The Way-Back Machine

I've started cleaning around here. It is amazing what a vacuum cleaner does to a three-quarter inch layer of dust bunnies. I'm going through various shelves and piles of papers and found a folder with my initial law school application in it. I wonder how my life would have been different had I gotten in the first time as a night student. I would have known a very different group of people. I would likely have transferred to being a day student after the first year. I might have graduated a semester or two ahead of when I actually did. I could actually be employed by now (ah...a paycheck).

Oh well, no pondering the what might have beens. In the folder with my application was a transcript of ye olde undergraduate days. Yes, we had only muskets back then defend ourselves against the roaming saber toothed tiger on the way to Chem 115, but I also had lots of A's on ye olde report card. I finally saw something that explains a problem I had in undergrad. I changed majors and wanted to have enough credits to graduate in only 4 years (the few, the proud). To do that I thought I needed one 20 credit hour semester (remember this is undergrad so 17 - 18 credit hours is pretty normal). That one spring semester was the worst of my life (at the time...had I only known about law school then). I had a continuous stream of papers, mid-terms, projects, and other exams out the wazoo because I took six real classes (and band. You always have band there). My roommates and friends wanted to kill me because I was so stressed out from all the work. I survived that semester with only one B to dent the GPA (in stats...I hate fake math).

For my final semester I discovered I only needed 12 credits instead of 15. I never understood why until I looked at my transcript. I received credit for a class I never took. It's okay, I tested directly into a upper level Spanish course so they gave me credit for the lower level Spanish class that I tested out of. CRAP, I busted my ass off one semester when I didn't need to!

Lesson to be learned: get into all those Advanced Placement high school classes you can and see how many college classes you can test out of. You need all the beer drinking/relaxing time in college you can get!

Oh well back to cleaning. I think I can throw out all those pledges to do pro bono work. Yet another thing I never accomplished in school.