Never Give Up (by Casey)

After I graduated High School, I decided to go to college at the University of Southern Maine.  Ultimately, my decided major was Electrical Engineering.  College was HARD, but I eventually hit my stride and I was getting A’s and B’s in my Electrical Engineering classes (and not doing TOO bad in my other classes after Freshman Year).

But Junior year was easily the worst year.  When you are an Electrical Engineering major, Junior year means two semesters of Electronics, appropriately (if not creatively) named “Electronics I” and “Electronics II”.

The Electrical Engineering Department was small; there was less than fifteen of us in my class.  The next class up only had about five students, and several of us befriended them during our Sophmore (their Junior) year.  That was their year to take Electronics.  Their class was first thing in the morning for a couple of hours, two days a week, followed by a lab that was “two hours” long.  I put that in quotes, because the reality was that the labs were so difficult and complicated that they would be there most of the day completing their work.  That’s probably one reason we befriended them despite not sharing classes; they were around the lab a lot.

For our Junior year, a change was made.  Our class was two hours, two days a week, but didn’t start until four in the afternoon.  So after a day of other classes we had to absorb this monster, and then try to do the labs in an evening.

I’m not intending to sound whiny, but trying to paint a picture of just how difficult this class was.  I think every major probably has one class that falls into the “monster” category, and this was ours.  I didn’t have the best time with it, but I put in the work with my lab group and studied for tests both alone and with the various study groups that formed within our class.

Around the beginning of December, towards the end of “Electronics I”, we each had progress meetings with the professor to see how we were doing.  I knew I wasn’t excelling, but I felt like I was doing ok, probably in the “B” range, B- at the worst.

Turns out I was getting a C-.  In college, at least at USM, when you are getting less than a C or C+ (I forget which one) in a class that is in the same department as your major, it is considered failing.  Due to being a class in a small department at a small college, this class was only offered in the fall, so it would be a whole year before I could catch up.  Not to mention that all of the other classes required a passing grade in this one.  So if I failed, I was basically stuck for a year.  Well, I could take some of the non-electrical engineering classes, but I was still looking at graduating a year later than planned.
So the question became, could I actually pass?  There was only a couple of weeks left until finals.  The final was pretty much the only thing left.  I told one of my lab partners/friends that I was probably just going to stop going to class.  Why bother?  I hated this class.  Besides being difficult, I didn’t find the material terribly interesting.  The professor was from Turkey and had kind of a weird, mumbly accent that made his lectures tough for me to follow.

Well, I cooled off, and decided that I couldn’t just quit.  There was only two weeks left anyway, and I still had the final.  Would it be enough?

I studied my butt off for this thing.  Alone and with my classmates, like I had with the others.  But A LOT more than usual on my own.  I really started to understand it better, and realized how lost I had been regarding certain parts of the material.

So finals came and went.  I’m guessing test scores are posted on the internet nowadays, but back then there was an automated phone line you called to get your grade.  Turns out that I blew the final out of the water (even getting some bonus points), which turned my grade into a B+!!  I couldn’t believe it!
So I wasn’t held up.  I went on to take Electronics II in January, and passed that, too (though my grade wasn’t quite as high).
My wish for you is that you never give up, no matter how hopeless a situation looks.  You never know what you can pull off.