Grandpa graduated from Yale in 1961 with his electrical engineering degree. However, not a single person on campus would have guessed that would have happened when he came in freshman year. Because at Hopkins he graduated top of his class, and he was an extreme baseball player, Yale gave him and his best friend Dick Massey a full scholarship. Nowadays it is almost unheard of to get a full ride through Yale. Unfortunately freshman year Grandpa took advantage of his exemptions and had to scramble to stay in Yale.
During freshman year, just like freshman year at Hopkins, he didn’t pay much attention to his schoolwork. Grandpa was exempt from most freshman classes and was taking hard sophomore classes. He was learning to have fun, staying up late, partying, drinking, and doing other activities with his buddy’s; working was not a priority at the time. When he would get an assignment, he would have to put it off because he didn’t have time to do it with his busy baseball schedule and his having fun all year. He barely scraped by in the first semester, and in the second semester the falling behind in his work really caught up with him. I have never had the experience of almost being thrown out of a school because I was failing, however I have had the feeling of scrambling to get work done so I don’t fail an assignment. On numerous occasions I have done this, I don’t know why I didn’t learn my lesson the first time. To stay at Yale, Grandpa had to work all summer and take a retest in chemistry and English. By doing this and succeeding at it, he was able to cling on to his scholarship spot at Yale. That fall he had to pick his major for college; he shocked everyone in the Dean’s office when he chose electrical engineering, because nobody thought he would be able to do it. What was this kid that had almost flunked out last year doing taking the hardest class that Yale had to offer? |
Dominating at it. He really clamped down and was able to push his way through Yale, all with his best friend Dick Massey by his side. However, the problem with taking electrical engineering was this; he was the only kid at Yale that took engineering as his major and played a varsity sport. Even Dick didn’t take engineering. This made the burden of Yale even harder for him. He had to miss baseball games and practices because he had labs to do, and when he skipped out on a lab and got a zero, doing this really demolished his grade. He told me with emphasis “don’t do that,” that it was idiotic for him to skip and get zeros as a result.
|
http://www.yale61.org/sites/YALE61/folders/images/headerright.jpg