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Dee agreed to help get me through my first year of
university and then after that I would be on my own. The
first step was to choose the discipline that I wanted to
study in. Then provide two other choices on the application
form in case I was not accepted for my first choice.
My heart had always belonged to psychology. It had been that
way since the first general psychology course that I had
taken way back in CEGEP. Obviously my first choice for a
discipline was psychology while my second would be
sociology. I was at a loss for a third choice and Dee
suggested history, as she said, "chances are your first or
second choice will be accepted anyway. The three choices
just assure that you have a foot in the door". Once you have
been accepted for a program by the university, you can
always switch over to psychology afterwards if that was not
the program you were enrolled in from the start".
As luck would have it, I was accepted for history. I had no
real interest in history but I had to bide my time until I
could transfer over to psychology.
The first year of university went rather well.
Dee just happens to be a historian, so I could not have
had a better mentor even if this mentor had been hand picked
by the university staff themselves.
Dee edited all my papers and she taught me how to write. I
was doing very well in my studies. Though my major was
history at that point, I had to follow the prerequisites for
psychology in order to qualify for the transfer the
following year.
One of the courses I had to take was math at the grade 9
level for it was the perquisite for statistics which was a
fundamental requirement of the psychology program. Of course
if I had passed the high school math I would not need to do
the grade 9 level math in university. But if you remember
from the very first part of this saga, I could not grasp
math. Poor Mr. Said, my grade 8 math teacher, would
constantly yell at me, "Carol, pay attention, Carol, I am
going to pull your ears".
I cannot begin to explain how terrified I was of taking the
math course. I could not add up columns without making a
mistake as I found from my experience in the insurance
company that I worked for. I could not write down a phone
number without making a mistake as I found out from the
experience I had obtained from plastic company I worked for.
Last but not least, I could not transpose figures from one
column to another without making an error as I found out
from the accounting course I had taken in secretarial
school. How was I ever going to pass this course?
Fortunately, Dee came to my rescue again. She also is
extremely good in math. Actually, Dee is gifted and is
extremely good at anything academic. So with
Dee's
help, a lot of hard work, and a strong desire to succeed, I
actually passed that math course.
It took many hours to go over my work to check for errors.
Once an error was found I had to determine if it was due to
my inability to understand the concepts, or simply
misunderstanding instructions from the professor. If either
was the case, Dee would try to explain the concepts to me so
that I could continue with the homework assignment. If the
errors turned out to be math errors where I miscalculated
something; I was left to figure out the problem myself. I
spent more time on my math assignments than I did with any
other of my subjects that year.
It paid off.
I succeeded and I passed grade 9 math with an A on the exam
to boot.
I was beside myself with joy.
I transferred to psychology the following year.
Dee no longer mentored me and I had to face the brutal
statistic courses all on my own.
My joy ride was over.
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May you be blessed today.
Bob Johnston
Editor / Publisher |
