My University offered three summer semesters. These were a crazy intense two week called pre summer, and two damned intensive summer semesters.
Again I'm not brilliant, but I'm smart enough to realize that spending a whole bunch of time in an educational institution is a devastating waste of time, so even before my first freshman fall semester I enrolled in all three of those summer semesters and knocked out some English and American history courses. I also signed up for tennis and racquetball classes that were scheduled right after those academic classes. I already played those sports - but hadn't had any formal instruction, and those classes helped me.
For the remainder of those summers (in addition to hitting required Baccalaureate crap classes in all three of those intensive summer semesters) I either went off to Interlochen, played tuba in a jazz band in a theme park, or eventually ended up with enough gigs and recording sessions and crap like that to keep myself busy enough and enough money coming in. I also even found time for working on difficult tuba passages and solo works, as I was playing huge catch up in college with the tuba, as I had not ever really spent much serious time with it certainly not compared to the guitar.
Taking care of the baccalaureate degree required crap - mostly in the summers - allowed me to sign up for several ensembles each semester, and spend more time with individual practice. I usually ended up with 21 to 23 credits per regular fall and spring semesters, and I think I was given two grades of B during the entire time I was there. I'm not boasting here either, because it was not considered a very highly academic university, I will say that (today) I would suspect that the academic standards are considerably lower than then, however. One thing that was good was that the tuition per semester was probably only about 150 bucks, even though I never paid it in the fall and spring, but had to pony up for those individual classes in the summers. Another good thing was that the textbook rip-off fascistic gimmick wasn't as well established as it is today, and I was always able to find used textbooks for four or five bucks either in the on-campus co-op or off campus locations. My Dad found out that I was paying for myself (in the summers) and told me that he expected to pay for my college, but that's the only check he ever gave me for any tuition was that one time... LOL Having up grown 13 years behind my brother, I learned - from watching my brother - that I should never ask my Dad to buy me any $h!t at all, and to just figure out how to get it for myself. (My dad actually sent my brother to a private college, and even sent my sister to the Sorbonne in Paris.) As early as 10th grade I learned to buy all of my own clothes, because otherwise my mother would buy them and those that she chose (as she had been a commercial artist, and studied in Iowa with Grant Wood - back in the 1930's) would probably encourage people at my high school to question my sexual proclivities and challenge me to fights.
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