Introduction
I attended Nassau Community College in summer 2024, taking calculus 2 under professor Jay Martin. This would be the first college course I’ve ever taken.
I knew several classmates who took classes at NCC during high school. Wanting to be at the same level as my peers, I registered for the class pretty hastily. From the people I knew, I thought the classroom would be full of other high school students, wanting to show off by being in a college-level environment. After all, I had registered under the High School Enrichment Program, there would be other high schoolers here right?
Initial Suprise
Everyone here was older than me. I just graduated high school 6 days ago, and some of my classmates were in their graduating year of college.
The student in front of me was already balding. The students to the left were talking about how they had 8 hour shifts after the class. The guy sitting in the front of the room had a 2-year-old child already.
I came to know this guy as Tony. He was 29 years old, working a full time job, taking several classes at NCC, and (like I said earlier) had a child already. In terms of ages, he was the outlier in our class, but I feel like he was the best representation of the other students in our class, and the people who attend community college in general.
Tony
When I overheard that he was 29 years old, I was pretty shocked. I mean, he didnt seem to look 29 years old… and also not to be rude but what is he doing here in a first/second year college course?? I thought about asking him, but wasn’t sure how to approach him; it felt somewhat rude and personal to ask. So for the next 3 weeks, I would be trying to learn about Tony and his background.
Long story short, after the 3 weeks and up to today, I still haven’t properly asked him. But I’ve learned the following things:
- He went directly to work after graduating high school.
- He’s been taking classes at NCC for a while now, but he can’t take too many because of his full time job.
- He works hard in order to transfer to SUNY Buffalo or SUNY Binghamton, where he plans to pursue engineering.
And he really was a hard worker. He would always be asking questions, sending resources in the WhatsApp group chat (that he made btw), and setting up study sessions with everyone else. After our 3 hour classes, I would always see him continuing to study at NCC’s Math Center.
And towards the end of the course, I started seeing a representation of Tony within all my other classmates. Everyone was a hard worker. People had full time jobs that made it difficult to attend class. People had family commitments which forced them to stay local. Everyone had their own story and just being here proved their dedication to work, and passion to learn—even when there are so many things in the world that made it hard to.
What really solidified this point for me was that a lot of students ended up dropping the class, but many of them continued to attend every lesson to take notes. Future me, is this a normal thing people do in college?
Was it worth it
When registering for the class, I was under the assumption that community college was an easy way to get college credits for one’s actual institution, and that this class would be inflated enough so everyone registered could leave getting what they had paid for.
The content wasn’t that difficult but the nature of the summer class made it extremely fast paced and honestly, really exhausting. The class was 3 hours everyday from Monday to Thursday, with homework everyday that would usually take me 3 hours. I’m aware that if this class was stretched out into a semester, the amount of work would be exactly identical, but idk spending 6+ hours per day on a singular class was just like… so not it… But at least I can now say I learned calculus 2 in 30 days… yay?
I was able to end with an A, and I can sleep well at night knowing that the first grade on my UIUC transcript can be an A. UIUC’s calculus 2 is a 3 credit class which would cost me roughly 3973.60 dollars (as an OOS-student assuming my schedule has 15 credits total). Calculus 2 at NCC costed 800 dollars. I guess seeing the saved 3173.60 dollars makes me feel a little better about myself so I would say it was worth it; however, if my life repeated, I would probably not do it again and maybe properly enjoy my last summer as a high schooler.
If anything I’ve learned to not trust professors that have a 2.5/5 raiting on Rate My Professors.