who's smarter?

Having Dave home all week has been kind of fun; after the first couple of days when Dave thought he was going to die (he is for sure the most dramatic)! The past couple of days I have been reminiscing our college days together. So, for those of you who are looking for updates on the grandchildren, sorry to disappoint you but they will not me mentioned at all except to say they are all well!

I am going to write about some of my fond BYU memories, particularly the classes Dave and I had together. I am not offended if you choose not to read on. It is a fun journal entry for me. I will tell you that the answer is Dave. (just don't tell him -- he will enjoy it far too much!)

As first semester freshman at BYU Dave and I had a few classes together, BOM and chemistry. (side note: BOM class is where Dave fell in love with me at first sight!) We had a wonderful BOM teacher, Sis. Fronk, and for me rel 121 was an easy A. For Dave, it was a little more difficult. Maybe that is because he was paying attention to me instead of the class!! (yes I am totally cracking myself up). Chemistry was
the opposite. Easy for Dave and harder for me. We didn't know each other well enough to study together at this point.

Second semester freshman year we had BOM and chemistry together again. In Chem 106 we had a TERRIBLE teacher. Class was very boring and very dumb. So Dave and I would often ditch class and instead meet in the library to make out. Just kidding. We studied for an hour every day. Dave got an easy A in the class and I can't remember what I got. Maybe it was an A- or B+. I thought Dave was terribly wicked for encouraging me to ditch class and never had done it before or after but it turned out that the teacher really was worthless as a lecturer. He was a pretty nice guy though and was very lenient when I sprained my knees that semester.

While Dave was on his mission for 2 years I took a fast pace through my classes so that by the time he came home I was waaayyyy ahead of him in school :) and we had no classes together his first semester back.

However, one semester later as newlyweds, our BYU MAP paths did cross again. I was teaching his pre-med physiology class as part of my master's program. the first day of class, about a week after getting married, I introduced myself as Denise Dahlquist instead of Denise Gonda since all of my BYU email, records, etc. were still in my maiden name. This did not make Dave happy. Maybe he was still recovering from my slightly sarcastic suggestion that he should take MY name when we got married instead of his!

So anyway, to keep up appearances of fairness Dave got transferred out of my section of physiology class, but I was still able to quiz him and discuss the fun stuff he was learning.

Our final class together was an upper level biochem class during a spring term. This is definitely the most memorable! It was a very challenging and rewarding class. We studied a lot. I remember that Dave always understood the concepts faster than me and when we studied together he felt he was ready for the tests an hour or two (of study time) before me. I always needed more study time than dave to learn the required material. The tests were infamous for being difficult and tedious. I believe there were 4 test during the term. Tests at BYU are taken in the testing center which means you can go at any convenient time and there are 100's of students taking tests for 100's of classes. Dave and I went to our first exam together. After about 90 minutes I was done and sat outside waiting for Dave to finish. It took him 4 hours to finish the exam. This was the story for all 4 exams. I always finished very fast and it took him about 2-3 times as long. I was an exceptionally fast test taker and dave was on par with most kids in the class. This doesn't mean I am smarter, just faster. For me I either know it or I don't and sitting there all day won't help me come up with anything I don't know right off the bat. So, how did we do in this class? Well, on each test i got in the 85-92 %range and dave usually got in the 89-95% range, so our scores were always very close with dave scoring a little bit higher than me. Was it worth 2 hours in the testing center for 3 percentage points? Well, when we got our final grades dave got an A- and I got a B+. I knew that I would be right on the border and so when I got my grade I went to see the teacher. Dave thinks I begged and cried but that is not true. The teacher knew I would be in to see him since he saw as he split up the grades that Dave had an A- and I had a B+! He got a big kick out of knowing that we were taking the class together and competing for the grade! Everything that passed between the teacher and I was fair and square. I simply re-submitted a couple of my tests to be re-graded knowing that there were a couple of points here and there that could be retrieved. I am not usually a student that complains about every point but in this case those few points could make a difference. So, in the end, I was able to recover enough points and got an A- also.

When Dave entered med school, I had a lot of fun discussing various concepts with him as he studied different body systems, drug mechanisms and science foundations. At that point I could keep up on most conversations and with a masters in physiology I'd say I was even ahead of him in some (very few) areas. However, he quickly passed me up and now knows way more than me. His ability to study for HOURS and retain information is remarkable. He is hard working and brilliant!