Sam in Stanford, how many years?

How many years did Sam spent in Stanford? We've talked about it and we can't get in agreement.

Kripke himself has said that he spent 2 ½ years. But for Sam's age, he could have spent 4.
so how do you want to do it?

"....it was actually a mistake. Sam's character is supposed to be a Junior in college and starting the interviewing process for Law School. So he spent his Freshman year and his Sophomore year away from Dean, and hasn't seen Dean then this is beginning of Junior year, it's Fall of Junior year so it's been technically two years as he's beginning the process. Becuase of what happened 22 years ago he was slightly older than what a Junior should be so no one sort of thought that he was a Junior so there was a lot of discussion about these two lost years, and I'm just like Hehe, just a mistake!"
Eric Kripke

(I took that from the original topic, Supernaturally Obsessed had posted it)

This post has been edited by RockGirl on Dec 28 2006, 09:10 PM

I originally voted for the 2 and a half years, but since reading this:

Eric Kripke acknowledged during a panel at the 2006 William S. Paley Television Festival that they made a mistake in the script - initially Sam was meant to be 20, then they aged him up to 22, but neglected to change Dean's line from "two years" to "four years". I.e. The creators' intention is that Sam has been at college for four years.

(http://supernatural.oscillating.net/index.php?title=Canon_Discrepancies#Dean.27s_Police_Records)

I'm confused enough that I take my vote back and don't really care which way it goes.

Oh God, I just read that Nicole, and I feel like they just quoted me, haha. Perhaps I should get a byline...

I don't really care what we do with it, I just need a date to put on my entry.

I guess that's one way of looking at it. The only thing is, I kind of don't want to lose the writers' intentions. If according to Kripke, "Sam's character is supposed to be a Junior in college and starting the interviewing process for Law School." then, changing that would be like taking away an aspect of the character, that they had in mind. I dunno. Either way, I'll deal.

Lol, yeah that's funny...maybe you should apply or something. Personally, I've always assumed that Sam was away for the four years because Dean says it in Hookman and I didn't figure you'd be making applications to law school until your senior year. I thought that the two years Dean refers to in the Pilot meant that they'd had some kind of contact during Sam's college years though very limited.

Having said that, I suppose if Sam was taking accelerated classes and going through with summer classes, he could've been in his last year after 2 1/2 - 3 years - but man, what a load. He'd have been one busy and stressed out puppy. But, even if you went with that theory, Dean's Hookman comment doesn't make any sense at all - I mean by then surely the writers were aware of the "mistake" that had been made????

I figure canon means what has aired, not the creator's intention. But, if you look at Dean's police records, how do you reconcile that? In Benders, he's 6'4 with green eyes, but in Usual Suspects he's 6'1 with brown eyes. What the ? is up with that? His eyes are so not brown and did he suddenly shrink? I really wish the writers would pay more attention to those kinds of details because it really bugs the heck out of me. I guess they could say the police made the mistake?

Anyhow, I think what has aired is canon, so what we are really discussing is whether to stick with canon or not. I figure Kripke will forgive us either way considering how messed up it really is. Even though it has always been 4 years in my mind, its not like I can't handle going with the 2 1/2 years simply because I'm easy like that

Okay, will someone please tell my husband to stop laughing...I didn't mean easy like THAT.

Well, we lost the Rose Bowl to USC so I needed something Supernatural
to cheer me up. As is happens, I've thought about Sam's Stanford years a lot - I
needed to come up with a reasonable timeline for a missing scene/flashback story.

We know that Sam was born on May 2, 1983. I'm a late May kid myself and
that means that if Sam went through school at the normal starting ages, he
was one of the youngest kids in his school class year. Despite his brains, given the
amount of moving around they did growing up, I don't think he skipped any
grades, either. So, Sam graduated when he was 18, but he was barely 18 - which
also means that was 18 for his freshman year at college, 19 as a sophomore, etc.

So, Sam started college August/September 2001, when he was 18. This is also
supported by the scholarship "full ride to Stanford" that he got. The faculty/teacher
recommendation is a standard, but important part of any scholarship application.
Given the Winchesters' nomadic lifestyle, the chances of Sam spending his
junior and senior high school years at the same school are probably less than 50/50, which means that Sam's teacher recommendation probably came from one
of his high school senior teachers. They'd be most likely to remember and
give a solid recommendation to one of their current students, not a previous student who wrote a letter asking for a recommendation. If Sam applied for and
received a scholarship in his senior year, it'd be effective the start of the next
school year - you don't win a scholarship and put it on hold for a couple of years,
it doesn't work that way.

Also, in "Bugs" Sam asks Matt how old he is (16), then says "...in two years, something wonderful will happen". He'll turn 18 and go to college, as Sam did.
You do the math. If Sam started college in September 2001, then when Dean
came to see him Halloween weekend 2005, he was 22 and in his FIFTH year at Stanford. That's not as far-fetched as it sounds, either. For at least the past 5 years or so, it's been increasingly common for students to take 5 years to get their
undergrad degree. Granted, Sam had a full 4-year scholarship, but the easiest
way to need a fifth year to finish your degree is to switch your major. So, Sam
started out a declared history/engineering/computer science/take your pick
major and switched to pre-law sometime in his third or fourth year, necessitating
in a fifth year to meet all his pre-law course requirements. This also covers
why he had his interview in his fifth collegiate year (if it's normal to be interviewing
for law school in your junior year), he didn't have enough of the required
pre-law courses to be a serious candidate until then.

Lastly, there's "Skin". My take on Zach Warren is that he and Sam are/were in the
same college class - I'd like to think that they were dorm roommates in their freshman year. So, Zach graduated in the normal 4 years and was living in his home town of St. Louis when the events in Skin occurred. As a lot of people do, he married the summer after he graduated from college. "Little Becky" is Zach's
older sister, attending graduate school at Stanford when she decides to take the
semester off to help defend her brother. Sam can totally relate to having an
older sibling who's also 'littler' than he is

Kazy
PS - I am totally ignoring the whole Winchester Universe calendar being
two days off from real life - there are some things you just can't explain
away. BTW, 2005 and 1983 are the same year, in terms of Christmas-is-a-Monday,
Halloween-is-a-Saturday, in other words, they are the exact same year-type
in a perpetual calendar. Cool!

Well to be a pain in the ass, I always have Sam in my head as Junior in college, who was just a few month into that year before Dean came back...hence being at college for a two years and a couple months...