Testing Out

There I was, ready to enter my first semester of college, and all I heard was how it was going to be difficult.  It didn’t matter if high school was easy for you because a lot of people could say that.  And those people always found out quickly that this wasn’t high school anymore.  This was a tough college, and you either studied and worked hard, or you dropped out and went to an easy college or something.
But I couldn’t believe any of that.  It wasn’t going to be true for me, I said.  I think I’m an exception to that rule.  People made so many rules: you can’t do this and you can’t do that and if you act like this you must be this type of person and if you think like that you must be that type of person.  And sure, the rules were usually right.  Usually.  But not always.  And I would say, no, no, no, I’m different!  I’m not like other people!  I am the exception!  Or well, I didn’t actually say that to anyone, but.


I was going to be walking in with so many credits already.  They had Advanced Placement (AP) courses in high school, and if you did well enough on the AP test you could get college credit and not have to take the courses in college.  And I did really well on all the science and math ones, and then I even had actual college math courses that I had taken as a high school student.  As such I was free to skip most of the classes that freshmen dreaded: Chemistry, Calculus, Physics…  It wasn’t that I was really worried about struggling in those classes, I just didn’t want to have to do the extra work.  And, I didn’t want to go through the chemistry and physics labs.
Now as it turned out, there was one catch.  I was free to skip Chemistry I and II, Calculus I and II, and Physics I, but to skip Physics II, despite earning the highest grade on the AP exam I had to also pass a Physics II exam from the school.  I hadn’t done any Physics for a year, and all I had to study from was an AP Physics review book.  And the test was a couple days away.  Here’s where I benefit from my skills as a master crammer, I thought.  At least this task sounds a little bit challenging…

I studied, how much or how seriously I don’t remember, but I studied that review book.  And I went in to take the test.  And I took my time, over-thought every problem to the point where I doubted myself on many of them, and left, figuring I couldn’t do much more.  All I needed was to pass.  All I needed was a 60%, but I wasn’t entirely sure I had gotten it.

Well maybe the doubt was just me being me, other people would've said, "I probably passed," but I walked out saying I might have failed.  The result came in and I did pass.  They didn’t give a score, but they said I passed.  And I didn’t know then, because the credit for passing the class was put in after the test was graded (which was after semester started), and because there were still other freshmen classes for me to take, but the extra credits from passing that class put me from second-semester freshmen status to first-semester sophomore status based on class credit earned.  I didn’t know it, and it didn’t feel like it with a bunch of first-year classes, but I was already one full year ahead of schedule.