Chris Hammond · Chris Hammond
Last Updated
15 Years 8 Months and 24 Days to Graduate from College
Embark on a journey from college start to degree completion. Explore 15+ years in academia, culminating in a Bachelor of Science in Economics.
On Monday August 21, 1995, I started college at what was then known as the University of Missouri – Rolla (UMR), now referred to as Missouri University of Science and Technology (MST). If I recall correctly I started at 7:30am with an Algebra/Trig class designed to speed freshmen into the math program if you didn’t test out of the class. Even though I had taken Calculus in High School I wasn’t successful at testing out.
Today, May 14, 2011, I am done with college, not done in as I am not going anymore (I leave that option open) but done in as I have a college degree. Before I talk about that here are some stats.
It has been 5746 days since I started school at UMR.
That is 15 years, 8 months, 24 days, or 496,454,400 seconds, 8,274,240 minutes, 137,904 hours or finally 820 weeks (rounded down) which doesn’t sound that bad, right?
I stayed at Rolla for 4.5 years, give or take, not completing a degree in Computer Science. After that I worked a number of jobs and took a variety of classes. I won’t bore you with all the details of what happened in between, but you can check out my “How did I get to where I am in my career” post from a few years ago.
I continued to take classes over the years, trying to get finished up. Fast forward to today. I have officially finished my college degree, a Bachelor of Science in Economics with a minor in Computer Science from the University of Missouri – St. Louis (UMSL).
What am I going to do with a Bachelor of Science in Economics? Who knows, I don’t have any plans to change where I am or what I am doing. In the future though I’ll leave open the idea of an MBA, but not right away 
I had a hell of a time trying to figure out when school started in August of 1995. UMR.edu is no more, and MST.edu doesn’t have a good collection of “archives”. I did however manage to find minutes from UMR Academic Council meetings from 1993-1994 when they approved the calendar for 1995, which showed the date of 8/21/1995. I will confirm that by digging through my file cabinet, I’m pretty sure I have a file from UMR somewhere that will likely have the information as well.
