This thread got me to thinking about some of the things that I did or that happened to me in college. I know others probably better stories, but I wanted to share a couple of mine. I always had pretty good luck with getting the right class/professor. Even the one time I got screwed with my scheduling. I was set to graduate at the end of a fall semester, and I needed one Lit class and one History. I registered for Sports History, and a lit class taught by a professor that I knew pretty well. Somehow the auto scheduling system the university used got messed up and kicked my schedule. I didn't find out until I went to pay. they told me that both classes were full and that I was SOL unless the department heads would allow me into the full classes. Neither would let me in so I was forced to take classes that were open. I was registered for "Midevil history" and "Women in Lit". The history class was taught by a guy who was way too into history, and I knew it would be tough. I told him my situation and he agreed with "my assessment" of the department head. He told me to make sure to turn in the work and he'd take care of me. I made a B (which was totally fine by me). I walked into the Lit class the first day and looked around thinking I wa sin heaven. it was me and 20 females! I was soon corrected, as the teacher said to me "You may be in the wrong class. We are going to read some women books and bash men, you may want to drop" I told her my situation and she basically told me to come to class, sit in the back, keep my mouth shut. I did and they did. I made an A though. I also seemed to to have pretty good luck with some of the instructors I got. i took Planetary Science and the professor had a wreck 2 weeks before classes started. he was unable to talk for the majority of the semester. the replacement professor was doing a stint working with NASA to launch a satellite. He scheduled his classes for tuesday/thursady and NASA stuff for Mon/Wed/Fri . My class was Mon/Wed/Fri so we never met. We met about 8 out of 40 class days. I had 2 professors that were in their last semesters in the University. One was for World Lit. He told us we could use whatever we wanted for our tests, notes, cheat sheets, the book, etc. I used a dictionary for our vocabulary tests.It was great. the funny thing is. I really enjoyed the class and remember more about it than I do most of the others I took. And finally, I had a professor in an art class actually tell me on the first day, that he did not check roll and would collect all of our artwork at the end of the term. That was like writing me a ticket to skip out everyday. I had another friend in the class and she actual went to class. I would call her and get the assignments. I did all the assignments the last week of the semester. I showed up with my portfolio to take the final and the guy actually forgot I was enrolled in the class. I turned in all my work and took the test (I made a 100). Got an A for the class and only attended 2 sessions. I could probably write a book about the things that happened to me in college but I'll save some of the others for later in the thread.
haha thats awesome your teachers were cool about the situation you were in. Just told you to do all the work and be taken care of. nice
Once I took a biology class in summer school from a Professor I knew to be fairly easy. It turned out that the class was overbooked, so half of us got moved to different class. The first day with a new professor and I could tell it was going to be a hell class. The amount of homework, study and papers was going to be insane. I went to the original professor and sucked up. I told him that I waited especially for summer because I had heard how good of a Professor he was, and that I wanted to be in his class to learn from him, and couldn't there be a way where I could back in his class. He bought it, and I had an easy summer class, instead of a tough one.
I had a roommate who was f'ing loaded. I mean, seriously, crazily rich. His dad had formed multiple hedge funds out of Chicago and was rolling large. This was freshman year...I was in a suite with 3 other roommates. I went to college in Philadelphia. A vast minority of students had cars. Public transportation worked, but wasn't ideal. So by spring semester, we basically rolled around town in a limo. Around the end of fall semester my roomate had jsut called up and ordered a limo one day to go run some weekend errands. The driver ends up being this really cool, ex-Vietnam guy named Joe. As Philly as you get. It was a good match, a good time, so he did the limo things a few more times, and we'd go along. By spring semester, he had just hired Joe effectively for him full time. And we'd hit up bars, where we could get in with our crappy fake ids, go to Atlantic City, etc. One weekend we found a beer distributor (Pennsylvania alcohol laws are different, can't buy beer in a grocery store for example), and filled up the entire trunk of the limo with beer. Got back to campus, rented out a cart as if we were moving something large into the dorm and rolled all the beer to the room. For a variety of reasons, I have lost touch with said roomate (it is actually a sad college story involving a cross country road trip, an accident and a death), but I did invite him to my wedding a few years back when we had more regular contact still. He couldn't make it but got me 10 full place settings at over $125 a pop....he just liked to flash and splash cash...made for some good times.
first year, was a good little student just like all the years leading up the college (elementary, middle, high school). went to most all my classes, didn't cheat, got A's. last 3 years, skipped as often as possible (one semester i didn't sit in a classroom for 6 weeks straight), cheated so much it was beyond ridiculous (all the way up to passing our actual test paper with engineering problems worked out on them back and forth), and got A's. i liked the last 3 years better.
Another situation I had. The fall semester before I graduated, my house flooded. We had 2 feet of water throughout the house. I had a kinesiology professor, who was a family friend, who told me to take a month off and not worry about it. I was living with 8 other people at my grandmother's 3 bedroom house for 2 months. I had to fight for the shower in the mornings. I was 3 minutes late to an education class one morning and 2 weeks later I was 5 minutes late. After the second class the instructor called me up and berated me for being late. I explained the situation to her and she promptly told me that it was my problem and she wasn't concerned with my "situation". I told her, "I bet if you had 2 feet of water in your house, you'd be concerned." I left before she could say anything else, and made sure I was late every once in a while. I also ripped her on the end of course evaluation.
I took an Analytical Chem class from a Prof I had for General Chem. I had don well in Gen Chem and the prof remembered me. Third week or so, he was handing out presentation assignments, and mine said simply, "See me in my office at earliest convenience." I went to his office and he asked me to write a proposal for him instead of the presentation assignment. I wrote it and turned it in. About a month left in the semester, he told me that he had gotten the grant that I had written the proposal for. It had enough to fund his research for the next year. I quit going to class, right then. I showed up for labs and for the final. I knew that since I had done well to that point and got his research funded, he "had" to give me an A. I was right.
Man the best college class I took was in summer school at Kingwood Community College in 2003. I needed a 4 hour lab to finish my basics and I decided that Astronomy at the local CC woud be great. I get there the first day and my teacher was this huge hippy with a pony tale and tie die shirts. It turns out all we did all class was watch movies about the universe on a huge big screen & surround sound in an auditorium. Every other weekend we had to do "field research" which actually meant going to planetariums or observatories. By the end of the summer I would show up to class in gym shorts, sandals and a bowl of cereal with milk. It got to the point I would just leave my bowl in the classroom overnight and wash it in the class (it was like a lab) and bring a pint of milk and boxes of cereal. Everyone including the teacher was freakin high like every class. Basically my routine in that class was 1. Roll out of bed 2. Ride with my friend and smoke out before class 3. Show up, prop my feet on the table and eat 2-3 bowls of cereal 4. As Im munching, dazed and confused, I would be pondering the wonders of the universe on the big screen with Carl Sagan, Steven Hawking and others. 5. On the weekends I would go to Brazos Bend State Park with all of my classmates, play football, drink and barbeque all day to see the observatory at night and get credit. I even hooked up with 2 hot chicks in my class. All that with 4 hours of lab credit included with an A+. Damn I really really really miss summerschool.
I got my first A of my college career in an elective...History of Rock Music Through 1969. For the final exam, the instructor gave us a choice of either a written test or performing in the class talent show at Club Foot. I chose performing. I aced the final exam. That semester, my report card was one A, one B, and three C's. My dad wasn't too happy.
Not interesting. Pretty straightforward story. Summer after freshman year, rich roommate, another suitemate and 2 other friends drove cross country to LA. On their way back, very last day of the trip, less than a week before classes start up again, rich roommate is driving, swerves off the shoulder a little bit, overcorrects, the SUV flips. Other suitemate and another friend are in the back, neither with seatbelts on. Suitemate is thrown out of the car, dies instantly. Other guy in the back only scratches. Rich roommate severly shatters leg, and other minor injuries - now walks with a cane. Female friend in the front passenger seat severly shatters upper arm, other minor injuries. It was all very surreal and as you can imagine messed with a bunch of the social and personal dynamics our group had created the previous year. Rich roommate was never the same....though none of them directly involved were. Rich roommate used to be such an enormously outgoing, hilarious, fun guy to hang out with. We lived in a high-rise dorm so had to take the elevator. Matching his personality, rich roomate was about 6'8", close to 300lbs. One time a bunch of us are on the elevator with just one other random person going up. And rich roommate just starts jumping, and laughing. Elevator is shaking, were all a little frightened, but the one random guy was freaking out. It was one of those really strange but hilarious moments in retrospect. I don't think it's a coincidence he was the one driving. We still had some good times afterwards, but it wasn't until the next year that rich roommate made it back to school, and he always had this underlying brooding auroa about him thereafter...
Now that's how you roll in college. If you tell me class didn't start till sometime after 11 am (preferably 12 or later) then it would be even better. In 4 years of college I don't think I had mroe than 2 classes that started before 10:30...which meant i had some friends who'd be done with class by 3 and usually wasn't till 5 or later, but I couldn't help but be an insomniac.
I remember my 2nd semester in college (my first at Middle Tennessee), my schedule was a dream. With the exception of Tuesday, the earliest I had to go to class was at 11 (on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) and my first class on Thursday wasn't until 1:40 in the afternoon, LOL! My schedule was the 2nd semester of General Chemistry (the one that chemistry majors and pre-meds had to take) with the lectures being M-W-F at noon to 12:50 and the lab being on Tuesday morning from 8 A.M. to 10:40 A.M. I also had Calculus I with it being from 1 to 1:50 in the afternoon on M-W-F and 1:40 to 2:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Soccer was my PE class and was on M-W-F from 11 to 11:50 in the morning. I had the 2nd semester of English Composition on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:05 in the afternoon to 4:20, and finally I had Art Appreciation on Mondays and Wednesdays from 3 to 4:15 in the afternoon. I still could not believe I got that schedule (I literally registered the day before classes started since I was a transfer student) but it was 16 hours. I used to stay up until 2 in the morning playing pinochle and just shooting the **** with guys in the dorm. The only semester I ever had a 4.0 (I did graduated c*m laude with a 3.61 GPA). 2 other stories, both happening in the same semester: The spring semester of my junior year, I took 14 hours and had among other classes, the first semester of American History and Vector Analysis (I was a Math major). The American History class was on M-W-F and started at 8 in the morning. Middle had a reputation that if you registered early enough, you could get easy teachers in the English and history departments - ones that didn't require you to write lots of papers and do book reviews or have essay type question tests. I signed up for this specific teacher because I had heard that she didn't make you do papers, essay type question tests, book reviews, etc. Well the first day of class, I walk in and there is this man. I didn't know what to think because I thought that Dr. Leone was a woman. It became apparent that she had switched sections with this guy (who was an adjunct). MTSU was infamous for doing that crap - replacing one professor with another but not telling the student until after the fact. One person asked the man (his last name was Fayles) if he was Dr. Leone, and he said he was not. She then got up and left; I presumed to drop the class, LOL! And wouldn't you know - he made us read books and do book reports as well as book reviews and also had essay type question tests. I wanted to drop him but I didn't want to go through the hassle of finding another section and messing up my schedule. I stuck it out and made an A - the guy was actually a pretty good teacher (damn good for an adjunct). That same semester I took Vector Analysis with a professor from the Ukraine named Dr. Melnikov. This guy was brilliant. He gave open book and open note tests. I didn't take the first test seriously and I made a 71 on it. The only grades in this class were 4 tests and to get an A, you had to have at least 360 points. So, after this first test, I was worried about being able to make an A. I made an 88 and then a 95 on the next 2 tests, but I only had 254 points going into the last test - making it impossible for me to reach 360 since I was 106 points away. I went up to him one day after class to tell him my concerns about not making an A in his class. He looked at me and said, "Aren't your test grades getting better and better?" I told him yes and he said, "Well, if you make a higher grade on the final compared to your last test, I will give you an A." I don't know what I made on his final but it must have been higher than a 95 because he gave me an A. To me, that is the way a professor needs to be - understanding and willing to give you a break if you are close. It seems too many times you have these assholes who will tell you, "You are getting a B as you finished with an 88 average. I just can't in good conscience give you an A."
yea we do those too, though I always question if they do anything...i mean if your teach has tenure (sp?) then it really doesnt matter. Though one of my teachers I had for a history course who was horrible, everyone hated him. Everyone gave him bad reviews..even people who did well. I heard the semester after they made him just do study abroad or something so he isnt teaching anymore.
it was my junior year at UH. i worked in shelving department in the Library. there was this cute girl who worked there also. After getting to know her, it turned out she was the same year and major. Surprisingly, I don't remember seeing her in any of my classes before....trust me, i would have noticed. anyhow, after a couple of months there, we started dating. we dated for a good semester when she drops the bomb saying she was moving to Colorado. of course we start talking about what was to become of us. eventually, i put my foot in my mouth and she broke it off the next day. i was hurt, but it was a week before the summer so it gave me time to heel my wounds. then, the fall semester comes around and guess what? She never freakin' left and we had the same damn class!
