Michigan dark secrets

Submitted by chunkums on

The offseason can be a long and difficult time for football fans, but it is a time that generates some really interesting threads occasionally. In light of this, I pose this question to you all:

What are your deepest and darkest secrets relating to your Michigan fandom? Are you a convert from the other side? Do you have any regrettable stories from watching Michigan games? Do you have any dark secrets now?

I'll start: I love Michigan and cherished my undergraduate years there, but next year I start my PhD at...Ohio State.

egrfree2rhyme

April 20th, 2015 at 6:42 PM ^

So you presumably have enough time to read and post on mgoblog for hours a week and yet watching the team actually play isn't worth your time?  Weird.

It sucks when the team sucks but you still get to watch and support Michigan.  

mGrowOld

April 15th, 2015 at 4:29 PM ^

I secretly rooted against MIchigan in this year's Ohio State game and was happy when we lost.  I was afraid that if we somehow won that game and became bowl elegible Hackett would retain Hoke for one more year and we'd be doomed forever.

 

Michael

April 15th, 2015 at 4:45 PM ^

I had similar experience too, and it was an extremely bizarre feeling. On one hand I wanted us to ruin what I perceived at the time to be a small chance they would make the playoffs, just so I could be assured that they wouldn't win it all.

On the other, I felt as you described - I needed Michigan to lose to ensure Hoke wouldn't be retained.

I don't know if I was happy, but I sure wasn't upset about the whole thing. I hope I never have to feel like that again.

Salinger

April 15th, 2015 at 4:29 PM ^

My name is SalingerUofMfan and I don't vehemently hate Notre Dame. In fact, I hold no hostility toward the Fighting Irish. And when Brian Kelly was hired as ND's coach, I sort of wished he'd been hired as our coach. This was pre-purpleface, but still...

Please don't send me to Bolivia.

Yostbound and Down

April 15th, 2015 at 4:57 PM ^

Nice, I am from GR originally and remember those years pretty fondly, we'd always cheer for them in the playoffs. GVSU was a powerhouse back then. I don't really have bad feelings for Kelly either, would have been fine if he had come here instead when RR or Hoke were hired.

Wolverine Devotee

April 15th, 2015 at 4:31 PM ^

Also another dark secret, I'm looking into transferring to Michigan even though I've said on here a million times that I'd never wind up there because of the money. I definitely want my associate's at the school I'm at now and then transfer out for my bachelor's. 

I'm rather terrified because I thought I defeated math for the final time in high school and I'd have to take FREAKING CALCULUS as part of the Michigan Transfer Agreement. 

I don't even know what calculus is. It sounds painful. 

Moe

April 15th, 2015 at 4:34 PM ^

But honestly, are you not great at math?  For me, I found Calculus easier than most math classes that I took in high school and college(relatively speaking of course, just grasped the concepts much faster).  I am definintely in the minority in that regard though, just prepping you for what is to come.

Wolverine Devotee

April 15th, 2015 at 4:40 PM ^

I made it pretty obvious by my post that I'm not. Once you start adding letters to math, then I'm completely lost. 

In my HS, marketing counted as a senior math credit so that's what I took to avoid actual math. 

 

Moe

April 15th, 2015 at 4:45 PM ^

I'd really think long and hard if you can pass a class like that then, and what steps you want to take to ensure it happens.  Find a tutor, or even a friend with knowledge to see if he can help you grasp the basic concepts.  I do wish you the best of luck.  I always understood math, but tell me to deconstruct a sentence and I'm lost.

Wolverine Devotee

April 15th, 2015 at 4:55 PM ^

No one in my immediate family went to college so I really couldn't get help at home beyond a certain grade level. I worked incredibly hard to get through math. 

Maybe I'd do much better in college with math. College has been extremely easy to me because I don't have ridiculously long days and an overwhelming amount of classes like I did in HS. 

My GPA right now is over the 3.0 line which is pretty amazing. So I do meet the U-M transfer GPA requirements. 

ifis

April 15th, 2015 at 5:14 PM ^

you'll never know if you don't try and 9 times out of 10 you'll surprise yourself.  My guess is that you'll do fine and ten years down the road you'll laugh at how intimidated you were.  Even if that's not the case you won't wonder what could have been.

Moe

April 15th, 2015 at 5:14 PM ^

Do you need to take calc before you get to Michigan, or once you get there?  Hopefully your current school can offer you classes to help you prepare either way.  Might be good to talk to a counselor there about your next steps.  

Wolverine Devotee

April 15th, 2015 at 5:29 PM ^

From what I've read on the Michigan Transfer Agreement, I need my credits in several subjects prior to transferring. My school can definitely help me since they offer all of what I'd need to get in. I am seeing a counselor on Monday.

ChemBlue

April 15th, 2015 at 6:18 PM ^

WD,

I am not posting in the right order, so see my comment below.  No one in my immediate family ever graduated college either (my dad blamed foregoing his last semester on me, which I call 100% BS (now that I know more).  Seriously, we are all Blue at heart, I don't know what I can do to help, but I will do my best.

JTGoBlue

April 15th, 2015 at 8:07 PM ^

I was somewhat intimidated by the math requirements for an ME degree from Michigan. I failed a precalc class at the school I transferred from in fact. My grades in calc 1, 2, and 3 were all A's. Got a B in diff q. All I did was went to every class and met with my professor as much as possible if I needed help, and practiced a lot. You can do it! Don't let math intimidate you or discourage you. Anybody can learn it!



Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad

JamieH

April 15th, 2015 at 7:27 PM ^

how much Calculus would they be making you take?  I APed out of Calc I and to this day Calc II was one of the hardest classes I've ever taken in my life (after a billion hours of studying I ended up with a B+).  At least when I went to Michigan it was known as a "weeder" class where they basically are looking to weed out people in majors like Engineering who wouldn't be able to hack it. 

Calc I probably wouldn't be too bad, but Calc II starts getting into some tougher stuff.  And this is coming from someone who found Algebra II to be cakewalk easy, like do it in my sleep easy.  So if you don't even have Algebra II under your belt you are really really not ready for Calc. 

Not trying to dissuade you from anything, you can get there if you want to work your @$$ off.  But you'll have to put some major work in to get caught up.

AZ-Blue

April 15th, 2015 at 4:40 PM ^

And you don't even know what calculus is?   Probably a safe bet you won't find yourself on the admission end of a UM transfer application.  It's never too late to learn but given the fact you spend every waking moment on MgoBlog, the prospects ain't looking good.

ChemBlue

April 15th, 2015 at 5:29 PM ^

Followed your posts on here a bit, and I am saving my all my responses for one post.  I, like you, seem to have traveled a unique path to a Bachelor's degree.  Neither set of my parents (OG parents got divorced and then remarried) would help me pay for college in any way.  The Fed goverment determined that they had to pay a certain amount before the Fed would give me loans. Long story somewhat short, I went to community colllege until I was 24 (the age at which I was able to get loans without the gov looking at the parents for support).  Anyway, I went the way of taking classes that would only transfer to a 4 year institution.  I finally received my B.S. in chemistry from NMIMT (look it up, they need the recognition), and a Ph.D. in Chem from UMich.  I also feel for you in the math department.  I passed all of my qualifying exams at UF (see below), but I didn't think I understood Quantum Chemistry very well.  My advisor ultimately got very annoyed with me and let me take Quantum again, but I had to take the class for people who passed the qualifer (i.e. Quantum Majors).  We did things with matrices in that class that I did not know were possible/legal.  Anyway,  if you ever need help with math, hit me up.  If I can't help you, my wife might be able to (she is an environmental engineer who wants to teach highschool math.  Remember, if it involves Quantum Chemistry, you can't go wrong putting "particle indistinguishability" as an answer.  That or 42, because you know, 42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

My dark secret: I started graduate school at UF before following my mentor to UM.  I liked Urban Meyer when I was at UF (I left b4 the grad assistant gave him heart palpitations). 

 

Mocha Cub

April 15th, 2015 at 6:39 PM ^

I rarely neg anyone on here because it seems so petty, but your comment really does deserve it. I really can't stand people that feel the need to shit on another person's dream, especially when it's just for the sake of doing it.

Michigan Arrogance

April 15th, 2015 at 4:45 PM ^

do you have to  take calc at UM ot transfer in with it? and what calc? business calc isn't bad, and calc at a CC isn't terrible. Calc 115 &116 at UM are challenging.

The biggest problem people have with calc is neither the calc concepts (which are basically slope and area) nor the skills, but all the pre-calc stuff you need to be able to to just to analyze the problems. Strong Geometry, trig, and VERY strong function & graphical analysis and algebra skills make the Calc course MUCH easier.

mgoblue0970

April 15th, 2015 at 6:45 PM ^

Calculus (calc 1 at least) is really just algebra from a different angle. 

For example, a derivative is one of the fundamental things you'll learn in calc 1.  If you have to take the derivative of x^3, you may not realize that you already know it.  The calc formula is:

d/dx = f(x)' ... so take the exponent, which is 3, make it a coefficient to x, and now you have 3x.  You also have to subtract 1 from the exponent too... 3-1 = 2.  Two is now your exponent.  So the derivative of x^3 is 3x^2.

You learned all that shit already.  In 7th or 8th grade you didn't know what a derivative was but you knew what a coefficient is and how to perform operations on exponents.

Don't get psyched out by it before your first class.  Later on is an ass whooping though.

Don't be afraid to seek tutoring either.  I had to.  There's lots of support on campus because we all went through it, it sucks, and the journey is what makes us a family (well except for the SJWs, they can sit at the little kids table like on Thanksgiving for all I care). 

The biggest problem with freshman at Michigan IMHO is they have been the best and brightest at everything they have touched for their 17 or 18 years on the planet -- which isn't shit.  Michigan is big boy land.  It is the first place many people get anything less than an A.  For many, that first "failure" (it's not, it's being human) is traumatic.  Moral of the story -- nobody is perfect and don't sweat the small shit.

 

HipsterCat

April 15th, 2015 at 4:48 PM ^

My dad's a buckeye, I didnt really follow sports growing up until I got to college (at UM) but I would root for them cause my dad did. But I grew out of it and now my dad roots for michigan sometimes because my mom hopped on the blue bandwagon with me and my brother both there. 

Yostbound and Down

April 15th, 2015 at 4:31 PM ^

I'm not sure if it's a dark secret, but even though I'm a die-hard fan now back when I was growing up in the 90s and even early 2000s I would often not bother watching every game; there's always other sports going on or chores to do on Saturdays, youth soccer especially for me. I remember parts of the 97 season as probably the first year I was fairly locked in but I followed the 06 team for example much more closely. Thank god for Wolverine Historian and the great Michigan books by Bo, Bacon, etc to get me caught up, and then MGoBlog to follow the teams closely now.