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L
EARNING
TO
L
EARN
: B
ECOMING
A
S
ELF
-G
ROWER
23
E
XPERIENCE
1: P
ERFORMING
L
IKE
A
S
TAR
RESOURCE
ended up meeting one of my new friends, Melinda, in the Student Union at least three times a week, and
we’d drill each other on our Latin verbs and proofread each other’s translations.
More times than I can count, I fell asleep at a reading table in the Math & Science library; thankfully, it was
open until midnight. As you can imagine, I didn’t have much time for a social life, but there were some fun
things. The classics and theater society used to put on midnight dramas, and I went to several of these; I
saw the
The Fall of the House of Usher
, by Edgar Allen Poe, and thinking about that still gives me chills. I
also played intramural soccer though I couldn’t always make the practices because of homework. Money
was extremely tight, and one of my real treats was a fully-loaded baked potato at one of the restaurants
at the student union each Friday. I also used to take my English books with me to a nearby neighborhood
that had huge magnolia trees and a little grassy park. Sitting there in good weather while reading was an
incredibly calming experience.
And through it all, I worked harder than I ever have in my life. It was nice to come home during Christmas
break, and I spent spring break with a new friend and her family in Houston. It was always good to get
back to school, and the amazing feeling of being challenged with things I never thought I’d be able to do
and then DOING them was incredible. But it was a lot. Too much, in fact. I didn’t get enough sleep and
ended up only pulling a C in chemistry (there just weren’t enough hours in the day to get all the homework
done for all the classes) and a B in Engineering Physics (though I got an A+ in the lab).
I guess I learned something after this because the next semester, I only registered for 13 hours: Calculus
II (3 hours), Technical Writing (3 hours), Latin (5 hours), Harp (2 hours). That qualified as full-time but
barely. I realized that as smart as I thought I was, I had bitten off WAY more than I could chew, especially
with the challenges of life – washing my clothes at a laundromat, only shopping for as much food as I
could carry in my backpack and on my bike, then having my bicycle stolen and having to walk everywhere
for a month, and so on. That semester was far better, and taking the harp course (learning to play a full-size
concert harp) was one of the best things I’ve ever done. I was always musically inclined and had played
piano ever since I was a young child. That plus being in band and symphony during high school were more
a part of my identity than I had realized; I hadn’t appreciated how much music de-stressed me and just sort
of re-centered and refreshed me. Being able to set aside the Latin or Calculus homework and bike to the
music department (even though it was a couple of miles away) and just practice harp for a hour was a big
part of what kept me feeling good that second semester.
My scholarship was based on me being a physics major as well as my GPA, and I had come to realize that
as much as I loved physics and the sciences, Latin and languages just sparked my passion like nothing I’d
ever experienced before. I knew that if I followed my heart, I would be without a scholarship for at least
the next year. That meant changing schools to somewhere far less expensive and possibly working part-
time. As supportive as my parents were, there simply wasn’t enough money to pay for my college after a
year of paying my off-campus rent and utilities. And that’s fair enough; they had three more kids at home
to think about.
Ayear of the life and education I’d just experienced had taught me that I was capable of not only continuing
with my education and actually excelling at it (if nothing else, I learned how to study very effectively!),
but that I was capable of taking care of myself and making some tough choices. It might not be easy, but
even when it’s supposed to be easy, it isn’t always. But after my freshman year at college, I knew that I
could do what I had to do, earning the degree that I wanted, gaining the education that mattered most to
me, and finding a way to pay for school and take care of myself. That’s an invaluable lesson that this big
fish would never have learned had she not taken a long and sometimes terrifying swim in the ocean.