Geesh! No wonder he has an inferiority complex about his education. The guy struggled with freshman level courses in his senior year at an Ag school and still had to be given a pass for just showing up to graduate. Some excerpts from link.
But, the point of Olbermann's lecture wasn't good fortune but "moral force," he said. He told a story of how he had struggled in the freshman chemistry course he needed to complete that senior year, when a kindly teaching assistant offered him an "A" in the class's lab, only if Olbermann continued to be diligent in his work.
"Here he was not necessarily cutting corners, not necessarily undermining the standards of the university, not really risking anything of his own," Olbermann said. "But nonetheless, he was factoring in the human equation, some sense of proportion into the rigid formulas of our lives."
But there was a reason that phone call to the registrar's office was the longest five minutes of Olbermann's life. The problem arose because in the frenetic spring semester of his senior year, he needed to complete 27 credit hours in order to graduate. He got 28.
"[It was] alleged at the time to be an all-time tie for the university record," said Olbermann, who recalled the courses: history, freshman chemistry, biology, introductory physics, two courses in English, an advanced communications course, three credits as a teaching assistant, one hour credit for an internship and one credit for an independent project. All this on top of 40 hours a week working at WVBR in Ithaca. How did he do it? He might have missed a few lectures, he admitted.
Olbermann described how the person he spoke to in the registrar's office prolonged his agony by checking a few things before giving him his answer.
"Did you know you can sweat from your eyelids?" Olbermann said, "My entire life flashed before me. That American history class, which I had dutifully attended maybe six or seven times was going to do me in. My job search was for nothing. My career was on hold. I would have to clean beer steins at Rulloff's all summer and pay my own way."
The office finally affirmed that Olbermann had graduated, he said. "I did not stop panting until I handed my father my diploma and said, 'Here's your receipt,' and told him to beat it out of town as fast as the car would go, before they changed their minds."
