When I returned from Florida and started back at school in the winter of 1996, I felt confident that my relationship with my girlfriend was smooth sailing now. After all, a two hour drive seemed minimal compared to the ten-hour drive separation we had for most of the previous year. Then, I came face-to-face with Electromagnetics.
Now, let’s talk about Electromagnetics for a second. “E-Mag” (or “Re-Mag”, or “Three-Mag” for those who have to take it over and over because they couldn’t pass it, or “D-Mag” for those whose majors allow a D to be a passing grade) has a notoriety at Georgia Tech for being one of the fiercest “weed out” courses at the school. Not only is the subject matter in the class difficult, but the testing and grading compounds the problem. Grades are determined by three to four tests during the quarter, plus a final. Each of the tests are only five-questions, multiple choice, no partial credit. Miss one and you’ve already got a B. Miss two and you’ve already failed the test. Each of the questions has four choices and the wrong answers are written such that a mistake as minor as adding instead of subtracting, or getting the order of the formula wrong will lead you to one of the wrong answers. Some of the professors of this class have earned legendary status for their unhelpfulness and belittling of students in class. Everyone at Tech has an “E-mag” story.
On my first E-mag test, I got a 20. I was shocked and pretty angry. From that moment on, I was determined to beat that class and not just pass it, but get an A, just out of principal. I spent almost every waking hour of that quarter studying E-mag. I would wake up in the morning, study E-mag, go to class, come back to my dorm, study E-mag, and go to sleep. That pretty much summed up my daily schedule. This was all well and good, except that, combined with the fact that I had no car on campus then, I very rarely left campus. So, even though I was so much closer to my girlfriend than before, we still rarely saw each other and most of our interaction, like the year before, was restricted to the phone and frustration started to build.
I got my “A” in E-mag, but the price for the victory was steep. It shouldn’t have come as surprise, but I was shocked when my girlfriend told me at the end of the quarter that she thought “maybe it was time to date other people.” I was stunned! I really didn’t have a good argument against her suggestion. I was worn out from balancing school and a relationship, so maybe it really was time to move on. She continued to try to keep in contact with me, but I had trouble shifting our relationship back down into friendship, so I didn’t try very hard to keep up with her. I was bummed about it for a while, but after a couple months, I had bounced back pretty well.
The summer of 1996 remains one of my favorite times in my life. After the school year ended, I shared an apartment with two friends of mine and the Olympics came to Atlanta. We enjoyed going to the Olympic events and immersing ourselves in a variety of cultures. I was carefree and had no obligations or as I have written before, “I was single and relatively happy to be so.” As far as dating went, I was right back at square one, occassionally going on blind dates with girls that seem bored when they were with me, but I wasn’t in the mood to try very hard at dating. After a year-long relationship that fizzled out, it felt good to be free.
I had no idea she was going to walk right back into my life.