September - classes

Posted by Krystyna Hunt in

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I am starting to panic. I feel like a ghost. I notice the Students' Union is avoiding people like me. Everything on their briefs and bulletins and schemes for making students feel at home and more involved amounts to pub parties, beer pong tournaments and wet t-shirts contests. Why do I feel I won't fit in?

At least I have registered with the Disabilities office and got letters to pass on to my teachers telling them they should excuse my ditziness, confusion, lack of coordination, losses, forgetting of time and place and teachers now don't mind me coming in an hour late, or leaving my assignments in my locker, or misplacing textbooks that this radical change in my lifestyle has only accelerated. I lost 2 more cell phone. After not having lost any for the 4 years I have had a cell phone, in one month I lose 2 and find that my reserve phone isn't working.

The profs are avoiding me. Their lesson plans and remarks are slanted to the experiences of high school students.

Typical situations:

A prof will say something like, "What did you learn in civics class?" How do I answer that? I haven't been to civics class in 40 years.

They'll say, "Close your computers right now! You are all on Facebook and I know it!"

But I'm not on Facebook, and the computer helps me record the lesson. The profs all take on the posture I remember so well in high school, that of a drill sargeant facing facing recruits who will have to be managed. We get a daily sermon about the evils of surfing Facebook when we are supposed to be focused on our future careers - and - do we know how much of our parents' money we are wasting by surfing Facebook instead of paying attention to the lesson? Oh my.

There are answers to lessons that I know simply because I have lived in the world, but I feel very strange answering them because I will be able to answer every such question asked.

After discovering that I do know the names of authors, historic events, an awful lot of books and current affairs they look over me because they expect me to know such things. Friends have advised me to hold myself back and let the young ones shine. But isn't that cheating myself? I have never shined in a college situation, what if I want to shine too? Once again I am expected to accommodate the needs of others over my own. When I lift my hand the profs don't feel challenged. They feel more challenged engaging with inert youth.

"does anyone about Watergate?"

No answer.

I wait a minute or two until I realize no one is going to lift up their hands. I have to lift up my hand. I can't let the prof think I don't know that. The prof sees my hand but ignores it hoping someone who is not supposed to know it will know it, not the person who should know it. Still no hand up from the youth wing. Then she allows ne to answer the question.

"Watergate is an apartment building in Washington, but it is also the term also refers to an event in 1972 that was uncovered by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, which lead to the prosecution of several of President Nixon's aides for burglary and funding irregularities, and eventually led to the resignation of Nixon himself for being complicit in the situation."

"That's right," says the prof somewhat flatly. She wanted one of "them" to know it, she wanted that thrill, that surprise. They were the ones who would have got her smile of approval. I have way passed the point of getting smiles of approval from teachers.

I discuss this with the Counseling Office and get total sympathy. "It's hard for mature students, really, really hard." They see this happening every semester. But they hope I don't quit. Oh I can't quit. If I quit now a mountain of debt would come crashing down on me for absolutely no gain whatsoever, I would have to return my grants and bursaries and I would be even longer out of a job.