December 15

December 15 – a date which will live in infamy. Or was that December 7, the day Tojo and Yamomoto thought it would be a good idea to mess with the ol’ red, white, and blue? In December of 2008, these dates were interchangeable in my mind.

For all of high school, I was spoon fed the belief that senior year would be a relaxing cake walk, a warm up for all the fun I would inevitably have in whatever college whose presence I would grace it with. Little did I know that Fall ’08 was one of the most stressful periods of my life. School got no easier, college applications began to pile up, and our football team went 1-8. So much for constant partying and 24/7 shenanigans (Editors Note: I still partied, much to detrimant of my diffential equations grade. Can anyone say 45 on my final exam?)

So what exactly does December 15 have to do with all of this? December 15 was the day that I was to find out about my Plan II application. There were many reasons for why this was such a stressful day. For one, I loved UT and saw Plan II as the perfect extension of my prep school education. Small classes in a giant school, complete with a national championship caliber football squad? I began salivating in August. But, as afraid as I was to admit it at the time, the main reason I was sweating bullets was the fact that I had only applied to one school…The University of Texas At Austin. And time was running out fast. My college adviser and my parents believed that I was on top of the application game. Unfortunately, I was so unwilling to even look at other schools that I never even bothered to start any other application. Lucky for me, on that fateful December 15^th afternoon…a large brown envelope secured my destiny.

To put it very, very lightly, I would have been screwed had it not been for Plan II. Is this the sign of an irresponsible high student, or the sign of a well intentioned young scholar confident in his path in life? I would like to argue the latter. As many people may not believe, I DO care about other things besides turtles, video games, and football. Learning is one of my many passions, and I truly believe that “the constitution of the human mind, that any kind of knowledge, if it be really such, is its own reward. (Course Anthology 166)” I have spent many a weeknight, nay, many a weekend perusing the galleries of wikipedia. Is wikipedia the most enlightening source of knowledge? No, but it sure is damn interesting. Challenge me at a World War II knowledge contest. I dare you.

I am not very grateful of fortune at ending up at Plan II. I honestly could not see myself being happy in other field. With someone with as varied interests as me, there was no way that at the tender age of 18 I could pinpoint what I wanted to spend four of the most important years of my life doing. I enjoy the more envolved nature of many of my Plan II classes. I never get bored in class, “because both sides of the brain and many intelligences are engaged, active involvement results in processing of information deeper than mere memorization. (Course Anthology 184)”

Am I in heaven at Plan II? That’s hard to tell, but let’s just say if the contents in that brown envelope that plopped in though the mail chute that December afternoon were a little different, I might have had a much different outlook on life at right now.