We were over at H.O.M.E.S. having lunch today after Folk Festival Weekend and before Lizard Breath had to head home for the work week to come.

We were talking about going back to school after you have been in the work force for a while. I did that, not to mention I was in the MOM force for a WHILE (like when I went back to school, I had two kids in college, one of them on study abroad). I did not go to grad school, I went to community college. I LOVED it there. The program I was enrolled in was fun and challenging and it ultimately resulted in my Adult Career, which you know I love because I blather on about it quite regularly.

Community colleges provide low-cost educations to students who cannot for whatever reason (money or grades or whatever) go to say UMich or Kalamazoo College. Community colleges change lives. WCC changed mine. The main requirement to enroll is to pay the tuition.

The flip side of accepting anyone who applies is that, well, at least the intro classes have a mixed bag of folks of varying capabilities when it comes to reading, writing, critical thinking, and FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS!

My first assignment was a writing assignment. One page. The [wonderful] instructor was very specific about the requirements, including that it had to be PRINTED *BEFORE* class. I arrived at class with my printed homework assignment in hand to find a queue of people up at the teacher’s podium. “My printer broke.” “I tried to print my homework in the library and it didn’t work.” “I wanted to do the homework, I tried to do the homework, yada yada yada… … …” Jeebus.

The yada yada person totally washed out of the class a few weeks later in a spectacular way. He arrived about an hour late one morning. He was wearing a Stars-n-Stripes hat (this was before MAGA hats). Instead of slinking in with a quick “sorry I’m late” to the prof, he announced his arrival loudly by saying how he was late because he had helped a woman change a taaaaar somewhere.

Okay. After that, he found his way to his usual seat. Unfortunately, he didn’t Shut Up. He began a loud conversation with his quiet young class neighbor about that person’s name and then told that neighbor that *he himself* had been The Sword Excalibur in a previous life. Yes he really said that.

And then he left the room…

When he returned, he passed out vending musheen packets of M&Ms for all of the women in the room, not the men. (I did eat mine.) At that point I was trying to figger what drug he was taking, not that I would’ve known. And as Lizard Breath said when I told this story today, I was trying as hard as I could to stifle laughter. Excalibur? Really?

These were three hour classes so at the break the instructor crooked her finger at the Stars-n-Stripes hat guy to meet her out in the hall. He did not return to that class. Ever.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 28th, 2018 at 6:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.