Drove up to Paradise Valley Community College this afternoon, by way of turning in a mountain of paperwork to HR.
What a pretty campus! Even though the weather is daunting—40 mph winds, blowing dust, threatening clouds—the place is architecturally coherent and pulled together, clean and well maintained…every building is full of light and pretty much absent tenants who look miserable. Over at the department, the head secretary was up on a ladder installing strands of party lights.
—What’s the occasion? say I.
—Graduation, say the assembled staff.
Graduation?
Takes a minute for this to soak in: for heaven’s sake! They’re fêting students who are graduating this spring!
This would require them to treat their students like human beings. How quaint!
You know what? I think I’m going to like working at a college that treats students like human beings. One of our research assistants has been given a weeks-long runaround as she has tried to get an answer to one simple question: can she file her graduation papers in the second summer session, or do they have to be filed in the first session? Whether she keeps her nicely paid assistantship through the first half of the summer depends on the answer. And no. one. will. tell. her! When I asked Her Deanship if she would please cut the red tape and find out on her end, she referred us right back to the same merry-go-round. How can I count the ways I’d rather work where they don’t deal with students that way?
Door-to-door, the drive from the college to my house took exactly 15 minutes this afternoon. Instead of passing through a concrete canyon built of 30-foot-high concrete walls, the freeway goes through scenic hills with a view of the mountains to the north. No train…but no dreary hour-long commute, either. Parking is free and close to offices and classrooms.
So, as it develops, leaving what looks like a plum job (but is only so because no one in the Dean’s office is paying the slightest bit of attention to us, leaving us unmolested to do our work) will not be the end of the world, after all. It will be an opening to a whole new world.
I can’t wait!
YEAH!!
Said it before, I’ll say it again: Community colleges rock. I think you are going to love the students, their stories, their work ethic, their dreams. Personally, I got a second chance at a place like Paradise Valley, and I had my life transformed completely by the faculty I encountered, teachers like you. You are going to have so much fun with this job.
Congratulations.
@ Chance & Simply Forties: I’ve always enjoyed the adjunct courses I’ve taught at community colleges in the past. Used to teach night courses in feature writings at the Scottsdale campus…evening courses are the most fun because they’re full of grown-ups who are taking courses because they WANT to, not because someone said they have to. That’s how I came to write The Essential Feature, which amazingly enough is still in print. It was intended to fill a specific niche: a textbook (not a self-help book) for nonfiction writing courses whose students are not journalism majors.
Second the “yes” for non-tradition colleges (and students). As a non-trad student myself, it’s so refreshing to have instructors (like YOU will be) that treat their students like the adults they are.
I’m glad you love your new campus and you’ll get used to the rail pass machine . You might drop a email or letter to the PTB for the rail line and see if ‘non-consecutive’ passes are in the works. If they get enough requests, they might start offering them.