Having ten dollars, Carson can send an application to only one college. As he considers which to choose, he determines that he will never again get “sidetracked by the need for peer approval”—the factor which, he says, kept him from being first in his high school graduating class (74). He chooses Yale, and when he receives his acceptance, he greets the news “calmly, and perhaps even a bit arrogantly, reminding myself that I had already accomplished just about everything I’d set out to do” (74). Although he expected to take Yale “by storm,” he finds himself for the first time surrounded by students who exceed his capabilities. His study techniques from high school—reading whatever he wants to and then cramming for exams—turns out not to work, to his great surprise.

His impending final in chemistry at the end of the first semester becomes the make-or-break moment. “I didn’t have the slightest hope of passing chemistry, because I hadn’t kept up with the material,” he recalls. If he fails chemistry, he cannot stay in the pre-med program, which will end his dream of becoming a doctor. He prays for guidance about what he should do if he cannot be a doctor, and cannot think of anything.