What was your academic experience like?

In My Humble Opinion
21

HS: No class work done at all - life was completely focused on sports, friends, and (for the last couple of years, in a harbinger of what was to come later) Everquest. I had multiple periods of several months in a row when I wouldn’t bring a single book home. I had something like a 3.9 in a prep school, 1540 SAT, 800/800/730 on the three SAT2s I took. Had a ton of extra curriculars - 3 varsity sports, student council officer, etc. Despite all of this, among 5 top universities I applied to, I got into 1, was waitlisted from 3, and was outright rejected by one. You can choose to apply the “dart board” theory or the “white male” theory, I don’t really care which. At least I got into one. And…

University: I was completely not-ready, mentally. My first two years, everything just kept getting worse and worse. I was really, really good at computer games (both Warcraft 3 and EQ), and apparently that was enough for me. I blew both potential relationships I had in those years, had a GPA ranging from a 3.1 in my first semester down to a 1.96 that put me on academic probation after my fourth semester. Wake-up call! At that point my cumulative GPA was about a 2.4 or so. It’s a wonder I came out of those two years with any friends at all. Thankfully, the cheap bastards weren’t really giving me a lot of money to begin with, so I didn’t have that much to lose.

Now, it’s my eighth and final semester. My GPA over the last three semesters (including a couple of summer courses I took to help in adding a second major) has been ~3.3, and I expect to get a 3.5+ this semester and graduate with a ~2.9 cumulative average. I took the LSAT this past fall and got a 177. I have a lovely and entertaining girlfriend, and my social life is much more active. I quit pretty much all online games during my sixth semester, and have had a ridiculous amount of free time since then. The plan is to work full-time for a year (to strengthen my resume, both with the experience as well as the grades from my last semester being on my transcript… and frankly also to make some money after paying a ridiculous amount for undergrad), and then apply to as many top law schools as I can, touting my ~3.4 average over my last two years in many of the most difficult classes offered in my departments as an offset to my somewhat less impressive overall GPA.

I needed a complete change in my mental focus, and it took something as shocking as a letter to my parents saying “if he gets below a 2.0 again, he’s outta here” to get me there… which is kind of sad. It would be easy to blame it on EQ and other games, but that was more just a symptom - the GPA upswing started during a semester where I was a 60-hour-a-week raid leader for a top guild. I just had to master concepts like “going to class matters”, “doing homework assignments matters”, and “studying for exams matters”. Well, I’m still not great at the “going to class” one, so apparently that may not matter so much after all. The other two are pretty good, though. I really wish I had done better in my first two years - but at the same time, I’m extremely thankful that I woke up early enough to salvage, well, my future.

22

For university, I did about average academically. Though as I majored in music and education, I decided to focus on performing and practicing rather than pedagogy. So I worked pretty hard until about fourth year when I decided to party a bit more. Though I extremely value teaching, I’m glad I focused on music as I think becoming a better teacher is something not learned until one is practically teaching. And now I have two careers. Woohoo!

23

High School: Took it seriously. Studied, did a lot of homework, took AP and honors classes. Football one year; soccer one year. Bowling league. Eagle Scout. Part-time job my senior year. Had a couple of close friends that I hung out with, but didn’t really have the “ultra-social” life that many others probably did. No drugs; no alcohol.

Undergraduate: It was all about the grades. Pre-Med track. My first dormmate pledged a frat and would make goodnatured fun of me when he went out to do social things and I stayed in the dorm studying all night. Hell, I was taking calculus, honors chemistry, weed-out zoology, etc. He ended up with a 0.9 GPA. (Who’s laughing now?! :smiley: )

I went into the National Guard as a medic. Called up for Desert Storm. Upon return, changed focus to straight zoology/ecology/marine biology curriculum (I hated being a medic and no longer had my sights on medical school). Got funding and other grants to do an undergrad research project. Worked graveyard shift at Circle-K for a year. Had no social life whatsoever. No drugs. Some alcohol, bust mostly when I was at my Dad’s just buddying around with him.

Graduate School: This is where I really came into my own. Lots of friends. Lots of parties. Social stuff 3-4 times a week. Tons of alcohol. Still no drugs. But it was still all about the grades. My major professor was more demanding than most, but we were well rewarded. He was extremely well-funded so I had a stipend and no need to look for an outside job. All our field research was conducted in the Florida Keys and around the Bahamas, so lots of opportunities for interesting trips. Spent many all-nighters in the lab working up results and writing writing writing. 4.0 GPA and recognized as top student in my class.

Would I do anything differently? Academically, no. I do wish I had come out of my social shell earlier. Undergrad was a particularly lonely time for me.

24

High school: I was pretty bored, but didn’t see any reason to buck the system. I took the most challenging coursework available and did the minimum necessary to get As. That pretty much meant acing all tests, occasionally skipping homework, and frequently half-assing homework. Socially, I was a big nerd but hated spending time at home, so I joined everything (band, choir, plays, you name it) and worked 15-20 hours/week after school. I was pissed when I came in 11th in my class (out of 170ish) because I knew there weren’t ten students in my grade who were smarter than me. The bar was pretty low at my high school, so any kid who showed up and did the homework could be an honor student. I had very high test scores and a shitload to prove to my family and the rest of our little town, so I went to the University of Chicago for undergrad.

College: I started off thinking I’d keep my bizarre combination of overachievement and underachievement going. I’d major in biology and maybe become a doctor or do some amazing research… Then I discovered the more complex side of social interaction…and dating! I met my now-husband and did some theater with him, and I went to parties and had lots of friends. That wasn’t what caused me to fall apart, though…it was the issues I’d shoved aside all through high school. They came out big time once I gave myself the space to let them. My first three years of college were a perfect downward spiral: I went from never missing class to hardly ever attending class, struggling to keep up with my homework to feeling completely defeated by it, and sleeping a few hours a night to sleeping all the time.

I took a year off because I realized I was depressed. (I had switched my major to psychology by this time, and it was all starting to make sense.) It’s funny how the year changed me–I worked two part-time jobs that I could leave at work and return home from, and this was an amazing epiphany. I didn’t have to feel guilty all the time because I SHOULD BE DOING HOMEWORK! or somesuch. And forgiving myself for being human was born, and I went back to school and had my best academic year to date. Then I got engaged. It was all really awesome. I think I had a 3.something, but I’m not one to place too much emphasis on that. I have a college degree, and I thank God and myself daily for that.

Sidenote: Amen to having a “break year” somewhere along the line. I think it would do both honor students and non-serious students a whole lot of good. It helps with burnout, build emotional maturity, and lets you know what it’s like working without a degree. Some people take “a year off” and never go back, though, so if you do take a break, schedule your return in advance. Talk to the school, write it on the calendar, and tell your employer that you’re going back to school in a year. Make yourself BELIEVE it’s only a year–that’s the key.

Grad school: I’m thinking of going in a year and a half, or maybe the year after. We will see…

25

I went to an extremely rigorous and nationally-recognied large NYC public high school. I worked my butt off in HS for my “ok” grades, which in context meant 92% (we used a 100-point scale in 1% increments) and about 1270 on the “old” SAT.

I went to a regionally well known university, which was my 5th choice as I got rejected from choices 1-3 and no fin aid from #4. Its hard when you’re compteting with 900 of the top students in the country, and they all go to school with you.

My first semster I got around 3.+ and grades improved every single semester that I attended (graduated on Dean’s List), and didn’t choose my major till the last possible second. I also signed into lots of 300 level classes without the prereqs – Buddhism, Political Philosophy, Wheel-Thrown Pottery – cause they’re interesting and did fine. I was highly active in the Theater (volunteer and paid work) and wrote a weekly column for the paper, and was on a travelling intramural sports team. I pretty much had one boyfriend or an other throughout my college years.

I wouldn’t do anything differently at the school I attended, it was a fun time, I got good grades, I was really busy and made good friends. If I could do something differently it would be to somehow get accepted to Northwestern. The college I went to was very geographically isolated, in a small town, boring and conservative. It was a bit of culture shock.

26

High School: I disliked High School starting about the middle of freshman year. I was in all AP classes, and my school’s AP classes were COMPETITIVE. We had some super smart people at school who would do nothing and get A’s, and others who would study and do nothing else and get A’s. I was one who was unwilling to put in the hours to get A’s and was perfectly content with my B average. Middle of Sophomore year I applied to graduate early, and graduated at the end of my Junior year. Despite the hoops I had to jump through, two of my science teachers (who graduated early from their high schools) helped me get everything through so that I could graduate. Theoretically I could have graduated at the end of my sophomore year if I had prepared for it, but I hadnt known I could and the counselors didn’t tell me. If I had known, I would have.

College: Im a freshman in college at the moment. I keep taking classes that I have to drop (Latin, World history (aka philosphy gag), and a lab where the TA disliked me), and so to help fill up my time I am currently volunteering at the SPCA, and have applied to volunteer at the Houston Public Library. My parent’s do not want me to work this early in the semester, so volunteering is a nice medium to them. Anyways, volunteering looks good for job applications. I have around a 3.0 GPA, and I am going to aim for a 4.0 this semester.

Hopefully after this I will go to grad school for library science, and become a Law Librarian. I wish I had taken a gap year between high school and college. I love college, and thought I knew what I wanted to do when I got here, but I do not have a clue now.

27

Bumping just once. Hey, I know you guys just looove talking about school. :slight_smile:

28

High school: Hated most of it, and my grades were anywhere between ‘passing by one point’ and ‘eh, OK.’ The problem was motivation: I ended up with decent (1300s) SATs and ACTs, and did well on my IB exams. Wasn’t very involved in many extras; most of my stuff was outside of school.

College: Went to a quirky school. Did OK for three semesters. Then it was decided that it’s best I take some time off, so in a few years I’ll be able to let you know how the college thing ends up working for me.

slinks off to bask in the self-loathing of being a total loser, living at home and not in school at the age of 19

29

In high school I had problems. I skipped an awful lot - in my freshman year maybe close to half the time. I failed or received a D in almost every class I took in my first two and a half years. And it’s not like I had any fun excuse, partying or drugs; I was the purest of outcasts, going through prolonged and acute mental strangeness. Or I was mental. Whatever. Some people have few friends; I had no friends. But I was well known!

So I dropped out and started going to an “adult” self-study high school in an adjacent county. I put scare quotations around “adult” because most of its students were youngsters there for reasons comparable to mine - there were very few non-teenaged students. It was just a room with two teachers; students read textbooks and were administered tests at certain points in their study of the material.

A motivated student could go there and graduate in a year. Like - total. Even with the credits I already had, it took me something like three. The motivation wasn’t there, until I finally matured sufficiently.

My twentieth birthday coincided almost exactly with the start of college for me. I’d always expected it to take five years, at twelve hours a semester, and I started with a major in philosophy and economics. When I took a calc course and didn’t fail it - did well in it - I decided to change my major computer science, just to do something practical. It would add a year or so onto my graduation date, but philosophy and (undergraduate level!) economics are useless subjects indeed when your goal is a comfortable life. I felt the tradeoff was worth it.

First couple CS classes … did great. I scored an internship that most students would kill to have last semester - highly paid, flexible hours, great company headed by a former presidential candidate with big ears. Yeah. I sucked at it. Completely bombed, and the stress obliterated me. I blew my classes, too; I didn’t do any of the final projects or attend any of the final exams. Somehow I still passed three out of four classes, one with a C.

So. Here I am. I’ve been in school almost five years. I don’t drink, partake in drugs, go to parties; I spend most of my free time at home with my girlfriend. I study, but not enough. I’m getting last semester expunged from my record so’s to keep the possibility of summa cum laude open.

And I’m going to study math. It’s what I wanted to do ever since I took that first calc class, and it prepares me for two things I’d like to do - actuarial science and grad school in economics. But it’s going to take me six years. Which sucks. 'Cause college isn’t really fun anymore.

30

High school - Made As and Bs, mostly without trying. My final GPA was 3.9 or so. I graduated 8th out of 330-ish. Too many AP classes. 1470 SAT (740 math, 730 verbal). I never learned how to study. I had absolutely no social life, and I went through periods where absolutely everyone hated me.

College - I’m a sophomore now, majoring in music composition with minors in Spanish and French. I’ve got a 4.0, but from everything I’ve heard, next semester is a bitch and I’ll be lucky to survive. I still don’t have a social life, but I have some friends.

31

In high school, I made barely any effort for schoolwork and somehow pulled off A’s and B’s. I worked part-time and I was heavily involved with the music department. My extra curriculars got the majority of my effort and focus.

In college, I used the same system and almost flunked out several times.

Now that I am in grad school part-time, I am not involved in any clubs and am trying to focus heavily on schoolwork. Sure, I have no social life and phone it in at work but at least my grades are decent and I am actually learning!