I did well as a university undergrad — mostly. I managed to graduate Magna cum Laude with a degree in Mathematics, and took a bunch of science and tech courses along the way. And some accounting, economics, psychology — I wanted to know about a lot of things. I ended up with a 3-way split minor: chemistry, systems engineering, and psychology. Kind of a weird combo.
But I was pretty challenged by it all, especially with work on the side. My parents didn’t have much income, so they were in no position to help financially. When I was as a senior in high school, a counselor contacted MIT to see about me going there, and they sent us a proposal for how we could pay for it, including various kinds of financial aid. But they assumed that my parents would chip in. When I took that paper to my father, he went berserk, yelling “God damn it, you were supposed to get a FULL SCHOLARSHIP!” In his mind that invitation to go to MIT marked my abject failure. So I told him to forget it, and he stopped yelling. I did not go to MIT.
So anyway, one semester during finals I was dead tired as I sat down in this big lecture hall with auditorium-style seating for a 2-hour final exam in some math or physics course. Next thing I know, I’m waking up just in time to see the professor write “30 minutes” on the blackboard. Holy SHIT! I didn’t know how long I had been asleep; was that 30 minutes REMAINING?!? If so, I was royally screwed — I had only completed a small fraction of the test.
Turned out that we were 30 minutes in; I had only slept 15-20 minutes. And I probably got a better score as a result. 🙂
Stray Thoughts 