I Hate Football Players 3 | 18+

Chapter 16: Ellie

College life was completely different from high school and how any stories or movies I'd come across portrayed it, but I loved every minute of my days at UW. Because of my shorter height, I always sat in the first or second row of my classrooms. Academic success was independently motivated and I took full advantage of my work ethic and desire to do well into my own hands... literally.

One aspect I hadn't expected prior to college was how I was forced to discover how I best learned. For me, that was 'tactile,' or hands-on learning. Very early my freshman year, even though I had my laptop, handwritten notes cemented the information better into my brain. I went one step further than status-quo level and focused not only on just what my professors wrote or provided for lecture notes but also whatever they said no matter how fast or messy my handwriting was.

I spaced each of my classes out at least an hour apart and between each one, rewrote and organized my jumbled class notes. That way, they were neater, more coherent, and the lecture information also more clearly cemented in my brain. Two weeks before a midterm or final, I typed up all my handwritten notes and threw away the paper copies.

Throughout each quarter, I also typed up all of my homework assignments so I had electronic copies. All of these efforts were very time-consuming but by the time I got to exams or term papers, I knew all the information I needed to complete them.

Another trick, that I taught Charlie, was we listened to only one song while we studied for a particular midterm or final, over and over. We then replayed that song in our heads during the exam for memory recall.

So, with almost all of my new textbooks purchased and notes folders lined with fresh paper, I geared myself up for class. After Logan and I found we shared Human Anatomy and he'd already bought the books, he offered to share them with me and I graciously accepted.

With my mental prep plan in the back of my mind, my stomach was full of excitement when I sat down in room 192 in PCar Hall for my eight am Elements of Statistical Methods lecture. Technically the brick and glass-enclosed building was called PACCAR Hall, but everyone at U-Dub called it PCar. The lecture room was lined with narrow tables split by an aisle between them. There were about fifty chairs total and the course title projected on a screen from a laptop.

While I waited for Dr. Pearce in my second row end table seat, other students gathered around me. I recognized no one but that was fine. After some shuffled movements on my right, a pair of tired brown eyes met mine and paused my eye scan. His athletic build slumped over in his seat like he preferred to have stayed in bed but he flashed me a slight smirk.

My cheeks warmed and I fixated my eyes down at the course description I'd printed out last night after Logan and I set up a makeshift study area on our dining room table. We both had laptops, fortunately, but them and a printer left little space for actually eating there.

Elements of good study design. Descriptive statistics including correlation and regression. Introductory concepts of probability and sampling; binomial and normal distributions. Basic concepts of hypothesis testing, estimation, and confidence intervals; t-tests and chi-square tests. Experience with computer software.

My eyes paused, reread that last sentence, and I inwardly groaned.

Programming? Great.

Programming was not my strength, in any shape or form. Suddenly, the course I'd assumed was going to be my easiest supplemental course now seemed like it wasn't and I hadn't even been to my other three classes yet.

Mentally I ran through my schedule when the last student stumbled in and got seated. I took earlier classes since I'd found I paid less attention in the afternoons. Labs were fine but I was nearly brain-dead during lectures. So I had structured my schedule for 8-9am Statistics, 10-11 Nutrition, and 12-1 Sports Medicine on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Human Anatomy was 9-10:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays.