Write about a challenge you faced and overcame.
I’ve faced a number of challenges and overcome (most of) them, or faced up to not overcoming them. But the important ones aren’t fodder for this blog.
A minor challenge that comes to mind:
Two summers after receiving my B.A. with a minor in biology, I returned to college to take an undergraduate course in microbiology. I thought it would be fun.
I had not taken the prerequisite chemistry courses—organic chemistry and biochemistry, if I remember correctly—but nobody at the registration table asked, and I didn’t volunteer the information. I guess they assumed I’d read the requirements in the catalog. I assumed that what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.
I spent the next five weeks growing, staining, and identifying bacteria.
I also spent five weeks memorizing where and at what angles to hang little H’s and O’s and N’s and other letters from little C’s, over and over and over, so I could draw the metabolic processes of bacterium after bacterium after bacterium on exams.
That was the prerequisite part. My fellow students already knew what those compounds looked like.
But I persisted—lecture and lab during the day, little C’s and H’s and O’s at night.
Things went well. That was back when my brain had space in which to stuff all those letters and the ability to spill them out into the right places on test papers.
When I turned in my final exam, I told the professor (a) I’d enjoyed the class; (b) I hadn’t had the prerequisites; and (c) good-bye.
It was a fascinating course. I’ve never regretted taking it.
But that was a long time ago. I’ve since altered my definition of fun.
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Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
Image of D-glucose by Ben; Yikrazuul, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Kathy Waller 