by Justin Morton, Design Editor
Imagine taking three different buckets of paint and splashing them against a blank canvas, then taking your hands and smearing all three colors together. That’s kind of what my freshmen year was like: one big colorful blur. It was colorful because I learned a lot of valuable lessons but blurry because I slept a lot, ate even more and dealt some hearty damage to school property.
I came in as a very cocky mathematics major. Although unknown to me at the time, just because I was really good at high school geometry did not make me math major material. My name is not Philip Meznar, and I am not good at calculus, which was brought to my attention by the fact that Dr. Lestmann seemed to be speaking Korean when talking about derivatives.
On top of failing calculus, I was successfully falling behind in all my other subjects, which is generally the anti-goal of a college career. I could really make excuses at this point, attributing my failures to the obvious dislike I felt each of my professors had for me, or I could just honestly say I was lazy and irresponsible.
So, honestly, I was lazy and irresponsible. High school was really easy for me, and I got my diploma without really ever trying. When I came to college I felt that I could do the same thing there.
It turns out that things are a good deal harder in college than in high school. So, I stayed up really late and played video games, which led me to sleep through most of my classes. In fact, I think that I’m the first student to ever fail Traylor’s Western Civilization class because of absences, or in general, for that matter.
I don’t know if there has ever been a record set for lowest GPA at Bryan College, but I’m fairly certain that I set it in 2008 with a cumulative average of 1.238. It’s on eStudent, and it is official, unfortunately.
One thing that never really caught my attention was the amount of greenback that Bryan was costing me a year. I think that it really sank in when I was struggling to afford school in the summer of ’08 before my “sophomore” year. Then, the Lord provided me with funds for school.
Where’s the bounceback you may ask? Well, it occurred my sophomore year/second freshman year when I retook Western Civ. with Dr. Ricketts and received a B. That in itself is pretty redemptive, but to make matters even better, I received close to a 3.0 when all was said and done in the spring.
Now I’m 15 credits shy of being a junior and two years wiser than when I first entered into Bryan College as a bleary-eyed freshman. I gladly impart my knowledge and wisdom upon all who may need it.