Until this week, it seemed that even Johnny Lechner had accepted the seasoned insight that all good things must come to an end. The 29-year-old had become a minor celebrity in the United States for having been an undergraduate for 12 years; he had appeared on television talkshows and landed a book deal.
At long last, however, the perpetual student with a flair for self publicity was due to graduate from the University of Wisconsin on Monday.
Then he had a change of heart.
”I’ve always wanted to study abroad,” Lechner told The Guardian, explaining his decision to withdraw his application to graduate in favour of spending a year overseas, as his degree course, in fact, allows him to do. ”Right now I’m planning on London, or maybe somewhere in Australia.”
Lechner has exasperated university authorities by refusing to leave college, despite having earned sufficient credits for a degree in communications, education, theatre, health, or women’s studies.
Last year the state of Wisconsin, which administers the public university system, introduced a rule requiring undergraduates in his position to pay double fees, even though his tuition is not subsidised by taxpayers.
But Martha Saunders, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin’s Whitewater campus, where Lechner is enrolled, takes a more stoic approach. ”We’re a community of scholars,” she said recently, ”and he just loves to learn.”
Doubts have been raised as to how much Lechner’s lifestyle truly resembles the brand he has built, which rests on tales of all-night drinking and escapades with female students: friends have claimed he is much more studious than his image suggests.
”I don’t know if I’m gifted with this crazy metabolism, but we do throw the biggest parties at my house,” he insisted. ”And then the next day I wake up and I go to class and I take my classes seriously.”
Lechner accepts that he lacks direction. ”I’m not going to lie to you, I really don’t know what I’m doing with my life,” he said. ”But at least I can admit that. A lot of people who are 29 don’t know what they’re doing. The only difference is they graduate, get married, have kids — and they still don’t know.”
The student said that he was still seeking money to study overseas, but would leave immediately if somebody in Britain offered him the right summer job to fund his year. After that, he promised, he really would graduate.
”Because then I would have officially accomplished everything that there is to do in college,” he said. ”Then, maybe I would move on to graduate school.” – Guardian Unlimited Â