I’ve thought a lot about it, and here’s my best explanation.

During orientation week at Penn State I took some placement tests, and I ended up placing out of the introductory English composition course.

I also took a Latin test, and I was surprised when I heard the results: I had placed into Latin IV.

But, I protested, I only had two years of Latin in high school and that was over two years ago.

Well, said the gentleman who was giving the test results, you scored very high in the test and we don’t offer Latin III this term, I think you should take Latin IV.

So I did.

That was a huge mistake. It’s one thing to do well on a multiple choice test where you’re selecting which of the four possible English words corresponds to the Latin word, but it’s entirely different to have to translate from Latin to English without a dictionary and with all the arcane Latin grammar rules that I had forgotten or never learned because I didn’t take Latin III.

I was completely out of my depth in Latin IV, and there was no way to catch up, as we weren’t using a textbook that had lists of words and rules of grammar that I could study. We were using books of Catullus poetry and Horace satires. I had neither the Latin vocabulary nor the grammar, and as much as I tried, I could not keep up. 

I should have spoken to the prof on the first day of class when I realized how far behind I was and explained my situation to her, but it simply didn’t occur to me. I didn’t even realize that I could drop a course.

And what made it even worse was that in preparation for going off to college that summer, I had called my old Latin teacher, Mrs. Spitler, and asked if she would mind reviewing some Latin basics with me. She had graciously agreed, so I had spent an evening at her house going over Latin with her. And as soon as I received the results of the Latin placement test, I dashed off a letter to Mrs. Spitler to let her know the news that I’d be taking Latin IV and it was all thanks to her.

I felt I had to do well in the Latin class or I would be letting her down.

So I spent far more time studying Latin that term than I should have, and the other courses received short shrift.

Still, it was hopeless. There was simply no way I could possibly do well in Latin IV.

I ended up with a D.

Yes, that’s a passing grade, but to me it might as well have been an F.

Meanwhile, also in that orientation week, I had met my academic advisor.

He told me he never wanted to see me again.

Pretty much in those words.

He was a philosophy professor, and he deeply resented the onus that the University put on him of having to be an advisor to students, so his solution was to tell them never to bother him.

What I should have done, I guess, was to ask for another advisor, but that didn’t occur to me. I was arrogant enough to figure I could handle things myself.

And the other really big problem was that I didn’t have the faintest idea what I wanted to do with my life or what I wanted to study. I was interested in a lot of things in a very general way, but I wasn’t interested in any one area that I wanted to concentrate in.

So with no star to guide me, and no one beside me (as the song goes), and no clear idea of what I wanted to do, I floundered.

And once I had failed one course, failing another didn’t seem to matter all that much. 

OK, I didn’t really fail Latin, but later that year I took Russian, for no discernible reason. Russian I was easy (I had studied it on my own a few years previously, so I knew the Cyrillic alphabet and pronunciation, etc.), but I was lost in Russian II. I do not have any aptitude for languages once I get past the basics.

Then the first term of my second year I had a horrible roommate. If you must know, he stank. Literally. So I avoided the room as much as possible. And I ended up not studying and I failed three out of four courses.

I changed majors a couple times and got new advisors, who were better than the first one, but they weren’t pro-active, and I needed a pro-active advisor. If I didn’t consult them, they didn’t reach out to me.

I honestly didn’t realize I was that close to flunking out when the letter finally came. Once I got used to failing a course, the subsequent failures didn’t seem to make much of an impression.

And there’s one other thing. I didn’t fully realize this about myself until much later, when I was working at DPSC and I was interviewing for a different position. The interviewer was John McAndrews, and apparently he knew me better than I knew myself. He asked me a question something along the lines of what I would do if I encountered a difficult problem.

Whatever I was saying, he interrupted me and laughed, “It’s probably not in your nature, but I was looking for you to say something along the lines that you’d ask for help.” 

I realized he was right.

All through high school, I was the guy that other folks came to for help. I simply wasn’t used to asking other people to help me. It’s not that I never asked for help, it’s simply that it was way, way down on my problem solving list.

So I rarely approached a prof or a fellow student, not even to ask for clarification on an assignment. It simply wasn’t in my nature.

The University probably had counselors I could have spoken to about helping me to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life, what I wanted to major in, but it never occurred to me to look into it.