Ignorant Historian

A college friend is in town visiting me this weekend, so I thought today’s School Day Memory would be from college. My last semester of college, in fact. College isn’t particularly ripe with school memories, as most memories occured then outside the class setting. But there are two major memories of my last semester at OU that are definitely worth sharing.

I’m not a procrastinator. I panic if I have only a few days left to do a paper. I’m much more calm if I simply stretch out the work over a longer period of time, allowing myself to get things done at least a day ahead of the deadline.

My roommate in college wasn’t like that (though she has since reformed her ways). Neither was my other good friend, Mindy, who was like a roommate to us. They each would tend to write papers the night before they were due.

Towards the end of my college career, I realized I had never pulled an all-nighter. Not for a test, not for a paper. I simply wouldn’t do it; it’s not my style. But I realized that this was a part of the college experience, so I chose a minor paper in an easy class that was due the same day as one of Mindy’s papers and saved it until the night before (See, I didn’t even act like a procrastinator about it…I planned to write it that last night!).

Mindy and I went to the computer lab around 10 or 11 to start our paper. Even now those are very productive hours for me. I sat down and started sorting through the research I had for the short paper (I think it was 2 or 3 pages). After about 15 minutes I realized that pulling an all-nighter isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. Thankfully, I finished writing sometime around 1 or 2 and called it a night. I can promise you that I’ll never be doing that again! I turned what would usually be a mildly unpleasant experience into several hours of agony and torture.

The second memory from that last semester of college happened the night before my very last final. The final was in a freshman-level European history class. If you’re keeping score, you’ll realize that this is a subject I’m familiar with as I was a history major. Here I was in my last year, taking a general overview of European history something I had studied much more specifically in a couple other classes. Should be a piece of cake.

I was told beforehand not to take the professor. It was his last semester teaching and his method was simply to lecture. That’s not unusual for a college class, but there were no papers and no assigned reading (though we did have textbooks). He would simply expect us to process what we got from his lecture and be able to show our understanding (not just recall) of the material on the three essay tests.

I’ve never been much of an essay tester. Give me multiple-choice any day. After 2 or 3 hours of studying, I got a B on the first test. No problem, I’ll do better on the next one. After about the same amount of studying on the second test (after all, this go around we were studying the Protestant Reformation…that’s easy!), I got a C. Uh oh. That’s no good, but that doesn’t matter. The professor grades progressively, so if I show improvement on the final, I’ll easily get a B or even an A.

The night before the final, I was rather snippy with my roommate. She noticed that I wasn’t myself and asked me what was wrong. I hadn’t realized how I had been bottling up my feelings inside of me about moving out, moving away from my best friends, and finishing college (wow, this seems to be a theme on my blog!), and they exploded right there in our dorm room. The night I had planned on studying got derailed by out-of-control emotions. Instead of trying to learn all the important facts about the French Revolution, I simply watched Moulin Rouge and downed Mr. Pibb (a very poor substitute for Dr. Pepper, but sadly that was the closest I could get on OU’s campus) and chocolate. I think I was able to study a little by the time the night was through, but needless to say, I didn’t put in the effort needed to swing anything but a C in the class.

You’re probably thinking, “A C? So what?” And you’re right. It mattered nothing. I put maybe 7 hours of work into the class all semester which is the least of any class I’ve ever taken. The C didn’t change my GPA or keep me from graduating, but that was my first (and hopefully only!) C. The fact that it was in a freshman-level course in my major when I was a senior just makes it embarrassing.