as this could come back to haunt you, etc)

quit taking shortcuts and enjoy the long ride once you get back on track.

you'll be happier

your mom will be happier.

you won't end up like whitealroker.

all the best