College

I put very little effort into High School and very little effort into applying for colleges, and went to a nearby public university.

It was a decent school, but the two full-ride scholarships had more to do with it's selection than anything else.

The summer of 1994, I was exposed to a game called "Magic: The Gathering." I wasted a lot of time playing that game when I should have been attending class. I also had a very needy girlfriend at the time.

I remember one weekend spent playing magic and not sleeping. The needy girlfriend demanded that I drive an hour to see her that Monday, eat lunch with her, and then drive an hour back. She knew I had no sleep and a calculus exam that night. I did not do well on that exam.

I would regularly skip classes for various reasons, and sometimes for no particular reason at all. I had no problems making it to work. (While I didn't fail any classes in my first year, I did do poorly enough that I lost both scholarships and had to take a job to continue attending.) For some reason, making it to work was important to me. I think it had to do with people's expectations. Nobody really noticed or cared if you missed class. I skipped all of my lectures and most of my recitations.


I remember an anthropology instructor that thought he had things figured out. He would randomly take attendance and give a random point value for being in attendance. He viewed this as random positive reinforcement for attending, or random punishment for not attending. I had a different viewpoint.

I skipped his class profligately. Every time I skipped and he didn't take attendance, I received positive reinforcement. Every time I attended and he failed to take attendance, I received negative reinforcement.

I will mention that the (very) few classes that regularly took attendance, I attended with regularity.


I remember taking Calculus 2 and skipping all of the lectures and only coming to 1 recitation per week. Recitations were Tuesdays and Thursdays, with quizes on Thursdays. I didn't do the homework, and I would only go to the recitations on Thursdays because of the weekly quiz. I would slip into the classroom 10 minutes before the end of class so I could take the quiz. Sometimes I would be playing games and would even miss the quiz. I only earned a 'C' in that class.


I took a 500+ level geography class as an elective to fulfill some requirements for my degree. The class was supposed to be "North-American Geography." I attended most of the classes before the first test. Did fine on the first test. (Most of the factual questions were straight from the course materials. The instructor seemed to have a huge hard-on for story and history of the Appalachian people, however.) I decided to skip all of the classes until a week before the next test, as marked on the syllabus. That week would allow me to get all of the review information prior to the test.

I walked into the classroom and sat down. I was a bit surprised at how many people were in attendence, as usually only ~2/3 of the class would show up on a given day. I got a bad feeling as the instructor walked in with a sheaf of papers and started handing them out. Ahh, the test had been moved up a week. The first question was an essay question that I can still recall. "What was the Pick-Sloan Plan and why was it called a shameless, loveless, shotgun marriage?" I felt like I couldn't just leave it blank, so I wrote a nonsensical tongue-in-cheek full-page essay regarding the abuse of the Appalachian peoples at the hands of slick lawyers that I'm sure made it quite obvious that I hadn't the slightest clue.

I did poorly on that exam and only barely ended with a 'C' in that class.


I took Biology, skipping all of the lectures, the vast majority of the recitations, all of the labs, the 'required' pig-practical (yuck!), and the paper worth 10% of the grade. I only showed up for the exams. Connie, the owner of the local magic shop, told me that I should write my paper. But she didn't stop me from joining the tournaments.

In all, I forfeited and did not even begin to attempt a full 30% of the points available in the course in addition to skipping a number of 'required' items in the syllabus. In addition to that, the weekly exams (which I did attempt) would frequently have BS questions like "What was the brown liquid in last-week's lab?" How exactly is that a biology question? Luckily, a number of jocks and their girlfriends brought the curve down enough that I passed with a 'C' anyway. (This seems nearly-impossible, as the very next semester hundreds of such students were caught cheating on the Biology exams. But I guess they must not have even been very good at cheating.)


I attempted to take Calculus 3 over a summer. Perhaps that was not a good choice. I was skipping all of the classes and homework and playing games at every opportunity. I remember going to Origins '97 instead of studying for an exam on the following Monday. I drove from Kansas to Columbus, Ohio and played magic for 3 days straight without a hotel room. I had gone with Lindley and Eicher, and they had both assured me they would help with the drive back. It is a 12+ hour drive, after all.

Unfortunately, they had failed to sleep during the convention as well. This resulted in me driving the entire way back myself, hopped up on caffeine. While I don't recall the exam, I recall not doing so well. Ultimately, my lack of personal responsibility and misplaced priorities resulted in my earning a 'D' for that course.


I had finally gotten a bad enough grade to motivate me to do better.

I retook Calculus 3 and went to all of the recitations and did the homework, though I still skipped all of the lectures. I earned an 'A' that time around. And then I did the same for Differential Equations.

I still skipped a lot here and there and was hit-or-miss with homework, but at least I was attending the recitations and getting decent grades.


I remember taking a programming course in Turbo-Pascal. I took the first test and had reason to believe I had done fairly well. (I had attended the classes.) I arrived at the first class following the exam slightly late. The instructor had already begun going over the (now-graded) tests. I grabbed my exam from the table and took a seat. I had achieved a near-perfect score, but the grader appeared to have overlooked my correct answer for the last question on the test.

I had taken the test in pencil, and wanted to avoid any appearance of impropriety, so I only kept a red pen in my hand as the test was gone over. I also kept the exam well out in-front of me and my hands away from it. The instructor asked for all questions to wait until the end, so I waited until the end to ask about the overlooked answer.

I took my exam up and waited in line to talk with the instructor after the class. When my turn came, I explained that I believed he had simply overlooked my answer and pointed it out to him. (It was the final question of the exam and I had utilized the white space below the question to work out the answer that I had circled.) He mentioned that he had not graded the papers and that it was now 'too late', as I may have written in the solution as he was going over the answers. I was rather irritated by this accusation of cheating after-the-fact on an exam that was already scored as near-perfect. I asked him to please simply hand it to the grader and ask him if he had simply failed to see the answer, or if he perhaps remembered it to be blank. If he remembered it to be blank, call me a cheater and give me an 'F' on the exam.

Around two weeks later, I got back the exam with no marks, changes, or comments. And the instructor remained unhelpful. He had simply sent it to the grader without comment. And the grader had sent it back to the instructor without comment. So I went to see the grader, who quickly gave me the points with no trouble.


I finally graduated with a BSEE in 2000, after being a tourist in Chemical Engineering and Computer Science for a while and a gamer for longer than prudence would have allowed.