Making Sense is Overrated

      So I went to the orientation at the college today and it was an incredible waste of time. I’ll try to put into words what happened today…

      The orientation was supposed to start at 9:00 AM however the teacher wasn’t there until a few minutes after. What’s worse is that twenty-three people signed up for it and only ten showed up. What’s worse still is the fact that four of the ten that showed up were late. I’m not here to judge other people but that’s kind of saddening when you think about it.

      Though there wasn’t really a problem with the teacher showing up just a few minutes late; that sort of thing I don’t mind. Once the teacher decided to start we had to fill out a bunch of forms and we were only allowed to fill them out a certain way and only where the teacher specified. Again, I didn’t mind this sort of thing. This was just the college gathering our information and so on.

      After that we were given a test with four segments and twenty-five questions each with breaks in-between most parts of the tests. I don’t really want to make it sound like the other people that were there were a little slow or anything but for the most part I finished the test segments before anyone else was done which gave me time to draw a little bit since I had nothing else to do. That’s not to say I did flawlessly on the test. The entire thing was simple however when the mathematics section started I soon realized I had forgotten most of the mathematical formulas I had previously learned over the years due to complete and absolute disuse.

      Mathematics is something I’ll have to work on, not because I’m weak with it or anything but because I simply don’t remember a lot of the formulas. However re-learning them is an easy enough thing to accomplish so it won’t really be too much of an issue. I just felt kind of silly since I know I’ve done much more complicated work before. If nothing else I suppose it was a good thing to notice that slight gap in my memory. I also thought it was funny that they gave us calculators for the word problems section.

      This all sounds fine and well, nothing unexpected so far. However once we were on the last part of the tests the teacher said to not worry if we did poorly on any part of it. I thought I understood what she was saying up to that point, these aren’t actual classes or real work we’re doing here… but I could never guessed what was about to happen next. As the teacher clarified further I realized why she had said this, apparently we have to do the same exact tests all over again.

      Yes, we have to do the very same tests again. “Why?” you might be wondering. Well the teacher actually explained that to us. She said that the people who are actually in charge of the program and place us into the appropriate classes don’t like the way that the orientation does the testing and thus makes you do them all over again. At this point I was wondering why we didn’t just take the tests with them to begin with and avoid the gigantic waste of time that we were currently partaking in.

      It gets even better. In order to receive credit for the tests we took today we have to return on Wednesday. Yes, in order to get credit for tests that grant no credit at all and must be retaken we have to come back on a completely different day than the day they were actually taken. I don’t even know what to say about it at this point. Do they think we had our twins or some sort of duplicates come in and take the tests for us? And why does credit even matter if we have to retake them all over again? 

      I’m not really thrilled about all that time I wasted there. Though I suppose it’s not a complete loss since I did have enough time to draw a little bit during it all. I’m not eager to go back Wednesday and I really don’t know what to expect. I don’t even want to think about it. Superfluous is a good word to describe the orientation so far.