{"id":2549,"date":"2024-05-30T11:17:25","date_gmt":"2024-05-30T18:17:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lewczyk.net\/tomswritings\/?p=2549"},"modified":"2024-06-25T17:31:12","modified_gmt":"2024-06-26T00:31:12","slug":"college-class-load","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lewczyk.net\/tomswritings\/?p=2549","title":{"rendered":"College Class Load"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Family History<\/strong>
My parents didn\u2019t go to college. I\u2019m one of six siblings, and some of my older siblings went to college (some didn\u2019t finish) and some others didn\u2019t even go to college. My sister (four years older than me) got a nursing degree, and my next older brother got an engineering degree \u2014 which generally inspired me to do the same. My dad made OK money, but my parents didn\u2019t have enough to fund my schooling \u2014 so I took out loans, graduated, got a job, and eventually paid my loans off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

School Choice<\/strong>
I studied electrical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. I have a math head and a problem-solving engineering head \u2014 so I could have focused on math (probably wouldn\u2019t have gotten me a good job) or mechanical engineering (my mind thought I already had enough mechanical engineering skills) \u2014 so I instead went with electrical engineering. University of Illinois was a public university in the state that my family just moved to \u2014 and so, was generally affordable (because it was public) \u2014 but I didn\u2019t fully appreciate that it also had a good reputation for producing solid engineers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Class Load Limitations<\/strong>
To ensure that engineering students took the right classes to feed their engineering degrees, the school was very specific about what classes those students should\/shouldn\u2019t take. The required classes were all science, engineering, math, software programming, etc \u2014 and there was no option to take classes for language, history, sports, etc UNLESS you took a larger class load, and squeezed these extra classes in. Doofus me did exactly that. 😐<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Dumb Was I?<\/strong>
If I were sensible, I would have taken the recommended class load, learned what was needed to become an engineer, and moved on \u2014 but apparently I\u2019m not sensible. I took a large class load each semester, often needing approval from the dean to allow me to take that many classes. I probably took 40% more classes than I needed to \u2014 including language classes, random things (like bowling), high-level math classes, etc. I even took additional classes outside the college \u2014 like American Sign Language, and Esperanto. A good indication of how \u2018dumb\u2019 I really was, is \u2014 at the end of four years, I was missing one class needed to get my degree \u2014 so I had to attend one additional semester (which allowed me to take even more classes 🫤).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graduation Timing<\/strong>
Because I finished mid-school-year, I didn\u2019t benefit from the university process to help students land jobs at the end of the school year. (Granted, this process was a little bit thinner decades ago.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Job Applications<\/strong>
When I graduated, I went back to live with my parents, and my mom helped me submit written\/paper applications to various companies. I still have a notebook listing 100+ companies that I applied to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One company I applied to was a location in Minnesota (same company my dad worked for in West Virginia and Illinois), and that same company reached out to me from a different location (San Jose, California). I did an on-site interview in San Jose, and got a job offer which I accepted. Seems crazy that I could have ended up in Minnesota and had a very different life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GPA<\/strong>
One overlay is that my university used a five-point scale for GPA\u2019s \u2014 which means straight A\u2019s would get you a 5.0 GPA. I took too many classes in school and ended up with a GPA below (but close to) a B. (Most schools use 4.0 for A\u2019s \u2014 so my B-ish GPA may have looked like an A-ish GPA.) I may be overthinking it, but I suspect that the company that hired me may have thought my GPA was better than it really was. I\u2019m a tech-smart guy and a solid worker, so the company wasn\u2019t disappointed with me when I worked for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall<\/strong>
In summary: I took way too many classes in college (plus extra external classes), didn\u2019t graduate on time, had an impacted GPA \u2014 but ended up with a good initial job that fed my successful multi-decade tech career \u2014 and got me to California where I met and married an amazing woman who has made my life wonderful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Family HistoryMy parents didn\u2019t go to college. I\u2019m one of six siblings, and some of my older siblings went to college (some didn\u2019t finish) and some others didn\u2019t even go to college. My sister (four years older than me) got a nursing degree, and my next older brother got an engineering degree \u2014 which generally … <\/p>\n

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