What I’ve Learned in College

  SIT AT THE FRONT OF THE CLASS.  I have had more than one professor say, “The A-students are always in the front row.”  THIS IS A CLUE.  When you sit in the front row, they remember you, they learn your name, and they can see your facial expressions and tell when you are confused or are struck with a brilliant idea.  When you sit in the front row, you cannot text on your phone, surf Facebook, or read the assignment for your next class, but if you’re doing those things, you’re not going to get an A anyway. 

FOLLOW DIRECTIONS.  I have seen plenty of students smarter than I get lesser grades because they couldn’t follow directions.  It always reminds me of the test like this they used to give somewhere along the way in grade school.  The first instruction would be to “READ ALL INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE YOU BEGIN” and then there would be a complicated list of directions like, 

• 1.      Put your name in the top right corner 
• 2.      Draw 5 squares on the left side of test 
• 3.      Draw a heart after question #7, etc.

When you finally reach the bottom of the test, the last question says, “Now that you’ve read all the directions, only do #1.”  You can be so brilliant the sun shines out of your bum, but if you don’t use MLA format, or provide two examples, or submit it electronically before 11:59 p.m., you have basically told the professor that you didn’t really pay attention to what they wanted.  This hurts their feelings.  Hurt feelings give them the latitude to not pay attention to what YOU wanted…an A.

BUY BOOKS ONLINE.  Thanks to half.com and Amazon and a million other sites, you can almost always get your books cheaper online than in the bookstore.  Get the list of required books from the campus bookstore, then order them used online.  Secret Tip:  Amazon will give students a PRIME membership that gives you “unlimited fast shipping, such as FREE Two-Day shipping and One-day shipping for $3.99 per item on all eligible purchases” for FREE.  Normally, you would have to pay an annual membership fee of $79, but if you have a student email account (you know…ends in .edu) then the membership is FREE.  I said FREE.  Killer deal.  Do it.

WRITE IN YOUR BOOKS.  I’m all for electronic texts, and I have the complete works of Shakespeare, Milton and Austen on my iPhone, because books are HEAVY when you have to carry 15-20 of them around all day for back-to-back classes.   But I still buy a hard copy so I can write in them.  You just got them for next to nothing on Amazon, so write in them.  Highlight the important parts, make notes in the margins, draw lines here and there and go crazy.  It’s liberating,  and heaven knows five years from now (or in my case, 5 weeks) you aren’t going to remember why you thought that passage was so important without the yellow highlighter help.  

  

GO TO THE LIBRARY.  I have a lovely office at home.  It has my laptop and three printers and awesome speakers for my I-tunes and a comfy couch with warm quilts, and every time I try to work there, I either fall asleep or am joined by a throng of people within ten minutes of starting to study.  It has sound-proofy French doors that I close every chance I get, but they can still SEE me, and if they can SEE me, then they think it’s ok to interrupt me.  

GO TO THE LIBRARY.  The study carrels are uncomfortable, the air vents always manage to blow either hot or cold air directly on me (never season-appropriate air, either), the seats squeak and some nitwit usually has his laptop sound so loud that I can still hear it through his headphones, but when I study there, I am highly motivated to get done and get back home.   

ASK FOR EVERYTHING.  Always apply for scholarships – most people are too lazy to go through the process and you almost always get money.  There are scholarships for single mothers, and children of employees who work in upholstery (seriously) and for people going back to school after an absence of five years or more.  There is money for every kind of demographic you can imagine, and most universities have consolidated the application process so you only have to fill out one master application, and it serves for every scholarship you’re eligible for.  Ask for help with anything that causes you a problem.  If your paper-writing skills suck, ask for help at the Writing Center – they’re just sitting there waiting for someone to come in.  Need help with your resume?  Ask the Career Center.  Not very good with Excel or Word?  The Technology Center is your friend.  Your tuition and fees have already paid for all of those services and more, so ASK!

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF, BELIEVE YOU CAN DO IT, BELIEVE THERE IS AN END IN SIGHT, BUT DO NOT BELIEVE your family when they tell you they will “support” you in this endeavor.  YOU interpret this support to mean they will, in cheerful Brady-Bunch style, pitch in and do laundry, cook dinner, clean house and acknowledge that writing deeply profound papers on “The Nature of Sermonic Language” requires more than ten minutes with a crayon and the back of an envelope while waiting on a child in the orthodontist’s office.  THEY interpret this support to mean they will ask how your test went before asking what’s for dinner. 

So tell me…what did YOU learn in school?

You're Only as Old as Your Kids Make You Feel

A few weeks ago I celebrated (and I use the term loosely) my 50th birthday and I’m not happy about it. I went to bed feeling fine, but I woke up looking like this.


Well, I might not look exactly like this on the outside, but it sure seems like my brain does on the inside.

It was especially apparent to me when I went home to visit my parents in Indiana again. My last semester of college started today, and I’m taking 18 hours – so before my brain started to bleed from reading a couple hundred pages a day and writing endless papers, I headed home to see my parents. My agenda was pretty simple: I wanted to gorge myself on fresh garden tomatoes and Indiana sweet corn, and I wanted to go the Indiana state Fair.

Breakfast the first morning - Check.


Item number two – State Fair. As a kid, it seemed like we went to the fair every year as the last hurrah before school started. The anticipation started with the local movie channel showing the “State Fair” movie, and then Cowboy Bob and Janie worked us up to a fevered pitch.

Back in the prehistoric era, before Cartoon Network ran 24/7, Cowboy Bob and Janie were the only two cartoon shows on Channel 4, WTTV Indianapolis. Cowboy Bob was on at noon and he wore a black hat, stood around the chuckwagon with his dog “Tumbleweeds” and told bad jokes in between cartoons. “Popeye and Janie” came on after school and she usually had a Girl Scout Troop or a little league team as guests. The kids sat woodenly on risers in the background, waved at the camera on command, and if you were destined for stardom, a kid might be allowed to introduce the upcoming cartoon. Janie smiled a lot, but word on the kid street was that she was kind of mean in between cartoons when the cameras weren’t running.

Every summer, both Cowboy Bob and Janie would broadcast live from the Fairgrounds, spotlighting the attractions and sometimes interviewing kids who were the proud owners of a Grand Champion cow or pig. Watching their shows “on location,” seeing the flashing lights of the midway and hearing about all the delectable treats, was a 10-year-old’s version of hanging on the fence at the Red Carpet.

When Fair Day finally arrived, our whole family went, and if you think four kids were remotely interested in tractor pulls or home-canned preserves, think again. My parents dragged us at a snail’s pace through exhibition halls and cattle barns, when all we really wanted to do was make it to the glorious midway where we could ride nausea inducing rides, beg for deep fried treats to throw up colorfully on aforementioned rides, and somehow convince our parents that we were destined to win a jumbo stuffed monkey if they would just give us ONE MORE DOLLAR to spend on the shooting gallery/ring toss/ping pong ball in a fish bowl game.

We usually arrived home late that night hot, sunburned, and sticky, stuffed with food our mother would never let us have otherwise, and sporting some ridiculously overpriced, air-brushed t-shirt or a key ring with a pithy saying embossed on it (even though we had no keys to put on it, nor a car to drive). Good times.

Since I went to Indiana alone this trip, because my kids had already started school (and because I pulled out of the driveway really fast and they couldn’t catch me), it was just me and my parents heading to the fair.

The first order of business was to buy an all-day train trolley pass for $3 that allowed unlimited on/offs as it made a constant circuit of the fairground. We started in Pioneer Village and we never really seemed to leave. We heard lectures on gourds and their many uses, and antique woodworking tools. We watched demonstrations on tapping maple trees and grinding corn, and saw log splitters powered by steam engines.


I mooned over prize winning quilts in the “Home and Family Arts” exhibition hall.


I cruised the food vendors for roasted corn, elephant ears and fresh squeezed lemonade. I was fascinated by the lengths people will go to in search of a gastronomic sensation, but I resisted the lure of deep fried butter.
We went back to Pioneer Village where we admired candles made from beeswax, watched wool being spun and listened to an old-time piano player. When we needed a break, we sat and watched blue grass bands play, and some people even sang along to “I’ll Fly Away” (but not me, because I’m not THAT OLD… yet.) My step dad had his picture taken with "Possum Molly" and I gotta tell you, there was definitely some inappropriate pioneer flirting going on.


My parents loved Pioneer Village because they could remember using some of the old tools, or seeing their parents and grandparents do things the old-fashioned way, and we arrived home hot, sunburned and sticky, with our bellies full of food I normally don't let myself have.

But most of the exhibits we saw didn’t have anything to do with my life, so I’m left wondering again why I’m so drawn to these relics of the past. I can’t seem to make up my mind where I belong. I spend my days on a college campus where some of the students are so painfully young it’s hard not to spit comb their hair and hold their hand when crossing the street. Yet I was pretty ticked off when the guy at the fair wouldn’t sell me the discounted pass to ride the train trolley because “It’s for 55 and over, honey.”

I remember my mother telling me once that she always felt like she was about 26 inside and I thought, “Yeah, right.” Yet when my daughter reminded me that she will be 21 in about 6 weeks, all I could think was, “Really? Seems like I was just 21 – how can you be 21?”

My brain doesn’t feel any different than it ever has...except for those times when it sees me in the mirror and is shocked speechless. So I guess I'll just keep throwing away the AARP crap that is now flooding my mailbox, and scurry past mirrors without looking.

Besides, I know I’m not quite ancient yet…because I couldn't stop myself from buying a cool keyring at the fair this year. Although now that I look at it closely, it’s commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Pioneer Village…*sigh*.
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