How Did I Get Here?

Quote of the Day: “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.”

Today I helped my son enroll in his last course load of high school.

If you recall, he is part of the Running Start program which allows a high school student to take classes at the local community college for credits that satisfy his high school requirements, thus he gets both high school and college credit, all on the high school dime.

Sweet.

When he first signed up for this, it was late in the summer (last year) and all of the classes at the nearest community college (Bellevue) were full so he had to enroll at the Green River Community College which takes about 40 minutes to drive to.

Not so sweet.

I have had some issues with Green River, mostly having to do with their uncooperative staff that wouldn’t talk to me nor resolve an issue with an online class. I know they won’t talk to parents (no leeway on that at all which I found rather rude) but they wouldn’t even investigate a glitch in their online test-taking procedures which in turn caused my son to fail a test.

Poor form, Green River.

For this reason and to head off another year of 40+ minutes of commute both ways, we are going to enroll Alex in Bellevue College. Not only is this closer (15 minutes) but it is, by all accounts, a better school.

But of course it’s not without its red tape tomfoolery.

For example, we called up the school to get some advice on classes. Here is where we were at:

Alex wants to get a degree in graphic arts, specifically computer graphic arts. We needed to know what was the best course of study for him. We guessed there was some kind of predetermined course for this, maybe through the arts and science department. We didn’t know, we just needed to get a foothold on where to get looking.

Here is basically how the conversation went:

Me: Hi, I need to schedule an appointment with a counselor for my son.
BC: Is he enrolled?
Me: No, he needs to talk to a counselor to see what course of study to take.
BC: He needs to be enrolled to talk to a counselor
Me: But, you see, to ENROLL, he needs the advice of a counselor. COUNSEL, if you will.
BC: He must enroll and then he can make an appointment with a counselor
Me: How does he know what to enroll in without talking to a counselor to figure out, wait for it,…. what to enroll for?
BC: We have limited counselors so their appointments are reserved for students who are enrolled.
Me: So you leave it to the students to figure out what to enroll in so the counselors can tell them they enrolled for the wrong course for what they are pursuing,
BC: He needs to be enrolled to talk to a counselor
Me: Yeah, you said that. I want to thank you for your help. Your assistance has been a breath of fresh air in this age of red tape and low job performance.

Click.

As though my son gets his jollies from signing up for counseling appointments at local colleges without any intention on going there. It’s a little game he likes to play to pass the time and clog the system.

In other news, my son starts classes tomorrow and he waits until now to broach the issue of actually having a textbook.

Dad and Craig’s List to the rescue.

We found the book he needed but it was in Gig Harbor. I called and set up a meeting at a grocery store in Tacoma. I was kind of excited because I had never been that deep into Tacoma and had never crossed the Narrows Bridge.

We got a sweet deal on the book and I assume it was Mommy and Daddy picking up the bill for this kid so selling it for peanuts after he was done wasn’t likely a big deal for Junior. All the better for me. All it cost me is some gas and a trip to Tacoma. On a Tuesday night, there was no traffic and I got to spend time with my son.

We got to the parking lot and after a series of phone calls, we met up and it went down like a drug deal. He pulled his car up to mine, I slid him a wad of money, and he handed over the book.

Man, did I feel like a gangsta.

On the way home, we hit a Taco Bell and I have to say, I had a good time talking with my son and sharing a Taco Hell dinner (the wife and daughter could take it or leave it so now it’s kind of “our thing.”)

Oh, and if you have never been across the Narrow’s Bridge, it’s AWESOME!

Free Advice for Today: “Never compromise integrity.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at 9:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.