entry into the academic

First college class ever.  Colleges success skills 100 – the 100 class is for people who haven’t been in school for at least 5 years, there is another for people just out of high school.  Looking around, I looked like maybe one of three people who would be able to buy beer, but after doing the “tell everyone something about yourself” portion of the class, I realized I’m just on the higher end of the age spectrum for that class.  I think that most of them were in their early twenties.  Nearly everybody had started and stopped (being in college) a few times and were back to make another go of it.  There was a tiny woman wearing corduroy shorts with a neat side-part that I assumed was about 19 but apparently she graduated a year before I would’ve, I think that I might be bad at estimating ages.  That, or I’m just assuming that most people starting college are young and inexperienced.  This wasn’t the case.  Most everyone seemed mature, well-adjusted and comfortable.  Many of the girls had several children and mentioned how busy they are all day every day.  There was one guy in his mid-60s who said he had 8 kids and 26 grandkids.  There was a lot of half-joking about college being the only way for these people to escape their domestic obligations.    Everyone seemed relaxed and nice.  I felt ill at ease and a little pukey.  The teacher didn’t have us go around the room and do our introductions in any particular order, preferring to let us decide when to jump in and offer up an explanation of ourselves.  This created several situations where nobody would talk for about ten seconds while people gathered courage and then 4 people would try to talk at the same time.  After the third or fourth person finished, I tried to speak, nervously thinking I’d just get it out of the way, and after I muttered “my name is”, two other people who couldn’t hear me started talking at the same time and then stopped when they heard everyone else talking.  Then we all started again at the same time.  I stopped and became very hot and uncomfortable while a guy on the other side of the room gave his spiel.  I could tell that my face was bright red and when he got done the two other girls who had started when I did turned and looked at me so I went through a little explanation of my age and the last time I’d been in a classroom environment – about 17 years ago (to save time I left out the job as a prison tutor).  I think looked like a tomato for about 10 more minutes and then was able to breathe properly and stop thinking about fighting the guys who seemed to really enjoy the opportunity to speak effortlessly about themselves and their intentions.  Then class was over and Dad brought me a big burger to eat on the way home.  All in all, a successful entry into the academic world.

progress towards academia

     Those things they feed you in prison about how your success rests entirely on you working hard towards your goals and having a good attitude isn't complete bullshit, but it's in the ballpark.  Like most vague and positive aphorisms, it's not something you can place a lot of faith in.  Especially the thing you hear most often: "What happens to you when you get out is entirely up to you, the only thing that can hold you back is your attitude and willingness to work hard".  Obviously we need to stay focused and work hard, avoid gangs and hate-groups.  We shouldn't inject drugs into our faces while driving.  Stop behaving violently and getting face tattoos.  That's (usually) good advice. but regardless of how well your'e behaving, you will still be entirely at the mercy of huge networks of indifferent people who agree that things should work but don't.  Those chipper people in the transitions department never mention that however much faith you have in yourself, and however willing you are to work your ass off to get what you want, your situation as a felon with no money or insurance or recent work history or skills, makes it so that your day-to-day progress tends to hinge entirely on whether or not strangers will go way out of their way to make things happen for you.    Which they generally won't.  Like with anything/anywhere else, the people in charge tend to be very adept at shifting any responsibility or work away from themselves while sounding empathetic and pleasant - but not actually answering any questions you need answered or providing anything that will help.  There's a lot of emphasis placed on "should".  "This should work.  Somebody at this # should be able to help.  They should have told/given you that..." etcetera.  Prison staff don't tell you that even though most of the people you meet will not be bothered by you being an ex-convict, there are plenty of time-honored roadblocks in place for us that nobody really knows how to clear out of the way - even though they seem silly and illogical to every single person you talk to.  That whole "it's all up to you" is a lot of bullshit, and the people saying it know that it is.  They are, I think, saying something closer to "If you want to sweep floors, or do something menial and unsatisfying that will never elevate you above where you are; you won't be told not to" (unless the ID and social security card and insurance stuff you applied for and we said we'd sent out never arrive because we didn't really do it).  But just thinking that you can achieve the things that they say you can - and I don't just mean easily or right away, I mean at all - is a mistake.  Believing what prison administration and staff and judges tell you usually is.  If you get out and think that the stuff they told you in the mandatory (because they get $ for making you sit through them) pre-release classes is true, and if you believe there are any effective institutions in place to actually help you - not just to put you through more and more bullshit while touting how much they care- you will  be disappointed.  Then you will get pissed, and become jaded.  Then, naturally, you'll want to join a hate group, inject some drugs into your face while driving, and steal the copper wiring out of your neighbors house to sell for its scrap value (between 0.65 and 1.95 a pound, depending on the wiring in your neighbors house).  And why shouldn't we be jaded?  For as long as we can remember, nearly everything we've been told by any authority figure has turned out to be self-serving bullshit that always makes them appear loving and reasonable.  So when you know for sure that the first 5 things they told you to do weren't actually available or applicable, and that they clearly knew that when they said them, why the fuck would you carry on with what they told you to do?  However...

      If you want a short reprieve from people who have access to the matrix that you don't and know that you're relying on them but would rather pass it on to somebody else who should be able to do something, people who can help you but don't have to so just give you platitudes and send you elsewhere, go to the Piedmont Virginia Community College and speak to the academic advisor Kristin.  Not being associated with any branch of the DOC or the police, Kristin doesn't have any agenda with felons aside from getting them into classes, which she seems genuinely interested in doing.  After being at the mercy of nearly every state-governed entity within a 50 mile radius, as well as constantly having to deal with the people in MN who left you hanging by not doing what they said they would and then hamstrung you by saying it was still in the works but it really wasn't, she is a nice bit of sincerity and was able to explain things so I could understand them while putting in however much time it took to make things work for me in my specific situation instead of just passing me along to the financial aid people and saying "its in their hands", something she easily could have done and not been (technically) in the wrong.  But since the financial aid people don't really have a number you can call them at - just an automated line that tells you how to pay them and what their hours are - she gave me the direct # for the financial aid director.  When that lady didn't answer or return my calls, Kristin went down there and spoke to somebody else about my situation and found a way for me to get my P.O. to sign off on where I've been and why I don't have any financial records.  I'll still have to eventually get the transcript from the IRS (I think, I haven't actually talked to anyone besides Kristin), but my immediate FAFSA situation isn't completely hinging on it anymore.  Presumably, I'll be able to start some classes in September.  All of this happened because Kristin walked down the hall and talked to her co-workers on behalf of somebody she doesn't know instead of just passing them down the line to somebody else that probably would't have given me the same response that they gave her.

     Now I need to get my P.O. to return my calls so that I can get what I need from her.  Guess I'll see how long that takes.  I might have somebody tell her I'm using drugs.  It isn't true but its a sure way to get her to physically come to me.  Immediately.  Where just telling her I have a time sensitive issue regarding my financial aid that only she can help with...Well, she has a lot of people to monitor for drug use and I might have to wait.

    

This week in summary

     Finally saw an advisor yesterday and got signed up for a class: College Success Studies, kind of a "welcome to PVCC" thing.  Everything else has to wait while I get my financial aid straightened out.  The FAFSA website, the PVCC website, and the emails I received from both of them, said I was good-to-go, but apparently I wasn't.  I have been "chosen for verification," so I need to produce some recent tax records, which obviously don't exist.  The IRS website has a thing called the DRT (Data Retrieval Tool), that is recommended on by various acronyms: PVCC, FAFSA, IRS, LMNOP, ETC.  The DRT would supposedly be the only thing i need to clear this up, but it seems to exist in name-only.  There are no links or directions or downloads for the DRT anywhere in sight, just disclaimers about how convenient and helpful the DRT is...  And obviously there isn't one single human being at the IRS, or at the PVCC financial aid department, that is available to talk to me and steer me in the right direction.  After 10 minutes of answering automated questions that I didn't fully understand, and 19 minutes of being on hold, during which I had to continually verify that I wanted to stay on the line and wait to talk to whatever the IRS considers a person - since they wouldn't want to answer an extension and have to hang up if nobody was there - I was told that there had "been an error," and my call was being dropped.  "Please try again later."  Still, it's only noonish and I've spent my mornings worse ways.  During all of this, I made some kombucha with a very questionable starter, and read a little bit out of The Pale King in the hopes that it would somehow align me with the spirit of the IRS.  I will dive back in shortly.

     The class I did sign up for cost $340+ and it's just a 10 week thing (although once the FAFSA goes through I'm supposed to get reimbursed for it from my PELL grant).  Unless I can get this verification sorted, all of the courses I'm going to take will require some financial aid if I don't want to ask Dad to shell out a little over 2k and hope it will just come out in the wash when the governmental/economic-beauracracy stars align. This all means I'll be doing some late-start classes in September.  The things I want to get out of the way, math mostly, are going to be available with the late-start stuff, and my actual time spent at the college won't be as massive a commitment as I thought so I'm happy with the outcome so far.  

     I tested well on reading and writing.  The guy at the testing center said I did as well as I was able to and won't have to take extra classes to get me up to college level in those areas.  Math wasn't nearly as easy.  I'll need to take some 1-credit classes to be able to test at college level, but I didn't do as terrible as I thought I would and considering I was class of 2000, the advisor assures me I didn't do bad at all.  That strikes me a bit as "you're not dumb...for your age".  But she meant it well and it's good news either way.

     I also finally got a state ID and an eye exam.

     Oh yeah, a CT scan shows there is a tumor in the sinuses on the right side of my face.  The words "significant tissue and bone loss" were used when he was first reading the results - which I'd had to ask him to look up since he hadn't bothered to look at them before seeing me.  But when I got curious about the tissue/bone loss comment, he didn't really feel like expanding on any of it and told me he'd refer me to an ENT ("make sure to call and ask if you haven't received an appointment time  after 2-3 weeks").  However, it convinced him to finally, after a month of him knowing I've been in constant pain for at least a year, write a script for some antibiotics that might clear up whatever infection that my tumor, that he only found by accident, might be causing.

     Progress.......