College — Freshman/Sophomore
I’m hoping to use this space to share a bit about myself, personally, but mostly professionally. If nothing else, I think it’ll be cathartic.
This is the long story of my career, broken into chunks. If you’re reading this, challenge me to go further than just college ;)
When I arrived at Colby College in the Fall of 2000, like many others, I had precisely no clue what the heck I was doing. Example: I thought I wanted to major in Economics because some smart sounding woman in my dorm was doing that and… IDK. Here’s how clueless I was — during the last month or so of freshman fall semester, someone pulled out the class book — at that point, after asking some dumb questions I realized I had purchased the book for the other section. My worthless freshman advisor failed to inform me I could actually drop that class no harm/no foul, but I digress. Back when employers asked for GPAs (or back when I didn’t immediately quit applications that contained this kind of question), this 2.75 dogged my GPA…
Spring 2001 I took my first Geology course. I confused my ability to memorize multiple choice common sense questions with academic/scientific talent. Nevertheless, this set the course for my career…
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Random memory from Fall 2001 was learning in class that the Twin Towers in New York had been… well… I tried to rush out of the class to… I don’t even know really, and the Prof stopped me and told me the phones would all be jammed… like seriously? I was addicted to CNN.com BAD for like 4 years after that [my first internet dopamine addiction, or maybe it was phish.com?]
Also Fall 2001 I had to memorize like 100 minerals by sight/formula, etc. (I think it was fall 2001) — This was freakin nasty, and TBH never once applied in my geological career since. I have nearly completely emptied that part of my brain except for the phrases “alumino-silicate” and “mesothematic” — both of which I’ve typed from memory, don’t know/care if I have the right, and certainly couldn’t/shouldn’t use them in a sentence.
Maybe some Chemistry this year? yuck. Another C somewhere along the line.
We had a January semester called “Jan Plan” and at some point during the first few years of college I took a class on Jazz Guitar/music. It was honestly just for folks who already knew jazz guitar and I was out of my league. C I think. Years later, I sat down and actually learned “Autumn Leaves” with a guitar teacher named John Carlini [plays on David Grisman’s “Dawg ‘90”] — John eventually told me I didn’t “have what it takes to play out” — ouch.
That more or less wraps up the casual academic stuff. I’ll dig in on Geology Junior/Senior year in my next post.
