College Dropout

On a whim, last week I ordered copies of my college transcripts.  It's been thirty years, and since my memory of events surrounding me quitting shortly after starting the second year of a planned five year architectural degree program were a little fuzzy at this point, I was curious to see what my grades had been like.

Well, I received the transcripts yesterday, and in short, they were crap. I immediately remembered exactly why I quit school.  In my year-and-two-month university career, I failed History of Western Civilization (twice), College Algebra (twice, only finally passing during summer school at a local community college), and got a smattering of Cs and Ds for the remainder of the classes. The only thing I pulled higher than a C in my not-so-illustrious stint at the University of Arizona in was Freshman Composition, where I got a B.

This was in some ways kind of—but not totally—surprising to me either at the time or looking back on it now. While I had been an exemplary student in high school, graduating with a 3.5 (out of 4) grade point average and in the top 10% of my class, I was still ill-prepared on so many levels for the harsh realities and expectations of college life. Additionally, I also came out at the beginning of the second semester of my first year, and other factors notwithstanding, the resulting late night partying (and other debauchery) did not play nicely with 7 am trigonometry classes.

Ah, youth.

Early in my high school career, I had wanted to become an astronomer, and had planned on going to Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.  Once I found out what the mathematics requirements were for such a degree however, I gave up all hope of that ever happening.  I barely eeked through with passing grades in High School algebra and trigonometry (the latter requiring extra-curricular tutoring), and I knew that calculus and differential equations (not to mention even higher math) would be totally beyond my ability.

So instead, I fell back on my inherited knack for architectural drafting and love of architecture.  (I was raised in a very design-oriented household.) But even with this major, my choice of the University of Arizona in Tucson over the much closer-to-home Arizona State in Tempe, was only because the architectural program at U of A did not require calculus as a prerequisite for admission, whereas ASU did.

Funny thing is, two decades later during my architectural career, I found myself using the algebraic and trigonometric concepts I had so struggled with in school without even so much as having to think about it. Funny, dat.

I shudder to think of how different my life would have been today if I'd gone to ASU instead of U of A.  While I might have graduated and gotten my degree because I'd have been living at home and keeping my nose to the grindstone during those critical first few years, I might never have even ventured to Tucson, where the thousands of events that led me to where I am now ultimately began.

I think it was an equitable trade-off.