Let me guess...You didn't graduate from high school a couple years ago?

Going back to college offers some interesting opportunities. For instance, introducing your classmates to your oldest son and trying not to notice that they are "checking him out." Yeah, that scores WAY up there on the seriously weird scale. Getting tutored by people almost half your age. Finding yourself admonishing and checking up on classmates: "Why weren't you in class today? You didn't get your homework finished? Don't miss the review, you need to be ready for the test?" And then I would remember that I'm not their mother. :)

I decided that I should apply for JAMP, a premed scholarship program for students in Texas that includes tuition money for undergrad and med school, 5 week intensives during undergrad summers to prepare for the mCAT, an opportunity to meet and study with professors in the different med-schools, and a guaranteed "you are in the door" to med-school immediately following college graduation. Yeah, it's a huge deal.

So I went in to see Dr. Altmiller who is the "good shepherd" for pre-med students and oversees student applications, etc., for things like JAMP. Dr. Altmiller was highly amused as I sat down across from him. "Um, let me guess," he began, "You didn't graduate from high school a couple years ago?"

"That's a very good guess," I responded," I graduated almost 2 decades ago."

Dr. Altmiller got a little more serious. "Well, for the purposes of JAMP you are too old and too white. Do you have any minority in your background? What about Native American?"

"I'm the ultimate minority. I'm a mother with six children going back to school to become a doctor. How many of those are there?"  It was a good sign when Dr. Altmiller laughed heartily.

So since JAMP does make exceptions (Dr. Altmiller assured me they wouldn't in my case), and I'd rather have an outright rejection than an assumed rejection, with Dr. Altmiller's blessing I'm going through the tedious process of applying to JAMP, and I'm almost FINISHED! I think I'll be able to wrap up the application tonight and I already turned in the arduous stack of paper work.

One minor detail about being a science major, decent grades are not enough. If you have less than a 3.5 GPA, you don't get a letter of recommendation from Dr. Altmiller for med school. So this definitely adds to the general strain of classes.

My first Chemistry exam was a rude awakening to say the least; 60. Uh, huh. A 6 and a 0. I redoubled my efforts, got up every morning at 4am, timed myself working through all the problems, made flash cards (which do not help me, by the way), and faced Exam 2 with more optimism. Optimism that was apparently missplaced when I got my exam back with a big 71 across the top. This is when I did the only rational thing a student can do. I changed my major from Biology to Chemistry. Biochemistry, actually, since it is the most difficult degree St. Ed's offers, and I'm a natural at Chemistry. Because clearly I loved chemistry and chemistry loved me. Furthermore I requested that my advisor be Dr. "K" who was also my current Chemistry teacher. I mean, clearly she loved me, thought I was amazing and would give me excellent guidance as I continued to bomb my way through countless Chemistry exams. I also signed up for vast quantities of tutoring. And thought about Ceasar some more, burning his ships at the coast of Britain. If ever a ship was burned, I felt confident that my status as pyromaniac numero uno was firmly secured.

I quadrupled my efforts. I quintuplled my efforts (how do you spell that?). Meanwhile, I was busy keeping up my grades in Chem lab, Bio lab, Biology II, Intro to Calculus and Speech (which doesn't really count except that I did have to write quite a few speeches, do power points AND take tests, so of course, I got an A, but it wasn't entirely without due diligence).

The next Chemistry exam arrived, thankfully for once not on a day I also had a Biology exam. And I was ready, excited, determined. I would make a 100 and redeem myself. A few days after the exam Dr. K was beaming at me. "Do you want to see your exam?' YES. In eager anticipation I took it and looked at the bright red lettering at the top. 91. "91?" I wailed quickly flipping through the pages looking for my error. I landed on the hybridization problem which was so easy I hadn't spent any time on it. Sigh. WHY do I always miss whatever is easiest? I was crestfallen, disappointed, frustrated. Dr. K was amazed. "Jenny, can you not see all the things you did right? You can only see what you did wrong? That was an excellent grade. Enjoy it. And get out of my office." (Dr. K is truly the best :). It is kind of a problem. I can't really enjoy what I get right because I'm always busy lamenting what I've gotten wrong.

Well, onward ho, my turn around began, and thanks to Dr. K's gracious policy of the largest improvement grade replaces the lowest grade, my 60 was also a 91 and I went into the final exam with at least a solid B, which I had by then more than reconciled myself to.

You could just feel the tension enveloping the science building like a heavy fog around the Austin river as finals approached. In the last two weeks of school, I had 8 exams. The 4th exam for nearly every subject followed by finals and I was not sleeping and stressed and of course, there were plenty of extra curricular needs in my family unit.

By the time my Chem final arrived I was deliriously tired with Gabriel in tow, who had a headache, and wanted to stay with me. We sat in the back corner of the classroom and two hours ticked by, very slowly for Gabe. When time was called, I turned in my packet completely dejected. We all congregated in the hall after the exam to "compare notes," Gabriel was horrified to hear me say that I thought I bombed the exam and by the time we got to the car, he burst into tears.

I was astonished. "Gabriel, what on earth is wrong?"

"You've been working so hard. All you ever do is study, and now you think you did terrible on your important exam," he sobbed out, and it was a for real, snot slinging sob fest. Thankfully, I keep kleenex in the car. Actually, I keep a roll of toilet paper in the car for use as kleenex and I handed him a wad of paper to mop up his face. So I gave him a pep talk and I gave me a pep talk. God had it all under control. Of course, I would get into med school in spite of a C, and more along those lines.

And thus began the eternal 5 day wait for grades to roll out. My greatest terrifying fear was a C on my transcript. Dr. Altmiller, amongst other things, had certainly put the fear of the C in me in our very brief chats. I couldn't sleep. I would get up early in the morning and go over all my Chemistry notes remembering the most bizarre mistakes I had made on the exam.

Other grades rolled in. A in Biology, A in Biology Lab, A in Communications, B in Intro to Calculus (that made me mad. The median grade on the final was a 55 because the department head wrote the exam. And you can bet what was on the exam was not the content of the classes we'd been attending for 4 months). Chem Lab and Chem were the last grades to be posted, and finally they were up. Do I need to tell you how much courage it took to open that file? A in Chem Lab. I was searching for the C. It wasn't there. I checked the subjects again. There was chem...a B. I can tell you I have never been so deliriously happy to get a B in all my life and I hope I never will be again. In my complete and utter joy I finally did the one rational, logical, expected thing I had done the entire semester.

I had a total and complete sob fest. And 1/2 a box of kleenex and 20 minutes later I began to feel a little better about the whole thing. So I guess you could say I survived the first semester in college. Maybe not with flying colors, but with 4 A's, 2 B's and a 3.71 GPA. It is my hope that this will be my worst semester. I guess we'll all just have to wait and see.