I am still haunted by some aspects of my college years -- yes, even 35 years later -- but maybe not by those things that might first come to mind.

 

I have occasional recurrent dreams (that border on nightmares) about going into exams completely unprepared. Weird, for sure, but so it is. There's no worse feeling than when you open up a test booklet and get that hard lump in your throat, thinking, "Oh, sh*t -- I'm screwed."

 

Ecology and Calculus for the Life Sciences were the two major culprits. My ecology class was scheduled for 5:00, across town, thus requiring a campus bus trip (I warned my daughters much later, when touring colleges, that if they saw a campus bus, keep on looking). The instructor was a monotonic bore. Factoring the 5:00, bus trip and bore together often convinced me to not bother. And I paid the price at exam time, even though I was able to BS my way through it.

 

There's no worse feeling than when you open up a test booklet and get that hard lump in your throat, thinking, "Oh, sh*t -- I'm screwed."

 

Calculus was just a whole 'nother animal, something I couldn't begin to make hide nor hair of. Derivatives, theorems, functions, thetas (the TA was Indian or Pakistani or something and pronounced theta as 'tayta') and the like left me totally, irreversibly confused. I hated it. Got a D first semester freshman year, flagged it completely second semester (which I had to take over in order to graduate). Of course I procrastinated until senior year to take it again, and got a D the second time. It completely sucked. In a nutshell. And no BS-ing through it.

 

The flipside of that type of helpless, dire experience are the situations in which you know the topic inside out and upside down. You have it down pat. You're confident, self-assured, relaxed, poised. Bring it on... because you're ready.

 

It could be an exam. Maybe it's a job interview, a presentation at a seminar, a pitch for new equipment at a board meeting. Or you might simply have to make a decision about a course of action when 'stuff' inevitably happens on the golf course. No panic, no cold sweat. A great feeling.

 

This type of situation generally comes about more often in one's later years' because you have gathered the experience and the street smarts by then.

 

As the years move on and life experience accumulates, I've found one also tends to better differentiate between those things you are cut out for and those you're not. This helps increase the probability of a confident, self-assured, enjoyable situation and diminish the potential for uneasiness, despair or discomfort.

 

Take playing golf, for instance. I didn't pick up a golf club until I was about 35, and never played more than six or eight times a year, always in business situations. So, I'd suffer through my 100 shots or so, but enjoy the company and the beauty of the course. At the end of the day it boiled down to four hours of embarrassment and frustration for me, mitigated by (very) few moments of glory. It simply wasn't fun.

 

I had always been a decent athlete, and a fair hockey player through college. Hockey players typically make an easy transition to golf, but not for me. So, after about 15 years of pretending to be a golfer, I just said the hell with it, parked my clubs and extracted myself from my misery.

 

I had always wanted to be a musician as well. I tried my hand at guitar, bass, drums and piano and never got very far. I discovered I didn't understand music theory. I wasn't cut out for it. It was like forcing the proverbial square peg into the round hole. But once I realized that and accepted it, I was OK with it. No more regrets or disappointment.

 

Side B of discovering the things you can't do well or aren't good at is finding those things that you ARE.

 

Side B of discovering the things you can't do well or aren't good at is finding those things that you ARE. I am a good writer (it's hereditary). I have a knack for computers (definitely not hereditary) and rise to the challenge of learning new things'as long as they don't have derivatives or theorems attached. And I'm a good cook, partly because I understand ingredients, flavors, acids/bases, sweets/sours.

 

There's no forcing the stuff you come naturally to. Realizing which is which and making the adjustments is the challenge. And that, per Robert Frost, can make all the difference.

 

PLM

 

(originally published in the May 2011 issue of TurfNet Monthly... and that makes it 38 years since college, now)