I am going to be taking two classes at a community college this summer. I have to take Spanish 4 and a lab science in order to graduate in December, and I decided to take them at Ivy Tech. There are three reasons that I decided to do this: 1) because I hate Spanish and Biology and want them to be over ASAP and summer courses are short 2) because Ivy Tech is ridiculously cheap compared to Purdue and 3) because my adviser told me they would be incredibly easy there.
B and I went to an informational meeting at Ivy Tech yesterday so I could see the campus and learn how to register.
From the moment I was greeted at the door by a young man who was just a little too friendly and self important, a strange feeling came over me. The presenter began by saying that he himself was a graduate of community college and was very partial to it. I immediately wrote him off as uneducated.
I wanted everyone to know that I go to a REAL college, you know, a 4-year university that is for enriching my mind, and not just helping me find a job.
I resented everyone around me: the fifty year old coming back to school at this pathetic little college, the 18 year old with a seriously loathsome dye job who looked so utterly bored with life, the couple in their mid-twenties with the whiny baby who were worried about passing the placement exam and not being admitted at all (the presenter reassured them that everyone gets accepted).
On the way home I realized that it was my own insecurities that were making me want so badly to separate myself from those people. After all, shouldn't I be impressed with anyone who wants to learn and better themselves? Some of them may be getting more education than anyone in their family, they may be working full-time just to send themselves to school, they may go on to a 4-year university and end up with a PhD. Am I so much better than them? Wasn't my New Year's Resolution to be more gracious?
Unfortunately, even though I want to be more gracious, I am still me. And a part of me, even with all the reasoning that I did with myself, feels that college is about learning for the sake of learning; it's a journey which helps you discover who you are, and how to be a decent citizen, and how to think about the world. That in a way, it might be wrong of Ivy Tech to take these people's money and tell them that they have graduated from college. Yes, they gave them a credential that will help them get a job, but college? No, I don't think that is what Ivy Tech is.
So good for the people who want to make more money and better themselves, and good for community colleges all over for giving them the opportunity.
But, even though my Marxist stratification professor would kill me for saying this, college is not a right, and it's hard work, and not everyone can do it.
I think it's important to note that Ivy Tech fulfills none of those requirements.
*I just have to mention, there was a mistake on the Ivy Tech pens that the presenter handed out. A word on the pen was missing a much needed apostrophe. I mean, come on.*
1 comment:
I taught at Ivy Tech for a few months and had similar experiences.
As a side note, what's up with the sculpture in the front w/ all the hands and legs and arms and butt cheeks?
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