This isn't a JW experience, but for those of you that have been following my life, I thought I'd have a drink and share this strange event in my post-JW life.
For you wonderful newbies, you can catch up on highlights of my story in the few threads I've started here. I'm finishing the junior year of my engineering degree and the classes are hard as hell. I used to be among the smartest students in the room until I hit the 300 level university courses. I just don't get things as quickly as I used to and there are a few gaps in my education since it had been decades since high school and my first semesters of college. And I think some valuable brain real estate is cluttered with WT garbage and interfering with the influx of factual information in school. But I never miss a class, I don't give up, and I manage to keep passing classes the first time. And I learned that C is passing, just like A is passing.
For one of my classes, the professor had given an assignment that left us a lot of room for creativity. And this is one of the classes I've been struggling with the most. It's very abstract and conceptual, where I prefer concrete, application, and reality. I submitted extra documentation for my assignment and the professor was very impressed. He asked me to come by during his office hours to discuss it.
That first meeting was interesting as I explained some of my widely varied work experience and my interest in the engineering concepts of the homework assignment I'd chosen. I admitted that I had a hard time with the classes and exams, but that I was learning and trying my best. He said that my experience and skill were something more important that most students didn't have and might never acquire. And he explained his research interests that he is working on. We ran out of time to finish the conversation, so I promised to return another day.
In the meantime, the next exam in that class came along and I didn't do well. I wasn't surprised, but I was afraid of how he might react after my rather poor performance. This brings us to two days ago. In several of my classes, I (the oldest in the class) sit next to the youngest student in the class. We're all chatting between classes and the young brainiac says, "On Monday, I went to talk to the professor about being a student research assistant and he said that he'd just offered a position to you."
After picking my chin up off the floor, I responded, "Oh, he was serious about my working with him on his research?"
"Uh, yeah."
So I went to see him today and I detected absolutely nothing negative like I'd expected because of the exam. And he continued presenting what he's planning to research. More interesting and entertaining stuff than what we're studying in class, by the way. I talk about what I can contribute. And an hour later I'm leaving his office with 3 pages of scribbled notes.
So I'm now an undergraduate research assistant. How that happened in the class I'm not doing all that well in, I don't know.
I put this out there for any of you that are where I was just a few years ago. I was soooo afraid of leaving the world of WT into an unknown world. Afraid of the challenge of going back to school. Things don't always go well, frankly things weren't going well at all during all that time as a JW, I just pretended that things were great. But things have a way of working out when you plan and execute... WITH A LOT OF HELP AND ENCOURAGEMENT FROM THE WONDERFUL PEOPLE OF JWN!
Thanks all! Have a great weekend!