Yesterday (Monday the 24th) was the first day of a brand new year in college. I am perhaps one of the slowest moving college students currently alive. I started my college career (and given how long I've been in college, career is an apt word) way back in the fall of 2008. It is now the fall of 2012. Yup, if you calculated it properly you'd come to 5 years of college. And yet, no degree to show for any of it. I've changed my major at least 20 times, flunked a half dozen classes, been placed on academic probation two or three times, and have missed entire quarters (in Washington we use quarters not semesters. So it's three quarters for an academic year, unless you're a smart student and then you do summer quarter as well) due to lack of financing. Well, none of that has clearly stopped me altogether from pursuing a degree.
As luck would have it, I'm still in that college-age group of students. So no one can tell that I've been in school for 5 bleeding years, seemingly stagnating in the rut of higher education. I intend to stomp that stagnation into oblivion this quarter. Turns out I'm over halfway through to a degree (finally!) and if I do well in this class, I get another one for Christmas (my parents awesome way of helping me achieve my degree). Now for that first day.
I had meticulously chosen a class that goes toward my degree, fulfills that final Humanities requirement, and is late enough in the day that I can sleep in on the mornings. Well screw that. My brother had chosen classes that require me to wake up at 7 in the morning. That seems normal to most people, but here in this homeschooled family, we're used to getting up at 9 or 10. I grudgingly got out of bed around 7:10 and attempted to put together an outfit. I had planned on doing it the night before, but I got distracted with cleaning my room, organizing my desk for the impending mounds of homework, and putting together my backpack in that way that we women have (you know that way, the one where we have to take our entire house in our bags). I actually managed to pack my bags in the most unwomanly way possible. The duct tape is even staying home (I always carry a roll with me just in case).
I ate breakfast, reminded my brother to grab his trail mix that I had promptly made the night before, and headed out the warm door to the very chilly outside. By the time we made it to campus, it was sunny and warming up (but not fast enough, so I still had to wear my coat all day). There was a benefit to having arrived on campus before 9 o'clock: plenty of parking spaces! This has been an issue in the past, particularly for this school. They built a new parking lot the year I wasn't here and it pushed back ultimate fill-up time an hour, so the parking lots are crammed shut with vehicles by 9:30 instead of 8-8:30. I no longer have to worry about parking, which is a serious time saver.
My brother and I decided to cut through the student center to see how it's changed since last we attended here (we both transferred to a junior college in the city as opposed to our navy town junior college. The city one didn't work as planned so we're back to the navy town). He only had 10 minutes before his first class so he popped in, said hello to some familiar faces, then ducked out as quickly as possible. My first and only class didn't start until 1:00 in the afternoon, which gave me 4 hours to kill (twice a week!). So I was able to soak in the new layout of the center, see who was still around, and become familiar with some new faces.
The student center's primary layout is still the same. There's the front of the building with it's walls of glass that have doors hidden in them (my mother had the hilarious experience of walking towards what she thought was a door, but turned out to be a window. I was the only one who laughed at her, but students were smiling and shaking their heads). Once through the difficult-to-see-doors, you're standing in a spacious lobby. Off to the left is the bookstore, to the right is the cafeteria. Continue along the right to the back and you get the food area (it's neither a cafe or a restaurant. It's like a stadium really, different foodies offered and ordered at different stations, but you pay at the same cash register). While still standing in the lobby, straight ahead are the back doors that lead to one of the parking lots and back passages to the Physical Education building.
Keep standing in the lobby. Continue on now with the left to the back and you get the Student Lounge. It used to have a very unkind nickname that I can't for the life of me remember. The lounge is where the stagnating or failing students hang out. Some of them do indeed finish college with a degree, but the majority of them fester away in that lounge. The lounge is home to vulgarity of every kind, intense magic the gathering play, anime addicts, druggies, computer junkies, and poorly dressed persons. It is frequently the loudest part of the center and the uncleanliest. Here you may find your hicks, slobs, sluts, and general losers at life. This isn't to say everyone who hangs out there falls into any of those categories, but it is often the case. I know many people who were good students who hung out there because that's where all their friends went, and before the quarter was out they had fallen victim to it, and were no longer good students nor savory characters.
It is often a dingy, low-lit, crowded area where seating is hard to find, and women often sit on the laps of men (which is kind of cute if you're dating the guy and there really isn't anywhere to sit. Any other time, it's flat out creepy), not to mention there are never enough tables to do anything (in the case of the loungers play cards, in the case of students study-time). Well, this year they fixed it substantially though the student body has not. The carpet has been replaced with something much brighter. They either removed or rearranged the lounge chairs so that they now have a half dozen or so tables with normal chairs. Now students can sit and easily play games or if they're smart, study! The students however have gotten louder and more vulgar.
I will not be visiting the lounge again.
I headed to the back of the building after many hours wasted watching over bags, being reacquainted with people that I will never take home to my parents, and wondering why these students even bother speaking English at all if they purposefully choose to limit their vocabulary to words of crudity, vulgarity and sheer stupidity. And I don't care who you are or where you come from, jokes of sex and rape are never funny, especially the latter. I also apparently got roped into some bullying forum thing where they discuss both sides of bullying. I'm fine with talking about my experiences with bullying, so long as it's a one-time shot. I'm not joining a club for it, and I'm not spending any amount of time on it. I'm here for an education in my field, not to promote anti-bullying (seriously, if you want to prevent bullying don't partake in it and teach your kids not to do it).
Anyway, I headed back to the MCR (multi-cultural room) which is considerably cleaner and quieter. Not to mention Jodi makes sure there is no vulgarity of any sort within the confines of the MCR. All the smart kids come here or head over to the library. The MCR is home to the international students, and it's home to where I did a lot of tutoring. I saw a few familiar faces and a lot of new ones. The familiar faces actually remembered me and seemed happy to see me (don't know if it was genuine or they were just being nice, either way I appreciated it). Then I saw Jodi, who totally remembered me and gave me a hug. Before I ran off to class, she said she was happy to see everybody (I guess she was just coming into the office) and especially to see me. That made my day. I was so happy, that someone actually cared that I was back in school.
I went to class with a smile on my face and a happiness in my heart that is still there. The class I am taking is a creative writing course that is split into two sections: short story & long narrative. I took the short story 3 years ago so this time round I'm shooting for the long narrative (which I struggle with). I am taking the course from the same professor as last time, Prof. Ian Sherman. This guy is oozing with personality and is a theatrical lecturer which makes it impossible to fall asleep in his class, not that I'd want to sleep in his class anyway. The texts are still the same so I didn't need to go and buy new ones. Hallelujah!
I don't know why but the class is held in the business building, but the room is bigger than when it was in the engineering building. Maybe in another three years they'll finally place creative writing in the same building as all the other English classes, or it'll end up in shop. (facepalm anyone?) Well, Prof. Sherman doesn't disappoint. He's just as fun & funny as he was three years ago, and still just as bad with names. He did make the class harder and increase the workload, but those are things I was hoping for. I want a challenge and I want to learn what he has to offer a student who wants to write for life. So it's a good set-up.
Until next time (I have one more post for today that'll be up much, much later) this is the Amazon Artiste signing off.
Post Script (Thursday the 27th): I remembered the name for the Student Lounge. It's "The Loser Lounge." As stated previously, it's extremely unfriendly.
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