I was introduced to Running Start during eighth grade. Eighth grade was interesting because it was my second year of advanced math. This is important because this meant I was one year ahead of the all the other eighth graders in regards to math (suck it losers): I was in Algebra 1 AC while others were in Pre-Algebra (this is important for a reason I’ll make clear later).

Anyways, given this was middle school (they liked to make groups of kids have the same classes as each other), I had the same science class with most of the people that were in my Algebra 1 class. We were all pretty smart, so it was kind of like of an advanced science class, but I have no clue if it was. Still, we were kind of treated like an advanced science class.

One reason I say we were treated like an advanced science class is because one day a counselor from the high school, which we would be going to the next year as Freshmen, came over to our science class to talk with us (and I don’t think he did this for regular classes). He came to tell us about a program called Running Start.

Running Start was an optional program that allowed a junior in high school to go to college full time instead of high school, that is if that person was eligible for the program. This allowed whomever to graduate high school with their high school diploma and an Associate of Science or Art degree.

Eligibility consisted of three requirements: the person had to have a 3.0 GPA, the person had to have completed Algebra II by the time he or she went into the program, and the person would have to pass a college accuplacer.

First off, I had the GPA thing down because my grades were all A’s and B’s at this point in my life (it was a big year in terms of getting great grades because previous years were pretty bad GPA wise… I got a 0 in band the second semester of sixth grade).

Now, earlier I talked about how I was in Algebra 1 while others were still in Pre-Algebra. What this meant is that freshman year of high school (ninth grade), I would take Geometry AC. Then sophomore year, I would take Algebra II AC. This means I would have completed Algebra II by junior year, which would be the first year of Running Start. Compare this to someone who was taking Pre-Algebra in eighth grade: they would only have completed Geometry by junior year, which would mean they wouldn’t be eligible for Running Start. Anyone could bypass this by taking the required math class during the summer, but luckily, I didn’t have to do any of that junk.

Finally, there was the college accuplacer. I didn’t have to worry about the accuplacer for two years, but I had always been a pretty good test taker. So there’s that.

Now here’s something that I haven’t addressed: while it was pretty obvious that I would be eligible to do the program when junior year came, did I even want to do it?