Familiarizing Setbacks

      Today I returned to the college for the second and final part of orientation. I don’t feel like I wasted so much time today though so that’s always good. All the same people showed up that were there before and I thought it was kind of funny that everyone (including myself) sat in the same exact seats despite the freedom to sit anywhere.

      As soon as the teacher arrived she began handing out strangely assembled slips of paper (as seen above). I could tell from the start that these were in fact the scores from the test we had taken just two days prior. The scores on the slips were actually approximations of what level of education you fell into for each segment. I expected I’d get average scores for the English parts and I feared the worst when it came to the mathematics. It turns out I did quite well, as you can see in the image at the top of this post. In fact my results were in the highest tier available.

      The teacher then began explaining the differences between the available programs which were ABE (Adult Basic Education), GED (General Educational Development), and AHS (Adult High School). In short ABE is for those not yet up to high school standards while GED and AHS are for those who currently are. There was a lot of explanation about what scores fit into what area; the higher your score the higher the tier you fell into. Scores of 8.9 and below fell into one of the four tiers for ABE while scores of 9.0 and above fell into one of the two tiers for GED or AHS.

      For the high school level programs scores of 9.0 to 10.0 were eligible for GED/AHS low and scores of 11.0 to 12.0 were eligible for GED/AHS high. Neither GED nor AHS is above the other as far as I understand it. The teacher never really elaborated upon the differences between to the two. Despite this, I know that AHS will serve you far better than a GED would. My choice was clear.

      I could elaborate on comparisons between GED and AHS even more but I don’t feel that’s needed and I don’t think anyone really wants to read it. Since I chose AHS my only requirement at this point is a total of twenty credits. That’s all I need and I will be finished and ready to start working for my fifteen college credits required to enlist into the USMC. It sounded simple at first but what would happen later took away that comfort.

      All that remained before the orientation would be over was a short tour around the college along with clarification of which buildings housed which facilities. After this I met privately with the teacher in her office to discuss an issue with one of my transcripts. You see the head of the private school which I once attended (and is now closed) never kept any records. Let me be a little more specific, she never kept any records of grades, attendance, or even student names.

      You did read that correctly. There were no records of any kind to be had. Due to this when she was creating my transcript she simply made everything up. When I left her school I was just a couple months from finishing high school entirely. However according to the transcript she had given me I barely even began. I attended for well over two years while the document (if you can call it that) claimed I had only been there for one year.

      It always seems to find a way to get even better. This lackluster ‘record’ in fact did list most of the classes I had taken for my second year there but as if it were some cruel joke of irony it didn’t assign any credit for any of them. The four or five classes that weren’t missing and she decided to give me credit for were all given the grade of C in what felt to be open ridicule of the fact that I had actually received a good amount of A’s. If that wasn’t enough, the crowning accomplishment atop this scandalous script was the fact that she didn’t even know how to spell my name which you might think isn’t so bad were it not for the grandiose absurdity of claiming that my name was none other than the word “Thorough”.

…

      Clearly this document was unacceptable. Even if it were I would never agree to submit the vast majority of my rightfully earned credits to the great void never to be seen again. I knew things wouldn’t be simple but this is getting worse by the day. Right now it feels like someone out there is trying to tear away my will to carry on with my quest to become a pilot. Unfortunately for them they don’t seem to be aware that my will is about the only thing I have left in my life at this point nor do they seem to realize that it’s impossible to stop a man determined to reach out and meet his future.

I’ll be damned if this ends here.