There are two things you need to know for this story. 1.) Entering my final semester of college I had a 4.0 and was on track to be valedictorian of my graduating class. 2.) I was able to achieve these grades through a mix of dedication and caffeine.
When I started college I hated coffee. We had a coffee shop on campus. I liked hanging out there with my friends, but I would only partake in hot cocoa. After a few months I branched out to vanilla chai. I was constantly exhausted, however, and I decided that I was going to MAKE myself like coffee beverages. I didn't know anything about any coffee drinks, however, so on my first conference trip during my second year of college, I decided to branch out and try several drinks. Anyone who has attended a conference knows that lots of drinking goes on. I, however, went to a Christian university with a no alcohol rule, so while the other attendees went to the scientist mixers, I hung out with one professor and two schoolmates who were coffeeaddicts connoisseurs. I dove in first trying a carmel machiato (not a great choice for someone who didn't like the taste of coffee), and finally settled on lattes and mochas. I also discovered the frappe, a seemingly magical blend of coffee and milkshake like dessert.
By the first semester of my junior year, I was taking the most challenging course load of my college career. I also knew that at the end of that school year, I would have to take the MCAT, the standardized test that determines where you can realistically be accepted to medical school. I increased my caffeine intake accordingly. I also realized that if I kept on buying lattes I would run out of money in my account quickly. However, coffee was only $1.00! And, if I used my own cup or reused my paper cup it was only $0.50!!! Plus, I figured, if I added enough cream and sugar it would almost be like drinking a latte. Because my study schedule was so demanding (and I also chose that year to be in leadership positions in 3 student organizations), I started to drink my coffee black. You may be thinking, "That action does not logically follow." You would be wrong. There was always a line to add cream and sugar to coffee. By foregoing these extravagances I was able to shave about a minute off of my time in line each time I filled up my cup. This was usually 5 or 6 times a day. You do the math.
Senior year of college, I had taken the MCAT and my courses had eased up slightly, but I was in the midst of applying to medical school. I also got somewhat obsessed with learning to bake that year, and would sometimes blow off some of the steam of studying and applying to schools by baking cheesecakes (junior year I struggled to make cookies from a prepackaged tube of dough, so if you have ever enjoyed one of my cheesecakes you can thank senior year and the baking guidance of one of my professors). This meant that I needed to continue with little sleep and excessive caffeine. I would generally sleep 4.5 to 5 hours each night. That same year, a convenience store opened on campus. How is this significant? They sold no-doz. Not only did they sell no-doz, but I could use my meal plan points to purchase the no-doz. I figued out that it only cost 3 points to buy no-doz. This would be equivalent to 3-6 cups of coffee. Each no-doz pill contained as much caffeine as a cup of coffee. There were more than 6 pills in each bottle. Thus, no-doz was a better deal. Plus, I didn't have to pee nearly as much. Growing up with Zack, Kelly, Screech, Lisa, Slater and Jessie, I knew that no-doz was no joke ("I'm so, I'm so...scared.") So I made sure that I was consuming no more caffeine than I had previously from coffee alone. This level of caffeine and sleep often led to headaches. My friend Jeremy would sometimes make me a "cocktail" of ibuprofen and no-doz (both were necessary to get rid of headaches). The biggest coffee mistake that I made was the night that I had a caffeine headache from consuming too much caffeine. I decided to try to knock my headache out with an excedrine. Anyone who has read the label of excedrine knows why that was a bad idea.
As you can tell, I often overcommitted, expected too much of myself, and was not dedicated to healthy living. But this combination led to me entering my final semester of college with a 4.0 (which I believe is the reason that I got into the MD/PhD program at OSU...they were applying for a grant and were looking for people to bring up their average GPA and MCAT scores; I met Keith in the MD/PhD program at OSU, so I believe that my marriage and now our child stem from my caffeine intake in college). I felt quite a bit of pressure to keep this GPA. One of my med school interviewers said, "You'd better not screw that up." Yeah. Encouraging. Right? I wasn't super worried. I was taking one science class pass/fail and then some gen eds. I had put off taking my literature courses until the very end, so my final semester I took world literature and C.S. Lewis.
And this brings us to that ill-fated final: C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis class was taught by a woman named Marge Elder. Yes, she is as old as her name sounds. I believe she started teaching at the university right after WWII. I'm not joking. She really did. 1946. You can look it up. She was a sweet little old lady who invited me over to her retirement village to look at her book collection and eat cookies one time. And this class was a cakewalk. All you had to do was read a bunch of C.S. Lewis books (an author whose writing I enjoyed), discuss the books in class, and write a couple of short papers (2 pages or less). All you had to do for the final was show up and read the 1 page final paper that you wrote. I had already gotten A's in all of my other classes, so I wasn't sweating my C.S. Lewis final. All I had to do was show up and read a paper I had already written. Piece of cake. In hindsight, I made a poor choice in staying up late to pack up my dorm room (yes, I still lived in a dorm my last year of college). I also did not supplement with caffeine. I ended up going to bed in the middle of the night thinking, "All I have to do is read 1 page out loud tomorrow and I'm home free!" Imagine my surprise when I awoke the next morning with my friend Brittany's face inches from mine. Brit took C.S. Lewis class with me. She said, "Why weren't you in class? You missed the final! Dr. Elder wanted to know where you were." Instead of exchanging pleasantries, I threw on whatever non-matching clothes were strewn across my floor and ran across campus in the rain to Dr. Elder's office. I apologized a thousand times for missing the final. But how do you make up a final that was solely based on listening to other people read their 1-page papers and then discussing what they wrote? Thankfully, I had worked hard (meaning I participated in class discussions the entire semester and was a nice girl who was willing to visit an old woman in her retirement village for cookies and old books), and I explained to her that I had a 4.0 and that if she failed me for this final I would no longer have a 4.0, and that would be a great shame since I was set to graduate as one of the valedictorians in just a couple of days. I then came up with a plan. No, I couldn't participate in a class discussion. But would it be okay if I read her my paper and then sat in her office and read every one of my classmates' papers? She said yes. So I slept through my last final, but she gave me an A anyway. I was able to have my cake and eat it too (sorry about that. I had already used 2 references to cake in this paragraph and felt the need to round it out with a third). This post is dedicated to you, Dr. Elder. Thank you for having grace on me for my last final of college.
When I started college I hated coffee. We had a coffee shop on campus. I liked hanging out there with my friends, but I would only partake in hot cocoa. After a few months I branched out to vanilla chai. I was constantly exhausted, however, and I decided that I was going to MAKE myself like coffee beverages. I didn't know anything about any coffee drinks, however, so on my first conference trip during my second year of college, I decided to branch out and try several drinks. Anyone who has attended a conference knows that lots of drinking goes on. I, however, went to a Christian university with a no alcohol rule, so while the other attendees went to the scientist mixers, I hung out with one professor and two schoolmates who were coffee
By the first semester of my junior year, I was taking the most challenging course load of my college career. I also knew that at the end of that school year, I would have to take the MCAT, the standardized test that determines where you can realistically be accepted to medical school. I increased my caffeine intake accordingly. I also realized that if I kept on buying lattes I would run out of money in my account quickly. However, coffee was only $1.00! And, if I used my own cup or reused my paper cup it was only $0.50!!! Plus, I figured, if I added enough cream and sugar it would almost be like drinking a latte. Because my study schedule was so demanding (and I also chose that year to be in leadership positions in 3 student organizations), I started to drink my coffee black. You may be thinking, "That action does not logically follow." You would be wrong. There was always a line to add cream and sugar to coffee. By foregoing these extravagances I was able to shave about a minute off of my time in line each time I filled up my cup. This was usually 5 or 6 times a day. You do the math.
Senior year of college, I had taken the MCAT and my courses had eased up slightly, but I was in the midst of applying to medical school. I also got somewhat obsessed with learning to bake that year, and would sometimes blow off some of the steam of studying and applying to schools by baking cheesecakes (junior year I struggled to make cookies from a prepackaged tube of dough, so if you have ever enjoyed one of my cheesecakes you can thank senior year and the baking guidance of one of my professors). This meant that I needed to continue with little sleep and excessive caffeine. I would generally sleep 4.5 to 5 hours each night. That same year, a convenience store opened on campus. How is this significant? They sold no-doz. Not only did they sell no-doz, but I could use my meal plan points to purchase the no-doz. I figued out that it only cost 3 points to buy no-doz. This would be equivalent to 3-6 cups of coffee. Each no-doz pill contained as much caffeine as a cup of coffee. There were more than 6 pills in each bottle. Thus, no-doz was a better deal. Plus, I didn't have to pee nearly as much. Growing up with Zack, Kelly, Screech, Lisa, Slater and Jessie, I knew that no-doz was no joke ("I'm so, I'm so...scared.") So I made sure that I was consuming no more caffeine than I had previously from coffee alone. This level of caffeine and sleep often led to headaches. My friend Jeremy would sometimes make me a "cocktail" of ibuprofen and no-doz (both were necessary to get rid of headaches). The biggest coffee mistake that I made was the night that I had a caffeine headache from consuming too much caffeine. I decided to try to knock my headache out with an excedrine. Anyone who has read the label of excedrine knows why that was a bad idea.
As you can tell, I often overcommitted, expected too much of myself, and was not dedicated to healthy living. But this combination led to me entering my final semester of college with a 4.0 (which I believe is the reason that I got into the MD/PhD program at OSU...they were applying for a grant and were looking for people to bring up their average GPA and MCAT scores; I met Keith in the MD/PhD program at OSU, so I believe that my marriage and now our child stem from my caffeine intake in college). I felt quite a bit of pressure to keep this GPA. One of my med school interviewers said, "You'd better not screw that up." Yeah. Encouraging. Right? I wasn't super worried. I was taking one science class pass/fail and then some gen eds. I had put off taking my literature courses until the very end, so my final semester I took world literature and C.S. Lewis.
And this brings us to that ill-fated final: C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis class was taught by a woman named Marge Elder. Yes, she is as old as her name sounds. I believe she started teaching at the university right after WWII. I'm not joking. She really did. 1946. You can look it up. She was a sweet little old lady who invited me over to her retirement village to look at her book collection and eat cookies one time. And this class was a cakewalk. All you had to do was read a bunch of C.S. Lewis books (an author whose writing I enjoyed), discuss the books in class, and write a couple of short papers (2 pages or less). All you had to do for the final was show up and read the 1 page final paper that you wrote. I had already gotten A's in all of my other classes, so I wasn't sweating my C.S. Lewis final. All I had to do was show up and read a paper I had already written. Piece of cake. In hindsight, I made a poor choice in staying up late to pack up my dorm room (yes, I still lived in a dorm my last year of college). I also did not supplement with caffeine. I ended up going to bed in the middle of the night thinking, "All I have to do is read 1 page out loud tomorrow and I'm home free!" Imagine my surprise when I awoke the next morning with my friend Brittany's face inches from mine. Brit took C.S. Lewis class with me. She said, "Why weren't you in class? You missed the final! Dr. Elder wanted to know where you were." Instead of exchanging pleasantries, I threw on whatever non-matching clothes were strewn across my floor and ran across campus in the rain to Dr. Elder's office. I apologized a thousand times for missing the final. But how do you make up a final that was solely based on listening to other people read their 1-page papers and then discussing what they wrote? Thankfully, I had worked hard (meaning I participated in class discussions the entire semester and was a nice girl who was willing to visit an old woman in her retirement village for cookies and old books), and I explained to her that I had a 4.0 and that if she failed me for this final I would no longer have a 4.0, and that would be a great shame since I was set to graduate as one of the valedictorians in just a couple of days. I then came up with a plan. No, I couldn't participate in a class discussion. But would it be okay if I read her my paper and then sat in her office and read every one of my classmates' papers? She said yes. So I slept through my last final, but she gave me an A anyway. I was able to have my cake and eat it too (sorry about that. I had already used 2 references to cake in this paragraph and felt the need to round it out with a third). This post is dedicated to you, Dr. Elder. Thank you for having grace on me for my last final of college.
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