Ingenuity
Two Required College Classes Meet at the Same Time! What Would You Do?
My solution changed my entire approach to life. What I learned applies to every situation, even today.
It was my last quarter. I had a job waiting, no more money and no more time. I had to complete the last class in a 3-class series to graduate and that class was not offered. Finally, I was on academic probation for low grades for the prior quarter.
The school, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, a top engineering college in Terre Haute, Indiana, came through and put me in a position to succeed. All I had to do was do it! Looking back 50 years, I appreciate their decision even more.
The problem
This was before home computers, laptops and cell phones. People sat in class and hand-wrote their notes as the professor lectured. Primitive by today’s standards.
First, the Electrical Engineering class that I needed was not available that quarter. The school agreed to let me substitute another EE class, so I chose Machines, Languages and Algorithms, which met at the same time as the required math class, Non-Euclidian Geometries, taught by my advisor.
I couldn’t be in two places at once
On top of all that, I announced that I was going to make the Dean’s List. It was my last chance to do so. For some reason, everybody laughed. Well, my academic advisor was polite and just smiled. Those reactions added to the challenge.
The solution
The professors agreed that I would attend the math class, since that was my major, except when the EE class had a test. I would meet with the EE professor twice a week to pick up class notes and turn in assignments.
All test questions for the EE class came straight out of the textbook.
Could I even learn enough from the textbook and notes to pass a test?
I knew I had to do something really different. So, using the textbook, I wrote a set of overheads as if I was going to teach the class.
I’ve heard that the teacher learns more when preparing for a class than the students will ever learn. Based on my experience with this class and others I’ve taught throughout my career, that is true.
At the end of the quarter, I got an A in the EE class, B in the math class, and made the Dean’s list. It’s the only time that a B pulled my grade point average for the quarter down instead of pulling it up.
I actually used a concept from that EE class to model database structures 12 years later.
In the late 80s, a job recruiter asked for my GPA and then said, “You mean you loafed all through college and did everything since you got out!”
He was referring to my published articles, the dozens of computer apps that I designed and built, the classes I put together, and the technical speeches at conventions. To be accurate, floundered is a more accurate word than loafed.
What I learned and its impact
For me, I needed as a motivator a target goal seated in the real world, like the job offer. The nebulous dream of getting a degree and being a mathematician was not enough. I was suddenly much more focused during that last quarter.
Then, every project, every business problem, every class I taught throughout my career fit the same look/feel of that EE class. I used the same thinking patterns and never had one fail.
Finally,
Every big situation in life is either a disaster or an opportunity.
Even if you can’t stop the disaster part, you can look for the opportunity.
Most of the time, the disaster does not happen, but the opportunity is always there.