| Biographical Non-Fiction posted August 5, 2019 |
  |
Doing Battle Guardians of the Gate
Adventures In College
by Earl Corp
The author has placed a warning on this post for language.
I've heard people talk fondly about their college years like it was the best time of their lives. Let me tell you mine, and it ain't pretty.
My plan for after I got out of the Army in December 1992 was to attend college and earn a teaching degree, at least that was my mother's plan. To my mother’s chagrin I didn’t start right away, instead I got a job.
The job I took was at Vision Quest (VQ). VQ was a youth placement that offered an alternative to lock ups. The kids were given a wilderness experience for a year; they lived in teepees and on rolling honest- to -God covered wagon trains.
I did this for a couple of reasons. First, I discharged in December, so it wasn’t realistic to be enrolled by January. Second, I wanted to see if I could work with kids before I went through the hassle of earning a degree I’d never use.
The biggest reason was I was scared to enter an institution of higher learning. My high school career had been lackluster to say the least. I’d barely squeaked by majoring in football and wrestling.
So I went to work with delinquents from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. I found I was good at it so I applied to Slippery Rock University and started classes in the fall of 1993.
My biggest dream for getting out of the Army was to grow my hair long enough to have a pony tail and a ZZ Top beard. I didn’t shave or get a haircut the 10 months prior to going to school. My hair gets thick and curls, no pony tail, but I got the beard!
So I started on a track to get a history teaching degree. My Introduction to Education class wasn’t my favorite. The professor wasn’t interested in hearing any opinions or being questioned about anything she said. To me it was clear she hadn’t been in a classroom around kids since the 1960s.
Aside from not being willing to take questions she thought she was witty by making sarcastic remarks if she didn’t like your answers. This worked with the 19-year-old freshman but I was 32, and I wasn’t having it.
One day after she made a particularly smart-ass remark to me I waited after class to confront her about it. It was clear she was uncomfortable being one-on-one with me. Though I couldn’t figure out why, after all I hadn’t had a haircut or shaved in almost a year, I am 6’1’, and I was pushing 270 pounds. Add to that I was wearing a jungle fatigue top with all my patches on it. She must have thought I was a Vietnam Vet with PTSD.
“What is your problem with me, Dr. Meier?”
“Well, Mr. Corp, you look like a bum with no direction in life who chose education so you could have summers off.”
This floored me! I had on a $75 pair of Nike Airs, a $15 Harley Davidson shirt, $20 Levis, and a $12 Cat Diesel Power hat. In my mind I was stylin’ and profilin’.
At least now I knew the lay of the land, academics weren’t interested in what you had to offer, it was a personality contest based on looks. And I didn’t fit the mold of what she considered a teacher should look like.
*****
Armed with this information I went forward to try and get the Hell out of there with my degree as quickly as possible. I was there for an education not beer pong and tailgating.
I went summers and carried a heavy load each semester for four semesters. I had come in with credits from the service so I was able to get to student teaching and graduation by the fall of 1995.
You might wonder why I was trying to jam my education in so quickly. Well, I was fighting the clock on two fronts. Being 33, I knew I had to get to the job market quick before my expiration date ran out.
The second front was my mother had gone in the hospital with congestive heart failure the week before fall classes of that last year. They found Cancer in her fluids, so she was fighting an expiration date too. I was the first kid in the family to go to college and I wanted her to see me graduate.
Of course this wouldn’t occur without a speed bump the previous spring.
One day in a class preparing us for field experience someone asked the professor, who was Dr. Meier's friend Dr. Snyder, what she thought about Veterans getting preference for teaching jobs. I’ll never forget her answer.
“I think it’s a shame that Veterans get preference for teaching jobs, they take away jobs from women and minorities who really need them, plus most of the time they don’t make good teachers anyway.”
For the second time in two years I was floored! My hand was up in a heartbeat, I wanted to hear her defend this point of view. She saw my hand, but moved past it.
“We’re getting off task.”
So I let it ride for the moment, but I didn't forget it. As the semester went on we were assigned a group project, for which we would have to make a presentation that counted for 1/3 of our grade.
Everything was going fine until the presentation day. At VQ I was being called as a witness by the Department of Public Welfare (DPW) regarding a co-worker who had broken two kid’s legs in a week.
I told them I had to be at Slippery Rock by 10 a.m., I was told they’d get me in first and I’d be on my way. DPW was scheduled to be there at 9 a.m., it’d be tight but I’d be able to make it.
DPW didn’t arrive until 9:45, and they made it known that they pick the order of the people which they wanted to interview. I was called dead last at 11:15. I had left the professor voicemails explaining my predicament.
I walked into class as everyone was walking out. I approached the professor to apologize and see if there was anything I could do like present her my portion of the presentation later.
No dice.
“You were irresponsible to your group and it worries me to put irresponsible people in the field, irresponsible people don’t belong in education,” she told me.
And I found out how I was going to be weeded out the next class. When she returned our grading sheet for the project it was marked, “Group grade ‘B’, Earl’s grade ‘D’.”
Again I was floored! This was going against everything we’d been taught. One of the drawbacks to cooperative education is everybody gets the same grade, or they’re supposed to. A ‘D’ would have knocked me out of being able to do my field experience, student teaching, and graduate.
One of my geography professors had heard about this dilemma and offered me some advice. He had heard about the Veteran remark she had made and it didn’t sit well with him. He had served three tours in Nam as a Green Beret.
“Earl, you know Veterans are one of the protected classes under the Equal Opportunity office don’t you?”
“Why no, I don’t.”
Armed with this information I went to the Equal Opportunity office on campus. I told the lady the whole situation starting from the Veteran remark. She told me not to worry the issue would be addressed.
Before my next class I was called into the assistant dean’s office. He asked me to explain what was going on, so I told him.
“Dr. Snyder doesn’t know some of her best friends are Veterans, I’ll take care of it.”
It seems the Assistant Dean had served in the Army from 1960-62. And he did take care of it. My grade was changed to a ‘B’, I got to do my field experience and then student teach.
Unfortunately, my mother died the Friday of finals week of the spring semester. I wasn’t able to deliver her a college graduate before her passing.
*****
But they had one last parting gift for all contestants, and it sure wasn’t Rice-A-Roni the San Francisco treat.
I was really excited to student teach. Getting to watch the light bulb go on above a kid’s head was the greatest high I’ll ever know. But then I had my first observation and the evaluation that goes with it.
My student teaching supervisor from the university was brand new that semester; she was working on her doctorate and trying to impress the higher ups how she was tough and turning out quality teachers.
The minimum number of observations we were supposed to get is four. I had that many before the halfway mark. Whenever she scuttled into the room I knew it was going to be a bad day.
Her idea of feedback was tearing apart your lesson and then telling you how she would have done it. It was a miserable, uncomfortable 45 minutes. Add to that my cooperating teacher only wanted me to stand there and slap slides on the overhead projector, student teaching was a lot more stressful than it should have been.
On the next to the last observation, she brought Dr. Joseph with her. The story I was given was Dr. Joseph wanted to see me in action and she was looking forward to it.
She got more than she bargained for.
After the lesson is over you’re taken to a private place while you’re given your observation evaluation. At this point, I’d received six of these and never had heard a positive word, and I wasn’t about to this time. I thought my shooters behind the grassy knoll, Drs. Snyder and Meier, had gotten to her and told her I wasn’t worthy of the teaching profession and not to let me through to graduation.
We got into the room for the evaluation. Dr. Joseph was beaming, she thought I had done a good job and so did I. But the session started out as usual, same crap different day.
When she was done I was embarrassed that Dr. Joseph had heard that. Finally I had enough of being bullied.
“Do I ever do anything right?” I asked her.
“Why of course you do,” was her reply.
“Would it kill you to tell me that then? I’m considering not becoming a teacher because of you.”
She started flushing and then stammering. Dr. Joseph took an interest and intervened.
“Earl, would you step out for a minute please.”
About 10 minutes later I was called back in. Lo and behold I had a fresh evaluation sheet that outlined a bunch of positive things I did. It did give me some points I could improve on but there was a lot less than there had been 10 minutes ago.
My last observation a week later was glowing so much I needed to wear shades to read it. I went on to graduate and be set loose into the wild.
I learned a lot in college, but I don’t think they’re quite the lessons they wanted me to learn.
Non-Fiction Writing Contest contest entry
I've heard people talk fondly about their college years like it was the best time of their lives. Let me tell you mine, and it ain't pretty.
My plan for after I got out of the Army in December 1992 was to attend college and earn a teaching degree, at least that was my mother's plan. To my mother’s chagrin I didn’t start right away, instead I got a job.
The job I took was at Vision Quest (VQ). VQ was a youth placement that offered an alternative to lock ups. The kids were given a wilderness experience for a year; they lived in teepees and on rolling honest- to -God covered wagon trains.
I did this for a couple of reasons. First, I discharged in December, so it wasn’t realistic to be enrolled by January. Second, I wanted to see if I could work with kids before I went through the hassle of earning a degree I’d never use.
The biggest reason was I was scared to enter an institution of higher learning. My high school career had been lackluster to say the least. I’d barely squeaked by majoring in football and wrestling.
So I went to work with delinquents from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. I found I was good at it so I applied to Slippery Rock University and started classes in the fall of 1993.
My biggest dream for getting out of the Army was to grow my hair long enough to have a pony tail and a ZZ Top beard. I didn’t shave or get a haircut the 10 months prior to going to school. My hair gets thick and curls, no pony tail, but I got the beard!
So I started on a track to get a history teaching degree. My Introduction to Education class wasn’t my favorite. The professor wasn’t interested in hearing any opinions or being questioned about anything she said. To me it was clear she hadn’t been in a classroom around kids since the 1960s.
Aside from not being willing to take questions she thought she was witty by making sarcastic remarks if she didn’t like your answers. This worked with the 19-year-old freshman but I was 32, and I wasn’t having it.
One day after she made a particularly smart-ass remark to me I waited after class to confront her about it. It was clear she was uncomfortable being one-on-one with me. Though I couldn’t figure out why, after all I hadn’t had a haircut or shaved in almost a year, I am 6’1’, and I was pushing 270 pounds. Add to that I was wearing a jungle fatigue top with all my patches on it. She must have thought I was a Vietnam Vet with PTSD.
“What is your problem with me, Dr. Meier?”
“Well, Mr. Corp, you look like a bum with no direction in life who chose education so you could have summers off.”
This floored me! I had on a $75 pair of Nike Airs, a $15 Harley Davidson shirt, $20 Levis, and a $12 Cat Diesel Power hat. In my mind I was stylin’ and profilin’.
At least now I knew the lay of the land, academics weren’t interested in what you had to offer, it was a personality contest based on looks. And I didn’t fit the mold of what she considered a teacher should look like.
*****
Armed with this information I went forward to try and get the Hell out of there with my degree as quickly as possible. I was there for an education not beer pong and tailgating.
I went summers and carried a heavy load each semester for four semesters. I had come in with credits from the service so I was able to get to student teaching and graduation by the fall of 1995.
You might wonder why I was trying to jam my education in so quickly. Well, I was fighting the clock on two fronts. Being 33, I knew I had to get to the job market quick before my expiration date ran out.
The second front was my mother had gone in the hospital with congestive heart failure the week before fall classes of that last year. They found Cancer in her fluids, so she was fighting an expiration date too. I was the first kid in the family to go to college and I wanted her to see me graduate.
Of course this wouldn’t occur without a speed bump the previous spring.
One day in a class preparing us for field experience someone asked the professor, who was Dr. Meier's friend Dr. Snyder, what she thought about Veterans getting preference for teaching jobs. I’ll never forget her answer.
“I think it’s a shame that Veterans get preference for teaching jobs, they take away jobs from women and minorities who really need them, plus most of the time they don’t make good teachers anyway.”
For the second time in two years I was floored! My hand was up in a heartbeat, I wanted to hear her defend this point of view. She saw my hand, but moved past it.
“We’re getting off task.”
So I let it ride for the moment, but I didn't forget it. As the semester went on we were assigned a group project, for which we would have to make a presentation that counted for 1/3 of our grade.
Everything was going fine until the presentation day. At VQ I was being called as a witness by the Department of Public Welfare (DPW) regarding a co-worker who had broken two kid’s legs in a week.
I told them I had to be at Slippery Rock by 10 a.m., I was told they’d get me in first and I’d be on my way. DPW was scheduled to be there at 9 a.m., it’d be tight but I’d be able to make it.
DPW didn’t arrive until 9:45, and they made it known that they pick the order of the people which they wanted to interview. I was called dead last at 11:15. I had left the professor voicemails explaining my predicament.
I walked into class as everyone was walking out. I approached the professor to apologize and see if there was anything I could do like present her my portion of the presentation later.
No dice.
“You were irresponsible to your group and it worries me to put irresponsible people in the field, irresponsible people don’t belong in education,” she told me.
And I found out how I was going to be weeded out the next class. When she returned our grading sheet for the project it was marked, “Group grade ‘B’, Earl’s grade ‘D’.”
Again I was floored! This was going against everything we’d been taught. One of the drawbacks to cooperative education is everybody gets the same grade, or they’re supposed to. A ‘D’ would have knocked me out of being able to do my field experience, student teaching, and graduate.
One of my geography professors had heard about this dilemma and offered me some advice. He had heard about the Veteran remark she had made and it didn’t sit well with him. He had served three tours in Nam as a Green Beret.
“Earl, you know Veterans are one of the protected classes under the Equal Opportunity office don’t you?”
“Why no, I don’t.”
Armed with this information I went to the Equal Opportunity office on campus. I told the lady the whole situation starting from the Veteran remark. She told me not to worry the issue would be addressed.
Before my next class I was called into the assistant dean’s office. He asked me to explain what was going on, so I told him.
“Dr. Snyder doesn’t know some of her best friends are Veterans, I’ll take care of it.”
It seems the Assistant Dean had served in the Army from 1960-62. And he did take care of it. My grade was changed to a ‘B’, I got to do my field experience and then student teach.
Unfortunately, my mother died the Friday of finals week of the spring semester. I wasn’t able to deliver her a college graduate before her passing.
*****
But they had one last parting gift for all contestants, and it sure wasn’t Rice-A-Roni the San Francisco treat.
I was really excited to student teach. Getting to watch the light bulb go on above a kid’s head was the greatest high I’ll ever know. But then I had my first observation and the evaluation that goes with it.
My student teaching supervisor from the university was brand new that semester; she was working on her doctorate and trying to impress the higher ups how she was tough and turning out quality teachers.
The minimum number of observations we were supposed to get is four. I had that many before the halfway mark. Whenever she scuttled into the room I knew it was going to be a bad day.
Her idea of feedback was tearing apart your lesson and then telling you how she would have done it. It was a miserable, uncomfortable 45 minutes. Add to that my cooperating teacher only wanted me to stand there and slap slides on the overhead projector, student teaching was a lot more stressful than it should have been.
On the next to the last observation, she brought Dr. Joseph with her. The story I was given was Dr. Joseph wanted to see me in action and she was looking forward to it.
She got more than she bargained for.
After the lesson is over you’re taken to a private place while you’re given your observation evaluation. At this point, I’d received six of these and never had heard a positive word, and I wasn’t about to this time. I thought my shooters behind the grassy knoll, Drs. Snyder and Meier, had gotten to her and told her I wasn’t worthy of the teaching profession and not to let me through to graduation.
We got into the room for the evaluation. Dr. Joseph was beaming, she thought I had done a good job and so did I. But the session started out as usual, same crap different day.
When she was done I was embarrassed that Dr. Joseph had heard that. Finally I had enough of being bullied.
“Do I ever do anything right?” I asked her.
“Why of course you do,” was her reply.
“Would it kill you to tell me that then? I’m considering not becoming a teacher because of you.”
She started flushing and then stammering. Dr. Joseph took an interest and intervened.
“Earl, would you step out for a minute please.”
About 10 minutes later I was called back in. Lo and behold I had a fresh evaluation sheet that outlined a bunch of positive things I did. It did give me some points I could improve on but there was a lot less than there had been 10 minutes ago.
My last observation a week later was glowing so much I needed to wear shades to read it. I went on to graduate and be set loose into the wild.
I learned a lot in college, but I don’t think they’re quite the lessons they wanted me to learn.
My plan for after I got out of the Army in December 1992 was to attend college and earn a teaching degree, at least that was my mother's plan. To my mother’s chagrin I didn’t start right away, instead I got a job.
The job I took was at Vision Quest (VQ). VQ was a youth placement that offered an alternative to lock ups. The kids were given a wilderness experience for a year; they lived in teepees and on rolling honest- to -God covered wagon trains.
I did this for a couple of reasons. First, I discharged in December, so it wasn’t realistic to be enrolled by January. Second, I wanted to see if I could work with kids before I went through the hassle of earning a degree I’d never use.
The biggest reason was I was scared to enter an institution of higher learning. My high school career had been lackluster to say the least. I’d barely squeaked by majoring in football and wrestling.
So I went to work with delinquents from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. I found I was good at it so I applied to Slippery Rock University and started classes in the fall of 1993.
My biggest dream for getting out of the Army was to grow my hair long enough to have a pony tail and a ZZ Top beard. I didn’t shave or get a haircut the 10 months prior to going to school. My hair gets thick and curls, no pony tail, but I got the beard!
So I started on a track to get a history teaching degree. My Introduction to Education class wasn’t my favorite. The professor wasn’t interested in hearing any opinions or being questioned about anything she said. To me it was clear she hadn’t been in a classroom around kids since the 1960s.
Aside from not being willing to take questions she thought she was witty by making sarcastic remarks if she didn’t like your answers. This worked with the 19-year-old freshman but I was 32, and I wasn’t having it.
One day after she made a particularly smart-ass remark to me I waited after class to confront her about it. It was clear she was uncomfortable being one-on-one with me. Though I couldn’t figure out why, after all I hadn’t had a haircut or shaved in almost a year, I am 6’1’, and I was pushing 270 pounds. Add to that I was wearing a jungle fatigue top with all my patches on it. She must have thought I was a Vietnam Vet with PTSD.
“What is your problem with me, Dr. Meier?”
“Well, Mr. Corp, you look like a bum with no direction in life who chose education so you could have summers off.”
This floored me! I had on a $75 pair of Nike Airs, a $15 Harley Davidson shirt, $20 Levis, and a $12 Cat Diesel Power hat. In my mind I was stylin’ and profilin’.
At least now I knew the lay of the land, academics weren’t interested in what you had to offer, it was a personality contest based on looks. And I didn’t fit the mold of what she considered a teacher should look like.
*****
Armed with this information I went forward to try and get the Hell out of there with my degree as quickly as possible. I was there for an education not beer pong and tailgating.
I went summers and carried a heavy load each semester for four semesters. I had come in with credits from the service so I was able to get to student teaching and graduation by the fall of 1995.
You might wonder why I was trying to jam my education in so quickly. Well, I was fighting the clock on two fronts. Being 33, I knew I had to get to the job market quick before my expiration date ran out.
The second front was my mother had gone in the hospital with congestive heart failure the week before fall classes of that last year. They found Cancer in her fluids, so she was fighting an expiration date too. I was the first kid in the family to go to college and I wanted her to see me graduate.
Of course this wouldn’t occur without a speed bump the previous spring.
One day in a class preparing us for field experience someone asked the professor, who was Dr. Meier's friend Dr. Snyder, what she thought about Veterans getting preference for teaching jobs. I’ll never forget her answer.
“I think it’s a shame that Veterans get preference for teaching jobs, they take away jobs from women and minorities who really need them, plus most of the time they don’t make good teachers anyway.”
For the second time in two years I was floored! My hand was up in a heartbeat, I wanted to hear her defend this point of view. She saw my hand, but moved past it.
“We’re getting off task.”
So I let it ride for the moment, but I didn't forget it. As the semester went on we were assigned a group project, for which we would have to make a presentation that counted for 1/3 of our grade.
Everything was going fine until the presentation day. At VQ I was being called as a witness by the Department of Public Welfare (DPW) regarding a co-worker who had broken two kid’s legs in a week.
I told them I had to be at Slippery Rock by 10 a.m., I was told they’d get me in first and I’d be on my way. DPW was scheduled to be there at 9 a.m., it’d be tight but I’d be able to make it.
DPW didn’t arrive until 9:45, and they made it known that they pick the order of the people which they wanted to interview. I was called dead last at 11:15. I had left the professor voicemails explaining my predicament.
I walked into class as everyone was walking out. I approached the professor to apologize and see if there was anything I could do like present her my portion of the presentation later.
No dice.
“You were irresponsible to your group and it worries me to put irresponsible people in the field, irresponsible people don’t belong in education,” she told me.
And I found out how I was going to be weeded out the next class. When she returned our grading sheet for the project it was marked, “Group grade ‘B’, Earl’s grade ‘D’.”
Again I was floored! This was going against everything we’d been taught. One of the drawbacks to cooperative education is everybody gets the same grade, or they’re supposed to. A ‘D’ would have knocked me out of being able to do my field experience, student teaching, and graduate.
One of my geography professors had heard about this dilemma and offered me some advice. He had heard about the Veteran remark she had made and it didn’t sit well with him. He had served three tours in Nam as a Green Beret.
“Earl, you know Veterans are one of the protected classes under the Equal Opportunity office don’t you?”
“Why no, I don’t.”
Armed with this information I went to the Equal Opportunity office on campus. I told the lady the whole situation starting from the Veteran remark. She told me not to worry the issue would be addressed.
Before my next class I was called into the assistant dean’s office. He asked me to explain what was going on, so I told him.
“Dr. Snyder doesn’t know some of her best friends are Veterans, I’ll take care of it.”
It seems the Assistant Dean had served in the Army from 1960-62. And he did take care of it. My grade was changed to a ‘B’, I got to do my field experience and then student teach.
Unfortunately, my mother died the Friday of finals week of the spring semester. I wasn’t able to deliver her a college graduate before her passing.
*****
But they had one last parting gift for all contestants, and it sure wasn’t Rice-A-Roni the San Francisco treat.
I was really excited to student teach. Getting to watch the light bulb go on above a kid’s head was the greatest high I’ll ever know. But then I had my first observation and the evaluation that goes with it.
My student teaching supervisor from the university was brand new that semester; she was working on her doctorate and trying to impress the higher ups how she was tough and turning out quality teachers.
The minimum number of observations we were supposed to get is four. I had that many before the halfway mark. Whenever she scuttled into the room I knew it was going to be a bad day.
Her idea of feedback was tearing apart your lesson and then telling you how she would have done it. It was a miserable, uncomfortable 45 minutes. Add to that my cooperating teacher only wanted me to stand there and slap slides on the overhead projector, student teaching was a lot more stressful than it should have been.
On the next to the last observation, she brought Dr. Joseph with her. The story I was given was Dr. Joseph wanted to see me in action and she was looking forward to it.
She got more than she bargained for.
After the lesson is over you’re taken to a private place while you’re given your observation evaluation. At this point, I’d received six of these and never had heard a positive word, and I wasn’t about to this time. I thought my shooters behind the grassy knoll, Drs. Snyder and Meier, had gotten to her and told her I wasn’t worthy of the teaching profession and not to let me through to graduation.
We got into the room for the evaluation. Dr. Joseph was beaming, she thought I had done a good job and so did I. But the session started out as usual, same crap different day.
When she was done I was embarrassed that Dr. Joseph had heard that. Finally I had enough of being bullied.
“Do I ever do anything right?” I asked her.
“Why of course you do,” was her reply.
“Would it kill you to tell me that then? I’m considering not becoming a teacher because of you.”
She started flushing and then stammering. Dr. Joseph took an interest and intervened.
“Earl, would you step out for a minute please.”
About 10 minutes later I was called back in. Lo and behold I had a fresh evaluation sheet that outlined a bunch of positive things I did. It did give me some points I could improve on but there was a lot less than there had been 10 minutes ago.
My last observation a week later was glowing so much I needed to wear shades to read it. I went on to graduate and be set loose into the wild.
I learned a lot in college, but I don’t think they’re quite the lessons they wanted me to learn.
 Recognized |
#206 2019 |
I know this is long, but I didn't come anywhere near 7,000 words. Some names have been changed to protect the innocent, but not many.
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