Ghetto Kids Baggy Pants

01/20/2014 by Pat Shiplett Leave a Comment

Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman

There are kids here who spent years rushing home from high school before the evenings turned dangerous. Parents got home too late for schoolwork. They’ve never been to Awards Night.

They look through a fence built around them and wonder if life on the other side is only for kids richer and luckier than them.

Community colleges provide acetylene and oxygen, and when students get the mixture just right, they burn through metal. Tuition is relatively inexpensive by 4-year college standards. With hard work and luck, they’ll finally transfer to a university. They’ll need those goggles every step of the way.

Rich kids at community college

01/17/2014 by Pat Shiplett Leave a Comment

Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman.

There is a group of nicely turned-out kids you would expect to find at prestigious universities rather than at a community college.

Some of them have confided to me (a safe uncle that won’t lecture them) that they had botched high school; others have limped home after a semester or two at college. This is way traumatic for the children of high-expectation zip codes. Community colleges offer a path to redemption—and older students particularly embrace the gift of a do-over.

You and I will meet these kids again. One of them may stabilize our vital signs on the way to an emergency room, another may ping the OS that allows us to control a car when we are deep into our dotage.

Sexual predators, I feel safe

01/15/2014 by Pat Shiplett Leave a Comment

Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman

The rumors of today’s college students being relentless sexual predators are categorically false. I feel safe here.

Oakton Campus descripton

01/15/2014 by Pat Shiplett Leave a Comment

Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman

The campus of our local community college sits in the next suburb over. For most of us students, it’s a short drive to the two-story, y-shaped building.

It’s a humanely engineered space that’s all glass and angles and sunlight.

It originally served as a high school with the needs of teenagers in mind. But its abundance of restrooms seemed to have anticipated us older, prostate-challenged scholars and, as a throwback to gentler times it has plenty of drinking fountains.

There are large multi-function conference rooms throughout the campus and I reserved one when my Earth-Science lab team needed a long flat surface to assemble our 5-meter (16.4 feet) geological timescale. It amazed my young partners that a lowly freshman, including them, could approach the school’s staff for special accommodations.

That may have been a lasting lesson they took away from the assignment.
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Warning to new students

01/14/2014 by Pat Shiplett Leave a Comment

Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman

“This is not high school.” is a mantra we heard often. Professors routinely warned that we’re responsible for chapters not covered during lectures.

At the beginning of the semester they would give a running countdown to the “drop date.” Up until then, students can drop a class without getting an “incomplete” slapped on their transcripts. I bailed on Philosophy of Religion—the sheer amount of work required by fifteen credit hours was more than I had expected. I didn’t get a refund on tuition. Unlike most students I don’t have to explain my drop to my dear parents, may they rest in peace.