I was midway through my college experience. I didn't live on campus (I lived in town). I had few friends who were in college with me (most of my friends were co-workers, from church or from high school). And then there was Mrs. Brad (who wasn't yet Mrs. Brad).
I was on my own to pick classes. I was a journalism major, but unfortunately, I was required to take other classes. I liked history. I tolerated psychology. I enjoyed radio.
We were required to take multiple science classes. I was terrible at science. It made no sense to me. In high school, I survived because it was a general class and I could memorize well enough to regurgitate facts for a test (while not understanding the subject).
It turned out that strategy didn't help in college. I registered for botany.
Confession: I had no idea what botany was and in the pre-internet age, the only way to find out would be to look it up in a dictionary or encyclopedia. Or ask someone who knew. I didn't do either: I needed a science class and the botany class fit my schedule. How hard could it be?
Very hard, it turns out.
I walked into the first day of class and got a sense of impending doom. I attended Humboldt State University (now Cal Poly Humboldt!), which had a large forestry program. Most of my fellow students were wearing flannel shorts, boots and had beards. And that was just the women (rimshot)!
Botany is the study of plants, it turns out. The class I was taking was a general education science class, but it was also required for those forestry majors who loved science and plants and flannel and beards.
I'd figure it out, I thought.
The botany class was three days a week at 8 a.m., which was a terrible time for someone who worked until midnight several days a week at a pizza parlor. Each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I'd get to class, sit in a massive lecture hall with 100 other students and the teacher would turn off the lights to show slides. The next moment, the lights came back on, it was 9 a.m. and I'd slept through class. Oh no.
The worse part? There was a lab requirement of two three-hour sessions a week, which seemed impossible. I didn't know what to do, other than to use a microscope to shatter a dozen cover slides (slide covers? Who knows?) per session. I couldn't figure out how to make the microscope work, while my fellow students were talking about chlorophyll and cell walls and nuclei. While wearing flannel shirts and stroking their manly beards.
The most memorable part of the class may have been the persistent gag by Paul, of my co-workers at the pizza parlor. He would occasionally ask me what class was giving me problems. When I'd say, "botany," he'd say, "not lately."
It was dumb, but the fact that it was the highlight shows how terrible the class was.
By the midway point of the quarter, I was failing miserably. My average was in the mid-30s and the lowest D required a score in the 60s, so I went to visit the professor. I could talk my way through this. I was trying! It wasn't my fault! I went to high school with his daughter! (I hoped the last point was the tiebreaker.)
He listened to me, then said there was a great way to ensure I passed the class: Get my score up to a 60 for a D-minus.
For me to raise my average to that point, I'd need to average an 85 or something the rest of the quarter. How was that going to happen?
I thought I could dig my way out. I'd pay attention in class. I'd solve the broken cover slide problem. I'd understand what chlorophyll was and maybe even wear flannel. Well, not that extreme, but maybe I'd figure it out.
The rest of the quarter was . . . more of the same. I went to class, fell asleep and woke up an hour later. I went to the lab hours and continued to shatter cover slides. I took tests and failed miserably.
I failed the class badly. I wasted an entire quarter by getting up early three days a week. I spent six hours a week learning to hate microscopes. I realized that people with beards and flannel shirts are smarter than me.
The most important lesson? Don't sign up for something you don't understand.
Ultimately, I compiled my science units by taking what were still casually called "bonehead" classes, those intended for students like me, rather than the whiskered, flannel-wearers.
The final class? Biology, taught by a professor who acknowledged that most of us were there for the credits, so he tried to make it interesting to us. And I had a friend who went to college and took the class with me: Mrs. Brad. We were engaged by that time and it was our last quarter of college. A biology class seemed perfect. We both passed.
Decades later, my main memories of college science, though, are of being tired and breaking cover slides.
Botany? Not lately.
Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.
