How Joy Can Quickly Overturn Disappointment

The Spring 2012 semester has ended, and my results were smack on par with what I suspected going into finals week.

I wound up with a B in both Introductory Chemistry and its companion lab. That was the sole disappointment in what had otherwise been a wildly successful return to college studies after more than 20 years.

Someone reading this post might think, “How can you be disappointed to get a B in Chemistry?” It isn’t the final course grade that was a downer as much as the knowledge that I went into the final exam still with a shot at an A in the course. I needed an A on the final to achieve that, and I fell short by a good 10 points. That, and the limited preparation time I had because of work commitments, was the disappointing factor.

Still, it’s funny how an unexpected and pleasant surprise less than 24 hours later can lift your spirits. In my case, the surprise came in the form of an e-mail from the University of Texas at Tyler’s Financial Aid Office. I had earned a scholarship for next year, which turned out to be a Sam R. Greer Presidential Scholarship for $2,500.

That will put a nice-sized dent in my registration and class fees for my final year of undergraduate studies, but I’ll confess that is not the aspect of the award that really puts a smile on my face. No, the thing that puts a little smugness in my step is the notion that this type of scholarship is what you expect to be awarded to an 18-year-old just graduating high school – not a guy who has a son older than that.

I have a handful of detractors around who think I’m little more than a washed-up, insignificant newspaper hack, some old man who thinks he’s still hotter than habaneros.

Well, this “washed-up old man” just ended nine months with his name on a four-year university’s presidential honor roll (4.0 for at least 12 hours), a 3.69 for a murderously difficult 13 hours this semester, a 3.84 GPA for the year, straight As in a foreign language, an A in a higher mathematics course, wrote, produced and hosted a 10-minute TV show that scored another A, and was top student in a literary analysis writing course where 90 percent of my classmates were half my age or younger, earned a major scholarship for next year, and is now a member of two national collegiate honor societies….all while holding down a 40-hour-per-week reporting job and commuting nearly an hour just to get to classes.

Dear critics and haters of Terry L. Britt: What have you done lately?

Excuse for an Absence

I haven’t posted on this blog for several months. There is a good reason for that.

Since my triumphant debut at the University of Texas at Tyler — a fall semester that ended with a 4.0 for 12 hours and my name on the Presidential Honor Roll — I went into the Spring 2012 semester with a sense of confidence and ambition that I could continue to carry a full-time job as a newspaper reporter and still produce top-notch work in all of my classes.

It hasn’t quite worked out that way, although I haven’t fallen off significantly. Still, if last semester was like a 3,200-meter run at a track meet, this semester has felt like a survival run on a twisted ankle. Truth be told, I’m surprised I’m doing as well as I am at this point.

Part of the difficulty may be in the difference between 12 hours of lower division courses and 13 hours that include two upper division courses. The work requirements are obviously tougher in 3000-level and 4000-level courses and require more time, which is the one thing I haven’t got.

In addition, unlike last semester, I was not able to get all of my courses on a three-day-per-week schedule. The commute hours, not to mention the increasingly painful cost at the gas pump, have simply worn me down physically and mentally.

Toss in the fact that I am still expected to put in 40 hours on the clock at my job and produce articles and photos substantiating that amount of time, and you can easily see why things like maintaining a blog have gone by the wayside.

Unfortunately, things like exercise and proper rest have been relegated to said wayside as well and the unwanted result is that I’ve put on extra weight I worked so hard last year to eliminate.

As I hit the last week and a half before finals, I’m left hoping to get something great to show for my struggles.

There is no doubt I will earn an A in Intermediate Spanish and it looks as though the same will be the case in my Writing Textual Analysis course, the English course that serves as a gateway to the 4000-level literature courses I will have to complete next year. I am clinging to an A at the moment in Multimedia Production and the final result will be largely dependent on the show production work we are doing this week and next.

Introductory Chemistry — a course I am taking only because prior science course credits did not match offerings for core courses here — has been the big challenge thus far. Still, for a guy who hasn’t set foot in a lab in more than 25 years, to carry a solid B into the final unit test and the comprehensive final exam is not a bad showing. I still have a shot at finishing with an A if I do very well on the final exam and the likelihood of a significant curve given on final course grades becomes reality. It was the same situation for the lab portion of the course. As of this post, I was still waiting to learn my score on the second exam but was sitting at about an 89 going into it.

If I do somehow manage another 4.0 for the semester, it will have been a greater personal accomplishment than that of the fall semester. Then, maybe I can turn my attention over the summer to getting the weight off again and enjoying a full eight hours of sleep each night.