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Past the turn of the year into Nineteen Ninety-Three, I didn't want
to make the same mistake I had seven years earlier when I was
pursuing my computer degree. Back then, as I was focused on getting
the Bachelors level degree, I didn't worry about taking the
Associates degree. As fate would have it, I couldn't complete the
full Bachelors due to my growing health issues at the time and I
ended up with no degree at all after three part-time years of
College. Had I planned ahead, I could have chosen the classes
needed to complete the Associate level degree, first, then
continue onto the full degree. But I hadn't and thus I had nothing.
So with my return to College after a five year health related break,
the moment I had those few classes needed to finish the Associates, I
filed for the degree and kept it for safe keeping, just
in case something unexpected came up and I once again
couldn't complete the Bachelors.
At first nervous returning to College after my lost years, I soon
liked the variety of activity and topics it gave my starved mind.
But to my surprise, after finding I was at the coding expert level in
the eyes of Rocky Mountain Telecom, it was the handful of remaining
computer courses I was bored with. In the past I could have
bucked-up and tried to test-out of them, but I was so apathetic with
the courses, rather than put in the effort to bring myself up to
speed on the topics in order to test-out, I felt it would be easier
to sit in the class room and work on other class material while
'absorbing' the nuances of the subject matter being discussed 'in the
air' around me. This might have worked with the computer teacher I
had quickly impressed the year before, but with this year there was a
new instructor for my last two computer courses, and his only
impression of me was my not paying attention to him in the classroom
as he taught. Still, I got my projects done on time and without
error, as well as getting all of the test answers right, so he didn't
have a way to vent his displeasure other than glare at me. Then
he assigned a project where he found his opportunity.
The coding project was to simulate the lottery number drawing. This
was a program I had mastered for my Junior year of High School and
needed to simply transfer it to the chosen computer language. I did
and I was done in an hour at home. For the class he spent a full
week working with them to figure out the logic. He hadn't figured
it out himself ahead of time. So he came up with having them
write a program to pick six random numbers, but then realized they
could get a duplicate number or two as a result. So he had them
place all the possible numbers into memory slots, then picked the
numbers out of the slots, but how would they detect if a number
had already been picked? He had them fill each picked slot with
a invalid number after the original number had been chosen, thus if a
random number was repeated, it would see the invalid value and not
print it. The problem was this would then only result in five or
four numbers being produced by the program instead of the six
required. So he then had them create a second variable to count how
many valid numbers they had gotten and not let the program finish
until six had been printed. Next, as the real world lottery balls
would tumble about in the cage between each one that was chosen, he
wanted the students to randomly pick two slots a random number of
times and swap the numbers in them. But he felt they should check
for invalid number slots and skip those, yet still complete
the same number of valid slot switches. They were trying to debug
the logic on this twist when the time frame ran out for the project.
All of the students who followed his lead during the course of the
two weeks received an 'A' for their program, even though it still
didn't run. My program which fulfilled his requirements and ran
flawlessly each time, he gave a 'B' noting that I had 'poor logic'.
Whatever, I only had one more computer class with him and I
spent a large chunk of that one staring out the window and watching
the summer foliage as it grew during the semester. This time I made
sure that not only were all of my tests and projects complete and
error free, but if he led the students into a rabbit hole figuring
out logic, I made sure my code followed that convoluted logic and
then took the final steps needed to make it work, even though it
ended up tied like a pretzel while doing it. He had to give me top
marks for that last semester with him and I could tell he resented
it.
But my other classes still captured my attention and one of them was
'Comparative Religions'. I enjoyed this class as it gave me a chance
to become familiar with many different faiths without having to
become an acolyte to do so. As Daina herself was interested in all
of the world's faiths, she had a selection of books in her personal
library I could draw upon as additional resources when working on the
projects and other class work. For the Final, we were to give a
presentation selecting a topic and then using it to compare two or
more religions we had discussed during the semester. Now being
familiar with the content of Daina's books, I decided to be daring
when choosing my topic. You see, Daina's books didn't only
just have the information, but often featured full color
reproductions of classical paintings displaying aspects of those
religions...
We had two days to give our presentations before the class and I
chose the second day simply to reduce the number of hours I'd miss if
I got kicked from the classroom for my topic. When my turn came, I
brought with me a pile of Daina's books with various page markers in
place. I then compared five different religions and their beliefs
about sexual activity in the afterlife, showing various
pictures from the books as I went along. The teacher placed her
knuckles to her mouth to stifle her laughter as I did this. And
I assured that the students had a good view of the various pictures,
some depicting couples & threesomes, others including full
orgies, though nothing too explicit. I
ended with the Christian depictions of sex in Heaven, which pretty
much was a good handshake, if that. The teacher loved my ballsiness
and gave me top marks for the presentation and for the class.
I could tell I had won her respect and made sure to take more
classes with her for my last year.
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