A Good College Try

When I was fourteen and just entering high school, my friend sat me down, looked me straight in the eye, and said “Becca, don’t do dumb things.” As simple as this advice may seem, it really did keep me out of quite a few tangles in those high school days. When I was about to jump into something, I would quickly halt my enthusiasm, take a breath, and ask myself, “Would this qualify as a dumb thing?”

Apparently, I should take some advice from my high school self; this past week I did a dumb thing. We had this project in Business Statistics; we were to make an executive report. It was due on Friday, and like a good student, I intended to start it over the weekend. But, then the weekend was gone, as was Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. The week was just consumed by the midterm monster, then the lit paper monster, then the work and illness monster. So, Thursday evening rolls around, and I am all revved up for an all nighter—yeah, going to do a stats project!

Since I am doing a statistical tracking of this blog (yes, I am watching you), my professor let me do an alternate project where I got to analyze some of the data from the blog and present it in an executive report. As my professor put it, “That is more interesting than analyzing gas prices.” So, I open my word document and put my header on the page, begin to pull up my numbers, and whip out my calculator to crunch some numbers; that is about the time that my project imploded. I spent eight hours that night trying to untangle the data with no luck. I called all of my friends who had gone through statistics—my sister even re-ran the numbers for me. Yet, still we could not get them to work out.

Now utterly lost, I composed a long email with a battery of questions for my professor, called it a night, and went to bed. Mid-morning the next day, my professor wrote back, telling me to go ahead and use the numbers if I found nothing wrong with my math. She answered my other slew of questions, told me she would be checking her email throughout the day (but was out of town and could not meet me) and even offered to chat online if I got too lost.

With two hours on the clock, I began again on the project. I was plugging shakily along, when I ran into another couple of problems. I now had thirty minutes before class, and no hope of finishing on time. So, I wrote my professor asking her my questions and asking for an extension.

The clock struck twelve-fifty, and I had to get to class. I still had not heard from my professor, and the project was not completed. Hoping that my request for an extension would be granted, I scampered to class without my half-finished project.

When I got back an hour later, there was an email waiting in my inbox—from my professor, answering my questions and telling me, “there was ample time to complete the project” and she could not grant an extension, but that she looked forward to reading it.

After nine hours, four computers, and several very frustrated phone calls, I sent it off to her—late. I attached an email begging for at least partial credit. Then, I did what any mature and capable college student would do, and called my mommy.

“Mom,” I sniffled, “I have had the worst day!” My mom let me whine out my story for about thirty seconds, at which time she quite calmly slapped me down. “Well, what did you expect? You wrote her on the last day, when she was probably busy. In her eyes, you clearly put it off until the last minute. This is college, they don’t reward that kind of behavior,” she said. “But are you ok?” She added as a motherly afterthought.

If you have ever dived into a cold lake, you know the sensation when you hit the water and the temperature shock quickly plugs up your nose and mouth in an instantaneous suction-like effect. This is the best way I can describe my reaction to my mother’s words. With a gulp and an instinctual holding of my breath, I gasped out, “I guess I am now,” and said goodbye.

Now fully aware of my own absurd over-reaction (thanks to my mom’s much needed verbal sucker punch) I had no choice but to wipe my eyes, take a deep breath, and get on with life. I am working on developing a compulsion to finish my homework at least two days in advance (which is proving much harder than I would like), and I realized that one poor grade is not the end of the world. Whoever invented the phrase “a good college try,” must have been a c-average student, because as my mom was happy to point out—that won’t cut it now.