Community College Blues

Okay, it all started when my professor was preparing us for the test we have on Thursday by telling us we needed to bring our scientific calculators and a Scantron sheet. Bring a Scantron?? That right there started my mind spinning. So when class was over, I asked said professor, where do we get these Scantrons? Why, the Scantron vending machine at the end of the hall, of course! Now, I've seen some odd vending machines in Japan: beer vending machines, residential condom vending machines, porn vending machines...but none have inspired such depression as the Scantron-and-bluebook-vending machine in the Math and Technology Building. Have we really nickel-and-dimed education so badly so that my tuition fees don't cover the cost of taking a test by multiple choice anymore??

And while I was down over the $1.40 I had to shell out for a Scantron882, those other ridiculous things about community college, which on some days strike me as kitschy, started to fucking piss me off. The fact that outside of my classroom there are decorations suited for an elementary school, like pictures of Mount Rushmore with the words "Mount Rushmore" written in dot letters; a "Happy Birthday" poster written for someone, but written as "Happy Brithday!", also in dot letters; Print Shop banners decorating classrooms saying cool catch phrases such as "What's up?", potentially but not necessarily in dot letters. Then it hit me: these people are in COMMUNITY COLLEGE. They have (almost) all come here straight from high school and taken their high school values right with them. Wearing your high school colorguard t-shirt is prefectly acceptable. Loitering to smoke cigarettes in the parking lot carries a certain meaning. And do not even get me started on the amount of bass in that parking lot. Just waiting to turn onto the street that goes to that stupid parking lot means that I will inevitably be in front of (or behind or both) some car with bass loud enough to make my windshield vibrate. These doods are not joking. They are all still stuck in permanent senioritis.

All these thoughts were swirling in my head, and I was getting more and more irritado. I walked back to my car through a sea of loiterers, bass, and fire ant piles. I hopped into the sanctuary of my car, ready to vacate these losers stuck in high school. Plugged in my i-pod, and the first song to come on was "Blister in the Sun" by the Violent Femmes. Hmmmm...now who's stuck in high school??