As many people are wont to do in their mid-40s, I have turned nostalgic. I have always had this streak, but the good times of college have really flooded back recently. A friend recently told me on Facebook that I needed to catalog all the stories from those days. So here I go. This will be an occasional series which may make you laugh, will surely make you question my judgment and could make you wistful for your version of the good old days.

I have had a bear of a time recently at work. They offered a couple of professional development classes I wanted, but both got cancelled. As I wept over the lost opportunity to sleep in – I come in normally at 7, but these classes don’t start until 9 – I also thought back to a weird situation during my senior year of college. Allegheny College had a requirement which (I think) was called 10-6-3. The final number is important because we had to take at least three classes in each of the major divisions – humanities, social sciences and sciences.

As an English major, that means I had four years to take three classes in the sciences, my least favorite area. I knocked two of them out my freshman year, relying on my brother to help me in computer science and managing to put two years of high school calculus to use in “Calculus for Non-Majors.” For the next two years, I did what I do best.

I procrastinated. I didn’t take one class to satisfy this requirement as a sophomore or junior. I had too much fun exploring my major and finding classes in other areas where I could rely on my writing rather than taking tests. So when I had to pick classes for my final year, I realized I had to buckle down and get this out of the way. When the schedule came out for the first trimester – we had three 10-week trimesters back then instead of semesters – I saw the perfect class: Sexual Reproduction. Some friends and I managed to stop giggling long enough to register.

However, we got a rude awakening when we returned to school in the fall. As I remember, the instructor was a part-time teacher who left over the summer because her husband was transferred. Or something like that. Either way, I had to find a new class. I inquired about the cake course to end all cake courses in the sciences Economic Botany, but that was not being offered for some reason. I vaguely remember low enrollment or an instructor conflict, but don’t recall the specifics.

All I know is that I could not find a science class for first term and needed to push it to the second trimester. I don’t recall the name of the class – General Biology sounds right – but the catalog made it sound like it would cater to those just looking to fulfill a requirement. Boy, was I wrong.

The goofy instructor made things as entertaining as he could, but that didn’t change the fact that I had gotten in way over my head. This trimester also included the final stages of my senior thesis, my final season as a wrestler plus my responsibilities as sports editor of the campus paper. I didn’t have time for a class that had way too much work for a non-science major.

Luckily, we had a bunch of us in the same boat, and a friend who was a science major (and enrolled for an “easy” class away from her concentration) did her best to tutor us. I had taken the class pass/fail so I really just needed to squeak by.

That didn’t happen. Technically, I did pass, but at Allegheny, if you took a class pass/fail, you gave up the right for a D to count as a passing grade. I had a solid D, something I never told my parents. I went to the teacher to throw myself on his mercy, but he didn’t want to hear it. In fact, as I walked into his office, he said, “I’m not changing your grade.” Crestfallen, I almost walked out, but he offered me a compromise. If I gave up the pass/fail option, I could take the D, pass the class and graduate. Since I had pretty much no chance of adding a science class I could pass for the final trimester, I had to accept. I could figure out how to deal with my parents on this later.

The deal had one catch, however. The provost of the college needed to approve it. At the time, I was writing very unflattering things about the administration’s decision to discontinue the wrestling program after my senior year, so I really didn’t want to go to them and beg for mercy. But I had to. Because of that, I really needed approval more than ever since the wait would put me well beyond the time I could add a class.

I hated that meeting at the time, but got the sense Provost Andrew Ford actually liked how I stood up for myself in the wrestling thing. We talked about the grade, he said he’d get back to me and, a week or so later, I got a letter confirming I had the best D I could ever imagine. The grades had come to my PO box at school over spring break, so I fudged the truth to my parents and never told them the truth of what happened.

I’m not proud of the whole thing, but learned a lot from the process. It didn’t cure me of my procrastination, but I learned a lot about planning ahead. I learned how to deal maturely with people who had the power in a situation. I also learned that I really, really hated biology.