Finality

[jackshoegazer]

Last night was my History 212 final. I think I may have even managed to squeeze out an A, considering I never really studied for this one. I am bad, I know, but I couldn't get my head into it. This was my last final for the semester. I am finished. Technically, I hold the proud distinction of possessing an Associate of the Arts degree. Ta-dah.

Another graduate asked be before the test if I was going to commencement. No, I'm not going. I'm just transferring to the university. I'm not really done with anything and I don't really feel any sense of accomplishment. Hell, I feel more like I just finished the tutorial level of a video game and now I finally get to actual game play.

Did I mention I am scared to death of this transfer? Now, that I'm going to a "real" school, I am worried. I've always been a big fish in a small pond - of course I do good work at community colleges and technical schools and hippy-dippy schools that don't have grades. This is a real university with thousands and thousands of students. This is a school with real standards and real professors in real academia.

Today is my first free day since the end of the semester. I am reserving it for doing next-to-nothing. Next week I'll need to start picking up extra shifts now that I'm not in school, but today, I can breathe a small sigh of relief. That is my graduation present. A day to breathe, a day of nothing.

There is a problem. I do not want to have days of nothing. I don't want my daily grind to, well, be a grind. I don't want my daily life to be such a chore that I feel I need a day of nothing just to unwind. I lose ambition and momentum on days like this. I spend my time in classes and taxis thinking of story ideas, thinking that as soon as I have a free moment, I'm going to write them down, do some real work. But I come home and I have a free day and I do nothing because I just need to let go for a moment.

My friend Mitch, who I often design flyers for, and Dale, an old Watertown friend are going to stop by in a little bit and take me out to lunch. It seems like the thing to do on a day of nothing. I haven't actually seen either of them face-to-face in years. Ah, the glory of the Facebook. I know this last paragraph was not a conclusion to the previous paragraphs, but it will have to do. Sometimes the end isn't really the end. It was Faulkner who said "the past is never dead; it is not even past."

Comments

[brdgt.livejournal.com]

You're going to do awesome - and you'll love being in challenging classes and finally getting to focus on your own interests instead of requirements!

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Bridget.

I have to wait until July 23rd for SOAR to register for classes and find out what kind of requirements I have to fulfill yet. The suspense is killing me! The less I know, the more I worry :P

[furison.livejournal.com]

I felt the exact same emotions, the same fear, when I transferred from my community college to an expensive private university. The community college had a rep for being the thirteenth grade -- so easy that only losers failed. The university had a rep for being one of the most challenging in the state. (Certainly it was the most expensive!)

However, I ultimately found that the reputations weren't entirely correct. I actually found most classes at the university to be easier. Not because the curriculum was easier, but because in a traditional academic world there's more leeway. At the university, students would come up to professors and say, "Oh, I was sick, my dog died, my grandmother died, I have another final that day," whatever. And they'd get their extension. There was this sense, almost this gentleman's agreement, that most of the kids at the university were "good kids" and that the profs would work with them so that they could get good grades even if they didn't strictly qualify for them.

At the community college I went to, there'd been none of that, because the teachers were jaded professional teachers, not tweed-jacketed academics. They had seen it all, heard it all, got paid $35k a year at best, and if you wanted A's, you had to pry them out of the teachers' cold dead hands. The students there were kids with two jobs, kids with kids, kids getting evicted and going to jail and coming out of jail and smoking too much pot, and if the teachers had handed out good grades to everyone with a sob story, there'd have been no grade differentiation at all.

Your mileage may differ, of course. But to be certain of getting straight A's at the university, I only really had to earn B-plusses or A-minuses -- that's 90% of the material, or a total of around 35-45 hours per week. At the community college I actually had to ensure I earned every single A and learned 98% of all material. It was a lot closer to 60-65 hours per week. And I went from being a really big fish in a little pond to a pretty big fish in a massive pond. It was fine.

I hope you find that the university is everything you want it to be and nothing that you fear it is. From what I know of you, I bet you'll grow to match the size of your pond.

[cabell.livejournal.com]

I don't know what the situation was with individual instructors at the CC you were at, but my experience at UW-Madison has been that the students whose peers probably went to CCs (if they went to college at all) are the ones least likely to ASK for those extensions, consideration, etc. I try to make it very clear to my students at the beginning of the semester that this stuff is negotiable, because the ones who are super privileged already know that--it's not like I'm giving them the green light; they already got it at birth--and the low-income kids, the first generation college students, they don't KNOW that they can ask, and they end up suffering because of it. There comes a point (we hit it today, with one student) where sob stories don't matter, sure. But a lot of the time, I wish more students knew when to provide them.

Anyway, god, you should see my freshmen. You'll be fine. :p

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

See, I never would have thought to ask for an extension on something. I'd be the guy emailing in a paper from my hospital bed :P

After seeing some of the work Jacquelyn has to look at as a reader/grader, I do relax a bit.

Thanks.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

My community college was a bit of both - very easy for some courses and very hard for others. Actually, it seemed that the older the teacher, the easier it was to get a good grade. The newer teachers, especially those right out of grad school were the strictest and really demanded more effort for a passing grade.

I think that for most of my life, I've always been a bit better than most of my peers, so I had to put in little effort to look extraordinary. What I'm worried about now is that I will actually have to work for that same level of recognition. I like to joke that my academic philosophy is "the bare minimum to get an A" and I'm worried that bare minimum is going to scale up quite a bit.

But thank you, that is a relief to know you felt similar and you seem to have come out just fine.

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

I can understand your nervousness about your transfer, but I think you have nothing to worry about. I took an undergrad class at Penn State this past semester, and the realization that stuck with me after being in class with the other students was that I had an advantage over them simply by being in my thirties. Even if my classmates and I had the exact same levels of education and came from matching backgrounds, my maturity would make it easier for me to succeed in the class. And the same is true for you, I'm sure. You can do it.

[the-wondering-1.livejournal.com]

my maturity would make it easier for me to succeed in the class

I just wanted to say I agree with this SO MUCH. I suppose I can't say too much about being mature, since I'm nowhere near in my 30's...however, there are a lot of people in college who just really aren't mature enough to be there.

You'll do fine; try not to worry too much! You've always seemed to be an excellent student.

[the-wondering-1.livejournal.com]

Arg. Stupid HTML.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

I've felt similar - I did much better than most of my classmates and I think one of the main factors was that I took it much more serious, and was thus more interested and engaged.

Thanks. We'll see how it goes.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've noticed that too, just in my classes over the past couple years. Being slightly older has had its advantages. One of which, I guess, is time. I've had a lot more of it to think and read about things :P

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

One thing about the university is that I think it scales a bit better - there are more opportunities for you to do independent work and cool projects and take upper-level seminars where the focus is more on discussion and less on memorization - at least, at your stage there can be. So in that way, it may be quite different. But I know you'll be brilliant. <3

[anima.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on your Associates. I bet you will do wonderful at university.