You can't erase your mistakes on a transcript
Martin Billig
Issue date: 2/17/10 Section: Opinion
Everyone makes mistakes. That is why there are erasers on pencils. The thing is to learn from your mistakes and be forgiven for your mistakes. Look at Tiger Woods, he made a huge mistake. However, it is up to his wife (and sponsors) to forgive him or not and himself to learn from his mishaps. Also, whether or not you forgive him has no bearing on his life or his future.
About ten years ago I made a mistake. Unlike Mr. Woods, my mistake affects only myself and I didn't realize how big the mistake was at the time. My situation is also unforgivable apparently and 1000 pencils with 1000 erasers can not fix my problem. The worst part was not that I didn't care about making a mistake at the time, but that I definitely didn't think it would come back and haunt me down the road.
I used to attend a small college, when I was 18, up in New Jersey. Fresh out of high school, finally driving (you don't get your license at 16 like Georgia) and with some new found independence I was not sure that I wanted to got college. To make my parents happy I decided to enroll and take some classes.
A friend of mine made the same schedule I had and took the 12 credits with me. Things started off ok, but about three weeks in we both realized that spending the day at the mall that was two minutes from school was much more fun. Then we realized when we cut, unlike high school, our parents didn't have to know. They didn't know our grades either.
This lead to a lot of things and a lot of road trips, none to the college. I managed to get three credits from an online course and decided to enroll in three more classes the following semester. Why? To this day I don't have that answer. I was unsure of a major, unsure of school itself, basically unsure of everything that didn't involve a good time.
Bottom line, I took seven classes got one C and six failing grades (WF or F). Not good (and that's an understatement). Fast forward about 8 years later, I moved to Georgia with my future wife and family and decided it was time to go back to school. I was more mature and ready to handle school, not to mention I wanted to work towards getting a career not a job. FYI, the quicker you realize what career you want to be in and how to get into it, the easier it is to accomplish and better for you.
About ten years ago I made a mistake. Unlike Mr. Woods, my mistake affects only myself and I didn't realize how big the mistake was at the time. My situation is also unforgivable apparently and 1000 pencils with 1000 erasers can not fix my problem. The worst part was not that I didn't care about making a mistake at the time, but that I definitely didn't think it would come back and haunt me down the road.
I used to attend a small college, when I was 18, up in New Jersey. Fresh out of high school, finally driving (you don't get your license at 16 like Georgia) and with some new found independence I was not sure that I wanted to got college. To make my parents happy I decided to enroll and take some classes.
A friend of mine made the same schedule I had and took the 12 credits with me. Things started off ok, but about three weeks in we both realized that spending the day at the mall that was two minutes from school was much more fun. Then we realized when we cut, unlike high school, our parents didn't have to know. They didn't know our grades either.
This lead to a lot of things and a lot of road trips, none to the college. I managed to get three credits from an online course and decided to enroll in three more classes the following semester. Why? To this day I don't have that answer. I was unsure of a major, unsure of school itself, basically unsure of everything that didn't involve a good time.
Bottom line, I took seven classes got one C and six failing grades (WF or F). Not good (and that's an understatement). Fast forward about 8 years later, I moved to Georgia with my future wife and family and decided it was time to go back to school. I was more mature and ready to handle school, not to mention I wanted to work towards getting a career not a job. FYI, the quicker you realize what career you want to be in and how to get into it, the easier it is to accomplish and better for you.
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