My college disaster

I was looking at my college transcript as I prepare to apply to grad schools, and I re-realized what complete train wreck my college academic experience was. The blunders are almost comical, and started my very first semester.

I rode into College Park on a full scholarship - tuition, room, board, books, and a stipend - and brought along 31 credits from high school advanced placement credits. I had four years ahead of me with no concern for money and a full year of college credit already on my record. I didn't know what I wanted to select for a major, but I was considering math, economics, and psychology.

So my first semester I took an advanced math class, Real Analysis, because I had received a letter from the department inviting me to take it. I ended up barely passing with a C, and convinced myself that math wasn't the right field for me. In retrospect it was clear that I wasn't prepared for that material, and that taking a few more courses before that one would have given me a much better chance to succeed. I didn't take another math class until the last semester of my senior year (Linear Algebra, which I enjoyed and would have benefited from taking before Real Analysis).

I took Psyc100 that semester also, and found it kind of boring and very easy. It was a huge lecture with hundreds of students, most of whom sat there doing crossword puzzles. Nobody answered questions when the professor asked them, and exams were scored on a curve. Based on that experience I more or less decided Psychology wasn't the right field for me. In retrospect it was clear that an introductory class wasn't going to cover the interesting stuff, and that the material and my classmates would get more stimulating in upper-level courses. I convinced myself that smart people didn't study psychology and besides, I couldn't get much of a job with a psychology degree.

That semester I also took a seminar through the honors program called Science and Pseudoscience. It was taught by a statistician who is a prominent part of the Skeptics community and I loved the class. I made no effort to further pursue any of the subjects or methodologies that interested me until a few years after I graduated. In retrospect it was clear that class was an early indication of the kind of ideas that I found exciting, and that I should have talked to the professor about how to explore those interests.

And the last class I took that semester was an introduction to music fundamentals. From many years of music training before college, I literally already knew every single thing that was covered in the course. I could have taught it. I knew that would be the case when I signed up, but I just figured taking an easy class that filled some credit I needed was a good idea. This would become a theme of the remaining 7 semesters.

With the tremendous opportunity of a full scholarship and the cushion of a year's worth of credits before I even started, I should have taken a wide variety of classes and explored my interests. I should have uses that experience to narrow down my interests and find a field that was interesting and challenging and that could lead me down a path to a job or graduate study that I would enjoy.

Instead I was tentative about pursuing subjects that interested me, and seized on various flimsy excuses to avoid the slightest bit of challenge. I drifted into the business school because a degree in finance seemed like it would be easy but likely to result in a high-paying job. I rarely went to class, and made the honor roll every semester just by cramming before the exams and forgetting it as soon as they were over. I would say that I didn't learn a thing, but that's not true. I learned to how to make myself look as impressive as possible while putting in as little effort as possible. What a fucking waste.

I feel ashamed at the way I squandered opportunities and derailed myself like this, but I have to wonder what kind of guidance I was getting that let this happen. It is obvious to me sitting here now almost 10 years later what a huge series of blunders I was making, but at the time I didn't really have anyone steering me in the right direction. Or maybe I did and I was ignoring them. It was a huge school and it was easy to slip under the radar if you wanted to. (But I was also actively getting bad advice. Who invited me to that math class? They probably just picked everyone with minimum SAT scores and sent a letter or something. And there was more bad advising in later semesters.)

Seeing the way Kira interacts with her professors here at this tiny school, I'm realizing that for my personality type, a small college would have been so much better for me. She knows all her professors and they know her by name. Faculty and students hang out and arrange trips and extra-curricular projects together. The faculty and administrators all take a personal and active interest in the students' education.

I can think of 2 professors who knew my name. In almost all of my classes I was just a social security number on a scantron sheet at exam time. I'm sure there were opportunities like that at my huge school, but I would have had to actively seek them out, which I never did. Small schools create a feeling of community, where you owe it to everyone else to make the best of yourself. Huge schools create an isolation, where you're just a number and you're on your own.

I think part of my desire to go to grad school is to make right all the mistakes I made as an undergraduate. Maybe having learned all this the hard way will ultimately be better for me.