Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Never Say Never

I generally have a song or melody playing constantly in my head, and as I have been playing with various ideas to write blog posts about, I have found that a lot of them have a song that can easily be related. So, for this post, I give you The Fray’s “Never Say Never” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aihu16RyYp8. I’m even listening to the song now J

My default song is Vivaldi’s Sonata No. 5, the Allegro Movement. I had the distinct pleasure of memorizing this song (I HATE memorizing anything – my brain just doesn’t work that way) and performing it in either seventh or eighth grade. I still remember the notes and fingerings, so I also find myself often “playing” the song on a desk, tabletop, arm, etc.

ANYWAYS, the POINT of this post. You really never know where life is going to take you. I know, kind of a cliché, but it really is true, or at least it has been for me. I planned to graduate from UC Berkeley in 3 ½ years and do a semester abroad in Paris during that 3 ½ years. I had it all planned out. No, I literally knew what courses I was going to take every semester for all 3 ½ years during my first (and really, only) semester there.

Well, I think we all know that didn’t work out.

Instead, I just completed my first semester at UT Dallas. Yay! I made it through a semester! I actually COMPLETED two classes! For me, this is a big deal.

Even more surprising than the fact that I’m excited about completing a semester as a part-time student at UTD is the fact that I’m working towards obtaining an Associate’s Degree. If you had told me anytime prior to February 2011 that I would be getting an Associate’s Degree, I would have laughed so hard I would probably have ended up accidentally spitting in your face.

But that’s where I am. I actually have more than 60 credit hours (the requirement for an Associate’s), but, of course, there is one class that is part of the Texas Core Curriculum that I have put off…until now. I will take the second semester of Government through Brookhaven online this summer. Once I have completed that class, I (should) have completed all the courses/earned all the credit necessary to earn an Associate’s in Science Degree.

My psychiatrist has been suggesting for awhile that I look into getting an Associate’s. He knows that I have quite a bit of credit mainly in thanks to AP Tests and that I frequently get into places, for various reasons, where I cannot be in school. My psychiatrist first suggested this awhile ago, like over a year ago awhile ago, but it wasn’t until a few months ago that I really considered following through on this idea. Why not have SOMETHING to show for all the work I have done for the past 7-ish years? An Associate’s Degree is a degree. Maybe it will even look pretty…

Thankfully, I found an advisor at Brookhaven, who I actually trust; he’s a former teacher from my high school. I just so happened to get assigned to him the first day I went to Brookhaven’s advising center, and when he called me over he said: “your name sounds familiar.” I never had him as a teacher, but my younger sister did have some interaction with him. I explained that I went to Turner and that my younger sister was in his program before she transferred to the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science at UNT. He immediately put the pieces together and seemed kind of perplexed as to why I was there. I gave the brief version of my situation and he got to work figuring out how to get me a degree in the least painful way. Since I never thought I would try to get an Associate’s Degree, I never had my AP Scores sent to Brookhaven, so a lot of the required courses that I had credit for because of my AP Scores were not in their system. And because of bureaucracy (isn’t it a wonderful thing?), the school won’t process my AP Scores (that they have now officially received) until I’m a few weeks into the summer course. The advisor I have been working with has looked over my AP Scores and helped me figure out what classes they will count for, and based on our “calculations,” which were verified by some person above him, once I get this second semester of government (which I also need for a Bachelor’s degree at any Texas public college), I will have completed all requirements for an Associate’s in Science. J


Never did I think I would be kind of excited about getting an Associate’s, but here I am.