Chapter 274: Two Important Meetings: With OSU and Mom

Thursday, July 28 to Saturday, August 13, 2005 (Continued)

I had some important meetings at OSU on August 10 and 11. I'd lost three weeks of studying time during our trip to Europe, but by mid-August I'd done about five weeks' worth over summer. I'd completed quite a few courses, as my studying speed had increased to about two weeks per course per screen. The increase was partly from studying for more hours because I needed less sleep, partly because I didn't lose as many nights to 'social activities' as I had while at school, and partly because not only were the second-year courses not slowing me down, but I was actually doing them somewhat faster than the first year courses, as I was into the swing of college studying by now.

None of the courses had been completed formally because I couldn't do any of the required lab work and I wasn't allowed to take the old exams. I'd have to wait until OSU restarted before those could be taken care of. But before OSU could prepare for my studies next year, it needed to confirm that I really was doing as well as Prof claimed. That rate of learning was, not to put too fine a point on it, unbelievable.

The Dean got several of the lecturers for the courses I'd said I'd finished studying to come in at staggered intervals on the 10th. I spent an hour with each of them, being examined verbally and/or with written questions they'd prepared. Whatever suited them, as it was only informal. With eight minds and near perfect memory, I aced them. By the end of the day, the Dean knew that I'd mastered one-sixth each of two degrees in just over one month's studying.

The next day Prof, Mom and I had a meeting with the Dean about what OSU was going to do for me. The short version was, "Whatever I wanted." The Dean was very excited to have me at OSU. He had considerable trouble believing I could've learned that much material, but I'd been examined one-on-one by several lecturers the previous day, and they'd all reported that I had their subject down pat, so he had to believe it. They'd carefully checked for cheating, and it just wasn't a possibility under the circumstances of my testing.

Prof had recommended against telling the Dean that I could read seven or eight screens at once, and as far as the Dean knew, I was still using the two-screen system OSU had paid for. We encourage his belief in my learning rate by telling him that I only needed three or four hours of sleep per night, and that I read EXTREMELY rapidly and with almost perfect comprehension. Those being far easier to believe than what I really did.

For my coming academic year's studies, there were several types of problems that had to be solved:

• Exams couldn't wait until the end of the academic year. I'd have something like a totally impractical 110 of them, depending on the amount of cross-crediting that could be done. Plus I shouldn't really be studying later courses before I'd taken the exams for their prerequisites. Exams would have to be written for me as I went. Every month or two I'd have to spend a few days doing exams. That didn't worry me as I wouldn't have to study for them, but it meant a great deal of extra work for OSU.

• Quite a few of the courses I'd be doing required that I physically attend OSU. Several of them required lab work (in the Physics degree mostly), some were discussion-driven at times (especially the Business courses), and there were the BCC courses (such as "Lifetime Fitness: Running") where I sometimes had to prove I could do something (e.g., run in circles). The Business degree was especially troublesome, as it had several group projects. The group nature of those projects was important, because business people have to learn to work in teams and to manage people. These were real problems for me because - for any specific course - those "physical attendance required" workloads were spread throughout the courses' normal timetables, in the worst case over the entire academic year, while I'd be finishing each course in two weeks.

• By the time OSU restarted, I'd have finished reading the online lectures for about three dozen courses. We wanted those to be formally completed as quickly as possible, which meant lots of urgent exam writing for those lecturers. It had to be done urgently too, because a month later I'd be ready for another dozen exams.

• There was also a great deal of bureaucracy involved, none of which I gave two hoots about, especially because the Dean was the boss bureaucrat. There were quite a few criteria that I was bound by and which the Dean couldn't overrule, but he could get OSU to do whatever was required to make sure they were met in ways that were convenient for me.

It was going to be a great deal of extra work for the lecturers, all 70 or 80 of them! But the Dean insisted that most of them would be excited at being able to boast of having taught Mark Anderson. If any of the lecturers proved to be unhelpful, I'd only have to mention it to the Department Head, who'd quickly fix the problem.

I expressed my concern about my ability to do the hard courses at the end of each degree, whether I could do them at all, or at anything like my current rate. Neither Prof nor the Dean cared about my concern. They cared about it so little they barely listened to my comment, so I repeated it.

The Dean waved it away with, "They're only undergraduate courses, Mark," (we're on a first name basis). "They're just book learning, which you've demonstrated considerable ability at, but if you do have problems, slow down to whatever rate works for you. We can cater to your going slower; it's keeping up with you that we have to make sure we can do. Let us know if you need to slow down, and we'll discuss its effects then."

Essentially, everything that I needed would be done for me, as efficiently as OSU could do it, even if they had to bend more than a few normal procedures.

There was one aspect that Prof and I had badly underestimated: the amount of time I'd have to spend at OSU. Math - being the excellent, knowledge-based subject that it is - suits online learning very well. That's not as true for Physics, as various courses require a minimum number of hours of lab work, and especially not true for Business Studies, which has a lot of group work.

I was going to be spending a lot more time at OSU than I'd previously thought; probably even more time than I'd be spending at high school. It was hard to complain about that, college being considerably more important than school, but it was a pity. Given a choice of doing lab work at OSU, or being with Julia, Carol and Ava at school, I know where I'd rather be.

It did mean that reproducing my multi-screen computer system at school would probably not be worthwhile anymore, as most of the time I'd be spending at school would be spent catching up with the school stuff that I'd missed recently. I was happy to drop the computer system idea, as I'd been imagining it causing envy, teacher's pet ridicule, theft and vandalism (it wouldn't be "causing" vandalism - that'd be the assholes' fault - but you know what I mean). Plus the teachers might've gotten upset with me for making them come to my room, rather than the usual reverse of that.

[When school restarted, I ended up just taking a good laptop with wifi access to school, so I could read one lecture or do online research, as the Business degree needed a lot of research.]

A few days after the above meeting with the Dean, on August 15, I had a short meeting with him again, plus the three DHs of: Physics, Business Studies and Math, the latter I'd already met ("DH" means "Department Head". Math and Physics were just departments, while Business was actually classified as a distinct college, but I'll call all of them DH's for convenience. For Business, take "DH" to mean "Da Head of da college", if you like). A few other interested people were invited too. It was just a casual meet-each-other meeting. The Dean had thought it was a good idea for them to meet the guy who'd be causing them so much extra work.

I spent half the meeting apologizing for the extra work I was causing them; they spent half of it expressing incredulity at my genius and presumed ability to do three degrees in one year. It was rather embarrassing, but they seemed very positive about fast-tracking my courses for me.

After the meeting I collected Donna and we went to buy her horse, which was a lot more fun than a boring meeting.