We have a college sophomore in
the family! Lynn took her last final yesterday morning and was home by
early afternoon. She left a message on my cell phone a few hours later
to tell me triumphantly that she had passed chemistry and that all was
well with her status at school. (In Lynn's curriculum, "passing" means
C.)
Lynn is in a
seven-year
program that leads to a Doctor of Optometry degree. She spends her
first three years at Millersville as a biology major, then goes to the
Philadelphia College of Optometry to
undertake the four-year professional program there. The bachelor's
degree is awarded after the first year at Philadelphia. (She always has
the option to switch to the traditional preparation that calls for
four-and-four.)
In my first semester of college I took freshman composition,
psychology, US history, and music appreciation. (I was already a
card-carrying member of the American Federation of Musicians, playing
second violin in the local symphony and hired periodically at union
rates by church choirs.) There was also a basic college algebra course
and a science course that might best be described as "Biology for
Poets." We memorized a lot of terms and had a one-hour lab where we
looked at slides and examined an articulated skeleton that, we were
told, had probably once belonged to an indigent woman in some very poor
country whose family had not the means to bury her. (As a matter of
fact, I did write a poem about her, but I no longer have it. I do
however, still have my math book and my biology notebook.)
Lynn's first year schedule was not nearly so soft. She jumped right in
with a zoology class, a chemistry class, and calculus. The science
classes each entailed three-hour labs. She also played field hockey, an
endeavor that took up a lot of time, especially for some of the away
games that required seven hours of travel. At least there was
"Wellness," a sort of extension of the basic common sense that any good
high school health class offers. (Lynn says they handled condoms
instead of just talking about them.) In her second semester, with field
hockey behind her and a less time-consuming training regimen, she took
the second half of the science and math classes as well as a writing
class and
a speech class.
A piece of wisdom repeated often at family orientation days last June
was, "You are not going into grade 13." The high school Lynn graduated
from has a reputation for high academic standards. Even so, a certain
amount of grade inflation creeps in. Like many of her classmates, Lynn
has seen her grades slip from A's to B's or B's to C's.
Lynn achieves by dint of hard work, meticulous organization, and
attention to detail. She never fails to complete an assignment and
never misses a deadline. She's good at critical thinking and problem
solving. But she is sometimes tripped up by tests which require
cold recall of facts or formulas. Her chemistry professor favored that
type of assessment over any other, a strategy which Lynn found almost
impossibly challenging. The final counted for a major portion of the
grade, and she nearly worried herself into a hospital.
But she persevered, and was rewarded. She'll finish her freshman year
with an almost B average. One down, six or seven to go.
May 6, 2005