Where did you get in? Where were you rejected?

Bodie: I was going to school for pre-physical therapy. That's why I didn't apply at Duke (that, and it was $23K a year at that point) because they didn't have a pre-PT program.

That lasted one semester and Chem 105. I was told in no uncertain terms I was going to have to get about a 3.7 combined in my next 9 science classes (which I'd never been good at). So I quit that. I was undeclared for another year or so. I'd written letters to the school paper about how goddamn liberal it was and what an embarrassment (one of my good friends wrote the same letters, only about how goddamn conservative it was) and every time, the response was "you're more than welcome to come down here and contribute to the product."

Finally, one day I did. They had me do a season preview on the baseball team back when Keith Madison was the coach. Nice guy. And I rarely left the paper's office (or that damn couch) for the next 2 1/2 years.

 

I knew going into college I wanted to be a journalist. So I visited but rejected Miami University and Notre Dame because neither had journalism schools. Decided Ohio State was too big.

Applied: Only Indiana, and got in.

Years later, I'm sorry I didn't apply at some Ivys and Stanford, just to see whether I would have gotten in. Never wavered a day on journalism though. And still practicing, many years later. Guess I will until they boot me out.

 

Accepted: Brown, Colorado State, North Central, Southern Illinois, Truman State
Rejected: None

-- I nearly had the last-semester fail. Latin American Civ. 8 students total, so me not in class was obvious. The class was the same time the student paper went to press every week, so I almost always missed Tuesday class (a predicament I explained to the prof, but he was an idiot). He made me give a speech, in Spanish, to the class to defend why he shouldn't fail me. Then the class voted whether I stayed or not. I stayed. He was pissed. He exacted his revenge by having everyone over for a dinner and finals study session on a weekend I had a job interview. Took the final the next week, everyone else is done in 30 minutes and I'm chugging along. Ask a friend how everyone got done so quick -- easy, she said. He gave us the answers. But I got a D. Good enough.

-- I just knew I wanted to be doing something in sports. I started as a television major, had an internship at the ABC affiliate, etc., etc. But I got burned out with the ridiculous hours and requirements of the classes. A friend was the sports editor at the student paper, said they needed help writing in the sports section, and boom goes the dynamite. Best decision I made in college (of course, that's not saying much, but ...).

 

I never understood the logic of skipping classes for extended periods of time. You are paying for the classes, why throw the money away?

 

I've never had the nightmare of not having my work done. That's probably, though, because I'm a huge dork who usually had his papers done a week or so before they were due so I could edit them thoroughly.

 

Amen. I didn't always do the required reading, or I skipped an assignment or two, but I always made it to class and participated enough to where the professor knew my name and that I appeared to give a damn about the class I was taking.

 

I was always just as much of a dork about school, yet I still have that nightmare on occasion.

 

Because you're actually paying for the credits (unless you fail the class). If you can get a high grade while skipping, the only thing you'll get out of going to class faithfully is knowledge that may or may not ever be used outside the classroom.

Education for the sake of education is a wonderful thing, and a lot of us would probably treasure it more were we back in school, but in my experience with 18-24 year-olds, they're likely to look for the path of least resistance to get them where they need to be. God knows I did.

 

Because I hated everything that wasn't English or journalism. I've also been a night owl since about 1974 and have never been any good with an alarm clock. I can't tell you how many times I went to bed at 5, set the alarm for 9 and woke up at noon.

Believe me: I am not proud of how "seriously" I took college and am forever grateful to my parents for a.) continuing to foot the bill and b.) seemingly forgetting, or choosing to forget, how interesting I made things. They should have pulled my ass out of there or made me pay my own way multiple times. There was a possibility of me speaking at a college class a year or two ago and I mentioned to my Dad the inherent irony of me being at the front of a college classroom.

Him: "You didn't do that bad in college did you?"
Me: "You've forgotten?"

 

It was a geology class that proved my downfall. Final term at school, spent way too much time at the paper in what was an unusually eventful semester . . . had to beg to pass it. Only time that ever happened to me.

And it meant that recurring nightmare. My solution was grad school. Everyone else's results may vary.

 

Accepted: Duke and Vanderbilt.

Didn't apply anywhere else. Don't remember anyone talking about "safety schools." My nieces and nephew cannot imagine this. I'm old.

 

Accepted: Mizzou and San Diego State. Rejected: None.

I enjoyed my time at Missouri, but if I had it to do over, I'd probably have applied a few more places and majored in something else. I decided in junior high that I wanted to work for newspapers. I blame the substandard middle-school education program in my hometown for this.