While the final grades are technically pending, I have finished all my coursework and examinations for what is effectively my first semester of college1.

I never intended to return to school, but the stars aligned enough to justify taking on the extra workload. It’s been a doozy with full-time work, freelance work, and the ever-important work of being a father to two young children, but it’s been a solid experience so far.

And, for the first time in my life, I’ve ended the semester with a 4.0. I don’t expect that to carry on throughout the remainder of my degree, but hopefully, I can sneak through with a 3.5 or higher GPA when all is said and done—a vast improvement over the 2.8 I left high school with.

Update (December 14, 2023): The grades are officially in my transcript: 4.0 across the board.

  1. The credits I acquired from my previous two years of university I dropped out of over a decade ago didn’t transfer, so I’m more or less starting over as a freshman ↩︎