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As a freshman, Michael Gyetvan tried to defy every cliche used to describe devoted students – bookworm, hitting the books, all-nighters – after he successfully completed 36.5 college credit hours this past spring semester.
Typically, college students need to take 12 credit hours a semester to be considered a full-time student.
Gyetvan, who graduated from Huntley High School, accomplished this feat by taking 15 credit hours while attending class at Western Illinois University. He then took 18 credit hours online at McHenry County College and an additional 3.5 hours online at Brigham Young University.
His transcripts show a 3.2 cumulative GPA from the spring, with his lowest grade being a “C-” in a general studies class from BYU. His highest grade was an “A” in botany at Western.
In the fall 2011 semester, Gyetvan took 21.5 credit hours, after completing some college coursework in the spring of that year – only weeks after he received his high school diploma.
All told, Gyetvan, 19, finished one year of schooling with 70 earned hours, when freshmen typically have completed 30 hours of coursework.
He also isn’t stopping. Gyetvan plans on taking 15 credit hours this summer at Harper College, while trying to finish his coursework for a clinical lab science degree by next spring. He then hopes to focus solely on a internship before trying to graduate in three years.
With a semester of juggling classes, homework and sleep behind him, Gyetvan met with reporter Stephen Di Benedetto to talk about what motivated him to take a demanding course load and how he accomplished it.
Di Benedetto: Why do you want to skip a year of college?
Gyetvan: I wanted to prove to everyone that labeled me a troublemaker or a bad student [in high school] that I could do something that no one else could.
Di Benedetto: Did you get in trouble while in high school? Where did that label come from?
Gyetvan: I actually went to the library, and they didn’t allow that. That was the best way for me to study, and they won’t let you go during an advisory period. I kept going, and they kept calling my parents, so they were actually distracting me from learning and studying. I wanted to show them that I was not the problem.
Di Benedetto: I would imagine taking 36.5 credit hours one semester and taking 21.5 credit hours the semester before, without taking a substantial break since high school, is difficult. How do you manage that? How stressful has that been?
Gyetvan: It’s been very stressful. I just try to focus and relax as much as I could. That’s probably the best thing I could have done with my time, considering what most college kids do. I would stay up at least two nights a week, all night, doing homework.
Di Benedetto: How did you juggle the assignments from all these classes?
Gyetvan: What I would do is once I got an assignment for class, I would do it as soon as I could. We had projects due at the end of the year, and I did them the first day I got them. I would stay up all the night and just do them, so I wouldn’t get backed up. I actually finished my lab assignment homework for botany within the first week of school.
Di Benedetto: What do you think completing 36.5 credit hours in one semester says about you?
Gyetvan: That I’m a hard worker, dedicated definitely. I plan to tell everyone, professional internships that I’ll be applying to, that I can handle a lot at one time. It just feels good to do something like that. Doing that alone, I’m proud of myself.
Di Benedetto: What’s the key to accomplishing this?
Gyetvan: You have to be confident that you can do anything. I walked out of this thinking I could do anything. You have to really, really want it. A lot of kids go to college and are not serious about it, and that’s why they don’t get the grades they want.