Changes in attitude, changes in aptitude.

 

6 am. Day before Christmas.  We shuffled from professorial office to office in the Cushing Engineering building looking up our final grades next to our anonymous ID numbers taped to the doors.  My sophomore study-buddy and I absorbed the bad news with false aplomb and insouciance.  Calculus – D and C, Physics – C and F.  It went on like this for 6 dismal doors.  Woe is me.   We shuffled back to our gloomy dorm - humbled, contrite, scared.  

Sophomore means ‘wise fool’ and we thought we had it figured out.  Apparently not.  Too much partying, chasing girls, sleeping in and sluffing classes means ‘Academic Probation’.  Our parents are going to kill us, we thought. They didn’t.  Our old-school, working-class dads just asked us what we were going to do to keep from failing-out of our fancy-schmantzy, trophy-school.  Study harder, own the problem, we promised.  And we did.

Fast forward to the Engineering Honor Awards dinner the day before graduation.  We sat with our Groundling friends and applauded politely as the smart kids received their awards.  At the end they presented a special award for technical writing, and they called my name.  Our group went wild to have one of us included with the elite and standing on that stage.  My study-buddy shot off a bottle of Champaign.  Afterwards, as I caught up with my parents and showed them my plaque, my mom said to me, “you were the only one up there without a tie”.  Yes, but I was up there.