Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette photos Ryan and his father, Ty, discuss Ryan's future at the family's Ben Avon home. After a year at Edinboro University, Ryan's grades were poor, and it was unknown whether he would return to school in the fall.

By Gretchen McKay
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Had life gone according to plan, the biggest decision Ryan Ballou would be making this summer would be: Should he work the front gate at his local community pool, as he's done for the past couple of years, or try to find a higher-paying job?

Multimedia Presentation: Reporter Gretchen McKay and photogrpaher Steve Mellon document Ryan's year at Edinboro University. Click image to launch MULTIMEDIA.

Instead, the Ben Avon resident is going to spend the next months wrestling a demon much more serious and ultimately life-changing: Should he return to Edinboro University in the fall?

In a way, the 20-year-old business major is lucky a second year at the state school is even an option.

He flunked his freshman year.

During the last half of his second semester, he wasn't attending classes. He wasn't studying for exams. And on some mornings, he wasn't even getting out of bed.

It might be tempting to blame his behavior on Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the terminal genetic disorder that has put him in a wheelchair. He's had a lot more to deal with, both emotionally and physically, than the average college freshman. Yet Ryan has never used his health condition as an excuse.

Rather, he chalks the year up to an unfortunate marriage of too little hard work and too much socializing. Although he was initially afraid he might have trouble making friends, the personable young man who was voted prom king at Avonworth High School ended up being one of his dorm's most outgoing residents.

"I pretty much sealed my fate when I stopped going to class," he admits simply, just a few days after he returned home for the year. His father, Ty -- sitting nearby on the couch with a tight-lipped smile -- nods his head in agreement.

"Ryan got an A in the lesson of life," he says with palpable disappointment, as his son looks uncomfortably away. "He learned that [to succeed], you do have to put something in."

Veering off course

Most students start their college careers with only the highest of expectations. Even so, experiences like Ryan's are not that unusual.

	Ryan Ballou stretches during a class at Edinboro University in which students learned to manipulate typography on a computer. Click photo for larger image.

According to the Policy Center for the First Year of College in Brevard, N.C., just 72 percent of students attending four-year public institutions return to that same school for their sophomore year; for two-year public colleges, that number plummets to 52 percent, says co-director and senior scholar Betsy Barefoot, citing a study from American College Testing. Those numbers are echoed at Edinboro, where for the past seven years the overall retention rate for the second year ranged from 69 percent to 74 percent.

But very few of those students actually leave because they flunk out; officials say it's much more likely they transfer to another school, run out of money for tuition or simply decide college is not for them.

Even with all their challenges, students with disabilities tend to return at slightly higher rates than the rest of the campus, notes Bob O'Connell, director of the Office for Students with Disabilities at Edinboro, a university recognized nationally for its accessibility for disabled students. During that same period, the disabled population came back for their sophomore year at rates ranging from 68 percent to 83 percent.

Those figures actually make sense, Mr. O'Connell says. Just like with the athlete population, these are kids with whom someone has made a connection, thanks to the special services they require. "They have people who are looking after them, maybe hollering at them periodically, encouraging them, pleading with them."

Still, Mr. O'Connell acknowledges that the first year of college can be an overwhelming experience for some, in large part because of the sudden freedom that's thrust upon them.

It's not unusual for a student with a disability to have almost an entourage of people looking after him or her, and oftentimes those caregivers have unknowingly assumed control of things.

"So when the student gets here and those people are not present, they don't know how to handle all that yet," he says. They have choices to make they've never had to make before -- and, understandably, not all of them will be good.

Mr. O'Connell says he and his staff do what they can to help make that bumpy transition as smooth as possible. For instance, any time he's with a student -- whether it's to fix a tire on his wheelchair or to give him a ride in a van -- he uses it as an opportunity to engage them in conversation. But in the end, the office of disabilities cannot baby-sit the student.

So while he can lead them to water, he says, "I can't make them drink."

Ryan certainly struggled with his classes as a business major his first semester on campus, earning a dismal 1.7 GPA. But he also had trouble handling his sudden independence.

With no one around to tell him what to do and when to do it, he did exactly what he wanted -- perfecting his "Halo 2" skills on Xbox and generally goofing around. It was only after his father threatened to yank him off campus after those bad first-semester grades that he vowed to settle down and stick his nose harder to the educational grindstone.

But old habits die hard. While Ryan initially lived up to his promises and went to class at the beginning of the second semester, he didn't do much work; by mid-March, after midterms showed he was failing two classes, he stopped going altogether. And he wasn't the only one: Several in his core group of buddies, including his good friend Nevin, who lives across the hall and has cerebral palsy, also blew off most of their classes.

The blame game

Ryan might say it was laziness that kept him out of the classroom, but not everyone sees it that way. His dad suspects his son -- whom he calls a "very, very bright young man" -- might have been so disheartened by his poor grades at midterms that he simply gave up.

"I know what he's capable of," he says. "And I know that he's very hard on himself."

Yet Mr. Ballou is also beginning to think that Ryan started college before he was fully ready. An average student in high school with no clear goals for the future, he applied to Edinboro simply because that was the anticipated next step. He majored in business not because he has a head for numbers but because his dad runs a sports marketing firm. But there's an inherent failure, Mr. Ballou notes, in doing something just because your mom or your dad or your sister wants you to.

"You need to do it for yourself," he says.

There's also the delicate, rarely discussed issue of his mortality. Prodded, Ryan reluctantly admits he might have allowed the degenerative disease that is stealing away his muscle function and eventually his life to cloud his judgment or make him feel depressed. He insists, though, he doesn't go there very often.

"I have thought, 'Why bother if I'm not even going to be around to use my degree?' " he acknowledges one night in early May, not long after he was busted for skipping so many classes. "But you can't really think about that. You have to keep doing what everybody else is doing. And I do want to get a job eventually."

Resident assistant Tyler Smith, whom Ryan knows well from Muscular Dystrophy Association camp and also has Duchenne, can relate. The second half of his sophomore year, Mr. Smith got so depressed with the boundaries of his disability that he failed four of his six classes. (It didn't help that Edinboro is a pretty bleak place once the snow starts to fall.) It was only after he accepted the fact that Duchenne didn't limit who he was or his potential that he was able to work it out. Today, the 22-year-old political science/print journalism major is an honor student.

"But you have to find the determination within yourself," says Mr. Smith. "It's figuring out what you want to do with your life."

One thing that can help you find your way, he adds -- and which Ryan failed to do -- is to get involved in a club or other activity. That way, if your classes don't initially pique your interest (and what general ed classes do?) you'll have something to do every day that will keep you on top of your game.

The type of people you hang out with also can affect how well you do in college, notes Mr. Smith. If your friends don't go to class, you might not either, for fear of not fitting in.

"Colleges think you've given some thought to your future, but in reality, you're still trying to figure it out," he says.

Looking ahead

Colleges, of course, want their students to succeed, so once Mr. Ballou and Edinboro staff became aware that Ryan was in danger of flunking out, everyone stepped into high gear.

Ryan talked with Mr. McConnell about what he needed to do to salvage the semester, and he also met with his adviser to discuss changing his major to communications. His father also arranged for a pep talk from athletic director Bruce Baumgartner, a four-time Olympic medalist in wrestling. But it proved to be too little, too late.

At the end of April, Ryan fell out of his wheelchair when he hit a bump on his way to class and smashed up his face, necessitating a trip to Erie-St. Clair Hospital. Six days later, while catching a smoke with some buddies outside his dorm, he fell again, this time twisting his knee and fracturing his wrist. But even without those preventable mishaps (he wasn't wearing his seat belt), it was a long shot at best. To get back on track, he needed Cs in two courses; he ended up with a D and an F.

What now? Well, it's still up in the air.

If he decides to give college another chance, Ryan can go back to Edinboro next fall. But in essence, he'll be returning as a freshman. So he's just not sure.

He'd obviously have to spend more time with his books and less with his friends. And no more sleeping in.

"If I go back, I have to do what I'm there to do -- my work," he says.

Ryan's father, of course, has no doubts he can to it; it's more a matter of when's the best time. Taking a year off to allow himself to grow up might not be a bad idea.

When you stumble, Mr. Ballou says, you always learn something. And Ryan has definitely been both humbled and enlightened these past nine months.

"I have very high expectations for Ryan in life, and not just with a GPA," he says. "It's an LPA -- life lessons. He can do so much."