Politerazzo: My Three Memorable Successes in Education

Have I mentioned balloons? There are balloons.

My original title for this post was "Trump Has Got to Go," which is still true, but I am not satisfied with my political writing, so let's try something else.

My College Education, The Big Picture

After dropping out of UC Berkeley, I graduated from Cal State Hayward at age 25. I graduated with honors, because the requirement for that designation was a grade point average over 3.25, which I managed with not much to spare.

Ten years later, I graduated with an MBA, also from CSUH. I had a 3.7 GPA, which was the result of two thirds A grades and one third A minuses, plus an F in a class which required me to write a thesis, which I never finished. The third story below was part of my way around that requirement. I did get an award one year for the best grades in the program.

On to three successful days, in chronological order.

The GMAT

I requested materials to sign up for the GMAT, but they allowed at least some people to sign up on the day of the test, so I decided to do that. I did not study or take a class. I got on BART and headed for the Berkeley campus, where the test was being given, and realized I had forgotten my materials telling which building was hosting the exam. No worries, I figured there would only be so many people on campus on a Saturday morning, and I could spot the activity. Sure enough, lots of people were headed for the science building, and that was the place. I stood in line waiting to sign up and chatted a bit with the guy in front of me and the young lady behind.

I had only brought cash ($80), and I heard the guy taking money at the front of the line say that they could not take cash. I asked the woman behind me, if they would not take my cash, could I give it to her, and could she write a check for me? And that is what happened. (No, it was not Jackie, I don't remember her name, and we never met again. It's not that kind of story.)

I scored in the 99th percentile on the test.

I guess all of these stories are about my being unprepared and somehow doing well. Hmm.

The 3x5 Card

One day at Hayward, I had an exam scheduled. Being stuck on campus, I showed up early, at a common room downstairs from class. A woman and man from the class were on the other side of the room, discussing what they were going to write on their 3x5 card. I had forgotten, for that test we could write whatever we wanted on a 3x5 card and use it during the test. I did not usually study for tests; if I went to class and did the assigned homework, I could pass the exam. Nevertheless, I found a card and started looking through the book that I had not read. In the chapters we were supposed to read, I found a type of problem that we never discussed in class. Nothing too elaborate, but not intuitive enough for me to solve during an exam. I made some notes, the only things I wrote on my card.

Sure enough, one of those problems popped up on the exam, and I had my card. When we got the tests back, the professor wrote some statistics on the board at the front. I think the average score on that test was 59%. The high score was 96%. When he handed back the tests, he gave me my 96 first and said, "Good paper." Then he turned around and said, "It can be done, folks."

The Graduation Test

As an alternative to the thesis I never wrote, I could graduate if I passed a comprehensive exam in addition to my required classes. I could take the test early, so I signed up to take it six months before my intended graduation, figuring I could do some studying if I did not pass it, then take it again. I was given access to previous tests, which as I recall were structured this way: one general question that everyone had to answer; three general questions, of which we had to answer one; and a number of course-specific questions, of which we had to answer two.

When I went through the previous exams, I could always drum up an answer to the one required question and one of the three other general questions. I was taking a class in financial asset evaluation, knew there would be a related question on the test, and figured I could answer it. However, I had taken most of my classes five years earlier, so finding one more question could be dicey. Still, on the previous exams, I could always find one more that I could at least fake my way through. Two questions were always hopeless: Quantitative Methods and Banking, especially since I had never taken a banking class, but the rest at least offered some hope.

I sat for the exam and looked first for the four questions I could answer. The general one, no problem. One of three others, also good. I could handle the financial asset question. And as I looked through the rest, I realized that I was going to get a zero on one question and probably have to take the test again. I could not even pretend to answer any of them. I looked them all over a few times, still not even starting the exam. There was no way.

Finally, in desperation, I looked at the Banking and Quant questions that I had not even considered yet. The Banking question was impossible, as expected. But the Quant question...I could hardly believe it. The Quant question, which had been way beyond my abilities on all of the previous exams, was so easy that I probably could have answered it in ten minutes when I was in the fifth grade. It was just filling in some missing numbers in a production/inventory grid, requiring a little arithmetic and no real business knowledge.

And so I passed. Don't know how good my score was, but good enough. And so I got my MBA.

There were plenty of failures, but those days were good ones.

They had a Valentine's Day balloon celebration planned, but it was too windy on Valentine's Day, so they did it today, February 15. Jackie counted 35 balloons in the sky at one point.