Castles in the air

A in Calc 1A.  I only know that because the grades are officially published; haven't heard anything from the professor about how well I did on the final itself, but the A in the class is the important part.

That started me down a rabbithole regarding my prior college experience and how it's going to affect me going forward, though.  In short, 20 years ago, I got Fs in 6 classes over two semesters because I tried signing up and then basically never went. 

Now, in most situations, you can go through a process called "academic renewal" or "forgiveness" and erase up to two semesters from the past.  My current school will do that once you get enough credits with good enough grades.  But they can't/won't "erase" the grades from another school.  And the old school doesn't count other institutions in its forgiveness policy: I'd have to attend 24 units there to get them to process the renewal.  Since it's 50 miles away and, frankly, I'm not sure I can find 24 units worth of classes I can take online, that's not likely to happen.

The other option is to re-take those classes at the new school and get better grades in them.  I can do that for most of them, I think, but only one (maybe two; the second isn't exact) would count towards the classes I need to transfer.  And I'm already running smack into the maximum transferable credits limit.  So, if I take them, I'll have to do so in addition to everything else I'm taking.

That's not necessarily impossible.  I could do one or two over the summer, for example.

If I *don't* wipe them out somehow, the absolute best I could possibly do GPA-wise including the transferred classes is about a 3.2, and that's if I get straight As at the current school.  It's entirely likely that I could go just submit to 4-years point out that those two semesters were 20 years ago and thus not representative of my recent progress; I know the "fail-safe" school will accept that kind of statement, as long as it's explained.  I just don't know about some of the others.

So, I've got some deciding to do, and I'll need to talk to the counselor to find out exactly what the options are.  There's also the off-chance that the old school will change its policy at some point, or that I could petition them separately and have them consider forgiving those semesters or at least turning them into Ws anyway (especially since there's no real way to meet the requirements as stated).

But the main point is that I have several possible paths, and some realistic options in each of them.  In spite of the potential difficulties here, I'm actually comforted by looking into it.

In happier/more general news, really geeking out about the SpaceX landing last night.  I watched it happen "live" and was basically cheering right along with the staff in Torrance.  This kind of thing is exactly why I'm pursuing an aerospace degree, even if I'll be in my 40s before I get it.

For both of these topics, there's a quote from Pratchett that seems appropriate:

It takes someone with their feet planted firmly on the ground to build castles in the air.