meme: order of events

[cellio]

Most recently from jducoeur. To play along, make a post with the following statements in order of when they occurred in your life (feel free to add/remove/edit as appropriate). Just the first occurrences of each, and only ones you were old enough at the time that you remember it.

Have done:

Become gainfully employed.
Start college.
Graduate from high school.
Get drunk for the first time.
Join the SCA. (Local group; national came later.)
First Pennsic.
Offend someone horribly online. (Guessing...)
Graduate from college.
Move out of parents' house for good.
First Real Job (TM).
Discover filk music.
Get a 401(k) (or IRA).
First SF convention.
Buy a car.
First real relationship.
Meet future spouse.
Get laid off.
Buy a house.
Buy own computer.
Get married.
Get a cell phone.

Haven't done (yet):

Get a smart phone.
Drive cross-country.
Start graduate school.
Go to live in another country.
Have kids. (Ha. No.)
Retire.

Comments

[jducoeur]

"Start college" comes before "Graduate from high school"? That sounds like a story...

[cellio]

The public schools I went to were not very good. They weren't actively bad, but they had very little for brighter or more-inquisitive students (and had a firm policy of not skipping grades no matter what). I don't know which is cause and which effect, but the curriculum was not very oriented toward the college-bound and only about a quarter of my graduating class went to 4-year colleges. (The rest: some went off for associates' degrees, some went to trade school, a few went into the military, and some went to work.) So I took every advanced class that was available (not a lot) and was carrying a 4.0 without breaking a sweat, and I was bored.

(For high school I had the option of going to an all-girls Catholic school, but their curriculum was even lighter on math and science than the public school, which was enough of a deal-killer that my parents and I didn't need to wrangle over the "Catholic" part of that.)

My parents are both CMU alumni so through that channel we heard about a summer program there for high-school students. You took two full-semester college classes in six weeks, and some subset of the students would be invited to apply for early admission to college. It was aimed at high-school juniors, but I applied for the summer after my sophomore year and got in. I was not surprised to not get the early-admission offer after that summer (I think policy forbade it and I'll bet my parents would have anyway), but I went back after my junior year and got the offer then, so I attended my freshman year of college and then went back for high-school graduation. (The HS declined to just give me the diploma early.)

A big down-side, by the way, was that by going "out of cycle" I missed out on many chances to apply for scholarships that are offered to HS seniors. Going to college when I did wouldn't have been possible without my parents' support, including willingness to co-sign loans for me.

[jducoeur]

Makes sense -- if I hadn't managed to get into private school when I did, I might well have done something similar...