Minding the Gap

So as I’ve previously mentioned I visited London recently (and the airline shenanigans were lovely). There were many interesting places to go; in fact there were too many. If ever there were a place that could have nearly anything you’d want reasonably nearby and getting to it was very convenient but you’d not have enough time available to take in even a fraction of what it has to offer then that place would probably be London. There are some places where, even if you spent the entire day there, you still wouldn’t be able to see it all unless you literally ran through.

While overall there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference in daily life from the US (and I didn’t expect there to be) there are some notable variances. For example, Greater London area is extremely diverse. I regularly encountered shops and restaurants run by a wide range of peoples from Italian, French, Indian, and even Japanese. I’m sure there were more that I didn’t even happen to notice. The great thing about this being that they all carried very different products and foods and there was always something very different very close by. I only wish I’d had more time (and money) to try more of it.

Another difference was transportation. I’ve lived in large metropolitan areas before and even though public transportation is available people generally own and drive their own cars. In London, at least, it’s a little different. Though many people do still have their own cars it’s not as prevalent as it is here in the US. Most people seem to walk or take busses to wherever they need to go; given that everything you could need is usually nearby, it isn’t much of a hassle to do so.

Every now and then I had still wondered about it myself (since I do have several friends in the UK), unsure why everyone simply didn’t have and use their cars. The main reason, it seems to me, is that space is a very limited resource. What I’m saying is that, even if you had a car you would still need a place to park it while at your own home. That usually means along the sidewalk as only the wealthy seemed to have driveways. On top of that, I do not recall seeing a single parking lot for a storefront that you were not required to pay a parking ticket to use. I’m not talking about parking meters or parking garages, I’m talking about going to a normal everyday parking lot in front of any normal store and needing to pay for parking your car there. This, to me, coupled with fuel and other costs makes owning and using a car considerably expensive.

Now, in any large city it’s fairly normal to be limited on space but it extends beyond actual London itself and largely into the surrounding areas. The reason for all of this and also why most any store you could need would be conveniently close was still unknown to me. That is, the sheer cramped nature of it all. Even outside of the city, houses are all crowded together and usually built as a single unit with connecting walls. The streets are also very narrow by US standards and most roads that I saw were comparable to what we would call a ‘country road.’ In short it’s very many houses and buildings crammed together as closely as it seems sane to do. This leaves very little space for much else. I really was sort of amazed that the bus drivers were able to safely navigate these kinds of conditions and roads. Sometimes the distance between two passing vehicles is mere inches. I’ve heard many stories about Europeans coming to the US and being shocked by the sheer open space of everything or by how straight the roads are; I suppose I was surprised over the opposite.

Once you visit London proper, the best method of travel is the London Underground (which is also my favourite). It is essentially a series of railways that run underneath the various sections of the city. It does seem to be the fastest way to go wherever you want, however, if you’re unlucky you may find yourself with a defective travel card and will have to manually (by the staff) go through every gate.

The underground is how I traveled to places such as the British Museum and RAF Museum. Though, when the underground line I was riding to get to the RAF Museum came above ground I was somewhat taken aback. It sounds nothing short of silly for a system called ‘London Underground’ to be above the ground. Regardless of this odd turn of events I spent an entire day at the RAF Museum and still did not have the time to appreciate half of what they had and there were some sections I missed out on altogether. While I was there I attempted to take as many pictures as possible of all the rare and unique planes but unfortunately my camera did die a while before I would have liked and a good number of pictures didn’t come out so well. This was even truer with the British Museum; however I did arrive there rather late so I wasn’t able to spend very long there.

It really was great to see so many magnificent planes all well kept and all in one place. Before my visit to RAFM London I had only seen mostly American aircraft. So a lot of what they had on display were firsts for me. This included such things as Avro Vulcan, Focke-Wulf 190, and de Havilland Mosquito among many others. One of the things that really impressed me about the RAF Museum is that they have a full history (as much as it can be in some cases) for most planes available on their website.

I could go on about a great many more things but this isn’t entirely on the subject of my chronicle to begin with. I thought more that it was interesting rather than relevant. Either way it’s back to work for me. I’ve included download links below to some of the pictures I took while on my trip. The RAF Museum is a separate file while the British Museum and everything else is the other. Oh and as usual I can provide a high resolution (larger and better quality) copy of any image; just ask.

RAFM London

Greater London Area

No Time to be On Time.

It seems we’ve come to a point again where I’ve not updated in a while. I’ve said some few times before that there may be considerable periods where I don’t update because there’s nothing worth updating for or that I’d be busy; that’s fine though as I’d much rather spend time on work and more productive things than a chronicle such as this. So let’s get right to it, then.

This last December I actually found myself on a casual jaunt to London with relatives. My notice was something akin to ‘Oh by the way I’m buying airline tickets to London; which seat do you want?’ my only possible reply to being so suddenly informed was ‘It doesn’t matter’ and a shrug as I went back to work. In truth it really doesn’t matter due to there being no room in any standard seat on an airliner, regardless of where it is.

The plane to London was to leave at 6:00 PM and the airport itself is the better part of three hours away from where I am, so in the thought of arriving early we began the drive to the airport at 12:00 noon. We arrived (after some creative navigation) sometime about 3:40 PM; spent around another thirty minutes going through the service desk, security, and getting to the actual departure gate which happened to be the absolute farthest gate possible from the airport entrance. Given that we were early, there were plenty of seats to be had and so we sat by the closest seats to our gate. These particular seats were in the corner of the room between our gate and another which was unattended and, unknown to me at the time, its staff radio was still on. By this time it was roughly 4:20 PM so there would not be very long of a wait for the plane. I took this as a relief since there were at least two other flights leaving from different gates (one being the other gate in the corner where we sat) in the same area as ours and it would soon be crowded.

This gave me enough time to get something to eat, to say nothing of the fact that airline food is none too appealing nor filling. Perfect, or so I thought. Around 5:30 PM or so we hear an announcement that claims our plane is being cleaned and prepared for the flight to London. As 6:00 PM came closer it was easy to notice that there was not a plane to be seen anywhere near. As I sat there waiting I could occasionally hear messages over the unattended staff radio; none of which had yet caught my interest. 6:00 PM came and went with no announcement or indication as to the state of the flight, save for that soon the departures board changed to suggest we would leave instead at 6:30 PM. Almost immediately afterwards the radio came to life again and I hear a call for maintenance on 174; my flight. It was then easy to surmise, by the lackluster state of things, that it was unlikely we would depart at 6:30 PM either.

Soon the board claimed 6:45 and again there was another call for maintenance on 174. No one seemed to notice or even be able to hear the radio except for those of us sitting in the four seats near it; which included the Jamaican woman who had just joined us. Once they heard this second call they all began to talk about it and my father made sarcastic remarks about the delays. I simply decided to play with my Nintendo DS during the wait. As 6:45 came the board changed to 7:00 shortly followed by 7:12 which was itself followed by 7:20. All the while I could hear random calls about maintenance for 174 on the nearby staff radio. When it actually came to be around 7:20 there was an actual announcement made that our plane simply hadn’t arrived yet.

This is when I began to ponder the situation. Was it that the plane had been there for all those hours and had encountered problems while being cleaned thus meaning their claims it hadn’t yet arrived were a lie? Or was it instead that the plane hadn’t actually arrived and the previous statement about it being prepared was the lie? If so then why the sporadic radio calls about maintenance, would the plane then be having an issue which caused it to have not arrived yet? Nothing was clear and I wasn’t about to go ask because I knew I’d most likely not get a straightforward or possibly even truthful answer.

Around this time the gate area was greatly crowded to the point where it was soon to be standing room only. Passengers for two other flights, as well as ours, filled the small area with many of them opting to sit on the ground or their luggage rather than stand. There were some children playing within the crowd and soon a woman trying to get a seat on a flight at the gate desk after being sent there by her original airline with no tickets or documentation at all. Soon, again, the departure board for our flight changed and this time claimed 7:50.

A few minutes later there was another announcement about our flight. The announcer again claimed the plane had not arrived yet and then proceeded to say “Flight 174 to London-Heathrow will be departing at eight-ooo…” the announcer dragged out the ‘o’ demonstrating that any time they gave would definitely not be our departure time as even they didn’t seem to know and after several seconds of dragging the ‘o’ out finished by finally saying “…ooo-five.” My immediate comment was “That’s a lot of o’s” as the board changed to reflect this new ‘departure’ time.

It was then that we found out the Jamaican woman sitting next to us had been waiting for the same flight since 9:00 AM. I can’t imagine spending that many hours at an airport doing absolutely nothing. Even with a portable game system such as my DS it would still be fairly mind numbing and deathly boring to me. I thought that since they made an announcement vocally claiming the departure time to be 8:05 PM then at least in knowing this was false information the plane would likely leave sometime during the hour of eight. This was not the case, either.

The board still continued its various time changes for our plane as the other flights came and left. It was dark outside now and thus difficult or impossible to see any planes that happened to be landing and no way to actually know the status of our plane until it had physically come to the gate. Eventually it was announced that the plane had arrived and it shortly came to the gate and unloaded its passengers sometime around 8:20. The flight staff also changed out after everyone had gotten off and our latest fantasy with departure times was 8:50.

Finally around 9:05 they called for first class to board, and just a short few minutes later they call for the other passengers to board even though the first line had not at all cleared. The line for waiting passengers sort of deformed and eventually split into two as they subtly rushed to get people on the now, very late, plane. To the best of my knowledge the plane finally began to take off around 9:30 EST for a flight that’s over seven hours long; the airline food was much more appealing now.

Overall the trip was fine and the return flight was rather uneventful. My favourite part was the day I went to RAFM London which I’ll cover in another update along with some other things.

I Must Be Popular

Well it’s been a while but here I am. People kept asking me when I was going to update again but I’ve been so busy with a number of things. I had to go out of state for a bit, I went to a couple of air-shows and took some pictures and videos, and on top of that I hosted an online international event to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Gundam (which had participants from at least eighteen countries); among other things.

Not a whole lot has happened with my work though. I hate to say it but I got so busy throwing the anniversary event because I was doing almost all of the work myself that I didn’t have time to keep up with my school. While I know it was probably a stupid thing to do it was the 30th anniversary and that only happens once. I refused to let it go by without doing something since I knew no one else would. Had it been anything other than Gundam I wouldn’t have cared but its creator, Yoshiyuki Tomino, is actually the reason I want to be a writer.

At any rate that’s all done now so all of my attention is back on work and will be from now on. I went to the college the other day to re-register for my classes because the semester ended and it was an odd experience. The paperwork was the same as always and that was followed by the teacher giving the details of the system which I already knew from before. In fact I should only need half of the credits that I did before to get a diploma now but I have to check the specifics to make sure.

The oddness didn’t start until near the end of the system explanation. The other person who was there registering for the same thing I was looked at the sections in their course and saw Etymology. She asked the teacher what this word was and what it meant, the teacher replied calling it ‘itemology’ saying it was the meaning of words. Of course I couldn’t just sit there and not say anything so I said that Etymology was the history of words. They didn’t exactly have faith in that but they took my word for it (oh look, a pun!).

After this was done everyone started talking about random things since the day was technically over and I don’t really know how but I ended up the conversation as well. The teacher asked me what it was exactly that I had been creating and managing. So I told her about the event I created, the anniversary, and that Yoshiyuki Tomino was the reason I wanted to be a writer. She asked me if it was something she could get her son interested in and I said I wasn’t sure, it all depends. In order to generalize it I just said it’s more or less about ‘giant robots’ which isn’t exactly true but I didn’t feel like getting into technical explanations about it.

I suppose since Gundam is a classic show (it was created in 1979) we ended up talking about other classic shows; which apparently only the teacher and I even knew about. I Dream of Jeannie, The Munsters, M*A*S*H, those kinds of shows. I said “You know how crazy it gets in M*A*S*H? That’s not even half as crazy as it actually is.” She asked “You mean back then?” to which I replied amusedly “No even now it’s like that.” Then I told her this was part of the reason I wanted to be a pilot because being in the military would be good experience for writing. Then she asked me “What do you want to fly?” I thought about it for a mere second and said in slight jest “Well, if I had my choice, an F6F” then I continued “but then it’d have to be the 40’s, so I’m a little late for that.” She said she didn’t even know that was so I went on to say that I’d want to be an F-35 pilot because it’s going to become our standardized fighter. She asked me “Which ones that?” so I replied “F-35, Lightning II” and she asked if I’d be afraid but all I could say was no.

After the other teacher came back in we went back to old shows as she asked him if he had ever seen or heard of any of the shows we had been talking about. The only one he recognized was M*A*S*H saying it was because his father watched it. There was a teenage kid there who didn’t have any clue what we were talking about so he brought up the movie Titanic and had severe disbelief over the fact that I’ve never seen it. One of the things he said was something like ‘it was their fate’ referring to the sinking of the ship; he soon said it was because the crew of the ship said that not even god could sink it.

A little bit more into the conversation (of which I wasn’t saying anything at this point) he brought up ‘the space shuttle’. He didn’t give any ship names and he vaguely referenced the event in which the OV-102 Columbia burnt up on it’s re-entry into the atmosphere. I really don’t know what brought any of this on but he said that his grandfather had told him the reason they couldn’t come back to Earth was because ‘they didn’t see heaven up there.’ It was like one of those train wrecks that you can see coming a mile away but you think ‘there’s no way this is going to happen…’ and then it does. I really wanted to put my hands over my face and shake my head but I kept being polite. I could tell that even the teacher thought this was a little silly and started to more quickly get her things together to go to her meeting.

Once she had gone the conversation was pretty much over and so I went to check on how many more credits I needed. The other teacher who was there at the time looked around a little asking me what my name was and said that my file wasn’t there. Further saying my teacher who had just left currently had the file. I said that I would just E-Mail her and ask her about it later, thanked him, and went to go sit outside until my father was back from doing whatever he was doing.

As I was sitting outside I thought about how uncomfortable the stone bench was and how I was glad to at least be out of the building away from strange conversations. Not ten minutes go by and the same kid walks out and sits on the bench on the opposite side of the entrance. He asked if I was doing the same program as him and I said I was; then he asked me if I really wanted to be a writer and of course I said yes. He then said that he had written a story once based off of a dream he had but that he made up more to it. I told him that’s how writing works; you find something that you like or think would be good and expand upon it. I also told him that the hardest part about writing is just getting it on paper. He asked me what I wanted to write about and I replied saying I most likely wanted to do sci-fi to which he said “You mean real stories?” I said “No, sci-fi, like Star Trek.” and he replied “Oh so like kind of real but not.” so I said “Yeah.”

Apparently he had been on his break and it was then over so he went back inside to work more. I again felt relieved that I was again alone but it was again short lived. An older man soon came out of the building and started talking to me saying he hated the English classes and that he had written a paper uncaring of errors and told the program to auto correct everything so he could come outside for a smoke break. I wasn’t sure what to say so in order to avoid being rude I said I always liked writing but hated science. He told me he loved science, especially when they dissected frogs. I told him I passed on that, it wasn’t for me. We talked a little more and I said I just wanted to do whatever I had to so I could get my credits and all of my requirements to be a pilot. He asked what I needed and I said I needed a college level to degree to which he replied “Oh that’s right because you need to be an officer to be a pilot” I further explained that the minimum requirement to even enlist in the Marines was now fifteen college credits at which he gave me a look of shock and said “To enlist?” I replied nodding “Yes to enlist.”

The reason he was so surprised by the minimum requirements was that he too was once in the military; I assume Marines. He then began to speak of his career and that he should’ve tried to become an officer. One thing he said was that one time when he was being transferred that he had the choice of either Hawaii or Germany. Then he said “I liked Hawaii but if I had went there then I’d be walking around like this all day.” As he said that he raised his arm and made the salute gesture. Basically he was saying there were lots of officers there and that’d he’d be saluting all day. So he chose Germany, only to later find out that at the medical unit where he would be going they’d mostly be officers too. However he said he was lucky because the day he was supposed to get on the train to go to Germany they told him that he was going to Italy instead and he said he felt relieved.

He continued with other stories. One of them was about how he had mistaken the general who was his base commander to be an Italian officer and thus didn’t salute him which he subsequently got chewed out for. Another was about how terrible their filing and paperwork system was and that he had spent a year completely re-organizing all of their medical records. He even said that one of the files he found sitting on a shelf was of a guy who was a Colonel that had been dead for two years and soon found out that his widow had been filling his prescriptions this entire time. She caused a huge fuss over being denied the medication that was meant for her very dead husband and insisted that she be given his original medical records so she could continue to get more somewhere else but he refused and went through every paper stamping ‘deceased’.

My father had come back during this story and they both started talking about how hard it was to get a job once you retire from the military. He said he had tried to get a job in a few hospitals since he had all of the qualifications but was denied because he hadn’t then yet used a computer because they did all of their paperwork and records by hand. After a little more of them talking we finally left and the day was over.

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On a slightly related note I took a number of pictures and some videos from the “Wings over Wayne” air-show at Seymour Johnson AFB and some from the MCAS Cherry Point air-show. I haven’t had time to go through both of them yet but I’ve sorted and uploaded everything that I took from the first show at Seymour Johnson AFB. I’ll add links to the Cherry Point air-show once I get them up.

Videos of the Seymour Johnson AFB 2009 air-show can be seen here (click the HD button to watch them in the best quality!): http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=71FD2EBB871C3F32

Pictures from the Seymour Johnson AFB 2009 air-show can be seen here:
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v259/casval/Camera/Airshows/Seymour%20Johnson%20AFB%202009/

You can also download the complete collection of pictures and videos from Seymour Johnson AFB 2009 here.
Pictures Pack: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CTF33U79
Video Pack 1: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1CBHQW1B
Video Pack 2: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=NQ3YFECJ
Video Pack 3: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5ITRQNYC
Video Pack 4: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GDJJ4R27

The Edge of Patience

I went back to the college today to set up my online classes and again I feel as if I should’ve just stayed home. It’s good that it’s set up and working now. Although the manner in which things occurred and as short and simple as everything was I feel like this is something to be done over the phone rather than requiring you to physically be there.

I was told yesterday to come to the college at one o’clock. I did so and again my teacher was not anywhere in sight. I thought to myself “Shouldn’t they have been here on time? They’re the one who scheduled the appointment!” and as usual I wasn’t in any hurry so I didn’t mind waiting. The issue here being I feel it’s a little improper to be late for appointments that you create.

Soon enough she came and she gave me paperwork to fill out. This is all well and fine however the paperwork she gave me was identical to the paperwork I filled out at the orientation. I can’t imagine why I’d need to fill out the same exact things twice but this makes me wonder if they’ve somehow lost my paperwork. I should have asked about it but at that point it probably would’ve made this whole thing a slightly larger mess and I thought I’d just go with it to make things progress faster.

As I was filling the papers out her superior came over and asked me when I was going to come in and work. I told her my plan was to get the online classes working and finish them as soon as possible. She asked “So ‘You and the Law’ is on the backburner then?” and I promptly replied “Yes”. She then gave me a look and shook her head while walking away saying “Oook” with a tone that felt as if she was saying ‘I think you’re making a mistake but it’s your life’. I appreciate that they say it’s a fast credit and easy to do but I know exactly how I want to do things so I felt like I was being questioned or even judged.

Because of the previously mentioned mess there were a few things I wasn’t sure how to fill out. For example I wasn’t certain how to fill out my last attendance dates to which my teacher said “Just leave it blank. I don’t have any problem with leaving things blank. Let the people in the office worry about it.” Now I don’t like to quickly form opinions about people but so far this entire procedure has seemed very unprofessional. Again I didn’t give it any thought and went on with it. The sooner I was out of here the sooner I could work at home.

While I was filling out the papers she set up my account and after I finished she showed me the website to go to. She suggested I write it down but I didn’t feel it warranted since the address was simple and I spend a lot of my time online. The page then loaded blank with a notice that in order to access the content you need a specific ActiveX control running. My teacher then began to explain in a very crude manner that this was something you might get and she didn’t remember what it was called and as soon as she said that I told her “It’s ActiveX. You could just tell your browser to allow it from this site and avoid future problems.” I’m no stranger to the internet or browser functions.

She quickly moved on and brought up the program interface and asked me which electives I wanted to take. She showed me which of the classes listed were electives and none of them sound particularly appealing so I just chose the first one I thought of. Then she had me log in on the computer in front of me and told me that the first class she had given me was health because it was a required class. Next she told me to try to access a part of the health class that was about halfway through the course. It worked and she told me to wait saying that I wasn’t supposed to be able to do that. After somewhat frantically looking through her admin console she found the correct setting to disallow me from access content out of order.

At this point she began to tell me how the classes actually work. Each segment listed on the screen has four parts. The first part is a test which if you score 80% or above you supposedly don’t have to do that segment of the class. If you don’t pass it then you need to read the chapter which is the second part. The third part is the ‘review test’ which doesn’t count for anything and is meant to prepare you for the actual test which is the fourth part. All of this concludes one chapter of study in a class. This was simple enough and I understood this easily.

Following this she told me that after every few chapters there is a ‘review test’ you are required to take. These tests cover all of the chapters immediately previous to it. I asked her whether these were just more practice tests (since she called the others ‘review tests’) or if they would actually count for something to which she quickly and laughingly replied “Boy you are dense aren’t you?” It was then that I was greatly beginning to lose my patience with her, this program, and the entire college. I’ve not heard very many good things about this college and the only reason I’ve gone to it is because there aren’t a lot of nearby choices. I wanted to stand right up and in my loudest voice possible give a response to that question she’d not soon forget. I wanted to see her try to make some snide comments about what I had to say but luckily for her I’m a patient man. Regardless I’ll not stand for such blatant disregard and unprofessionalism again. I’m willing to give second chances but not a third.

I’m not at all pleased with anything this college has to offer so far. I’ve not yet even started and already I doubt anything can happen that would change my mind about it. I was thinking about waiting until I finished so that when I tried to join the USMC I’d go straight to officer but if things keep up in this manner I’m seriously going to consider enlisting when I have the minimum fifteen credits just to get the hell away from here and find a much more professional learning environment.

I Should've Kept Playing Ace Combat...

      I guess I haven’t updated in a while. Well nothing has happened worth writing about. That’s not to say that things of little or no consequence have been happening; nothing has happened at all. Nevertheless I will not forget about this blog, there will always be new posts. I’m not the kind to give up on things.

      As you can already guess, something new happened. I once again returned to the college today hoping to set up my online classes. Before I left I was playing Ace Combat 6 because I figured I’d be doing a lot of work once I was at the college and so I thought I would get in as much relaxing game play as possible.  I’d prefer to do my classes online so that I can do it wherever and whenever I please while wasting very little time. Not to mention my plan is to blaze through it all as fast as I can. Much to my dismay this was not set up today.

      Once I arrived I soon found out that my teacher was not around. I asked the only person I could find in the office about this and they said she was in a meeting of some kind. I wasn’t in any hurry and I asked when my teacher would return, to which they said ‘maybe an hour’ and as usual I didn’t mind waiting. They asked me what I was there for and once I answered they brought me to one of the rooms where students were working and told me that a different teacher could help me.

      When I walked into the room this other teacher was hanging something on a board. After he was finished he asked me what I needed and I told him I was there to set up my online classes. We moved over to a computer and he looked at the screen and asked if it looked like ‘a+’ (which is the name of an application used for one of their online programs). I said I wasn’t sure and that I didn’t even know how any of this works or what I needed. He then said something along the lines of “Well… I don’t either” followed by “People like to think I know things that I don’t” at which point I said “I figured I’d probably just have to wait.”

      He told me I could use the computer until my teacher was back and I said “I don’t know what I’d use it for.” He then asked for my name and set up an account for me on an application called ‘plato’ for me to work on as I waited. He told me that he gave me two English sections to work on and said “I don’t know if this is what you’ll be using but it probably is so it won’t be entirely in vain.” I said “ok” and began working.

      As soon as I started I was underwhelmed. The questions, setup, and difficulty of the work before me was ridiculously simple. The very first segment was identifying pronouns. All of the segments were as effortless as distinguishing a finely cut diamond from ordinary river stones. At this point I assumed this computer program was for ABE (Adult Basic Education) because it certainly seemed too easy for me. Despite this I felt the need to finish as much as possible including all of the tutorials simply to kill time.

      When my teacher finally returned I had finished almost the whole first course I was given. I would’ve finished everything to be sure but the program was set in a way that it requires you to be on certain screens for a preset amount of time before advancing. I later found out, not much at all to my surprise, it didn’t count for anything. For once I didn’t mind that I had done work that was meaningless. It was incredibly easy and I’m the kind of person that can get caught up in things and not realize how much time has passed.

      Now that my teacher was here I expected things would move quickly; they didn’t exactly. She was already helping another student with something and told me to wait in the front of the room and as soon as she was finished she would get to me. Roughly ten minutes later she was back and started telling me what credits I would need. She had another ‘revised’ version of my transcript which actually gave me more of the credits I rightfully earned but it still wasn’t acceptable. From my understanding this wouldn’t even be a problem save for the fact that my old teacher apparently doesn’t like to return calls.

      What was wrong this time? My name was displayed correctly. It granted me more but not quite nearly all of my credits. It even had numerical values as far as I could see and they were still wrong and far lower than what I had actually received. So what could have possibly made this one unacceptable? For some reason my old teacher decided to change the dates on the transcript. This might not have been an issue (though I have to wonder quite simply why they felt the change was needed) if it wasn’t for the fact that the dates that were listed as my final high school years were in fact dates which I was still attending middle school.

…

      Moving on she told me that for the moment they’re going to assume they will be getting a fixed transcript so that I won’t have to redo the credits that were listed. “Good luck with that”, I thought. Then she showed me the core credits I needed and how many electives I would need. For the moment, I need a total of fifteen credits. She also told me I could challenge only two classes. A challenge is more or less where you take the final test and if you pass you automatically get that credit. Yet I wonder why I can only do that for two classes? The entire program from what I’ve seen is free so it can’t be a money issue. 

      She then passed me off to her superior who told me pretty much the same things. Her superior then started to write a list of classes I could challenge. This entire process took quite a while because students kept coming up and asking questions and for some reason they would always both respond. Around half way through the list she erased two of the classes and said something like “You’ll never be able to pass those anyway.” I couldn’t help but think to myself “Excuse me? Isn’t that for me to decide?” but I chose not to say anything since I can only do two total. She then asked me which two classes I wanted to challenge and I was a little astonished that they expected me to decide this right there so I simply said “I don’t know yet.”

      Next she handed me a book titled “You and the Law” saying that it was an easy elective credit since it only took a couple days to complete. She told me how to go through the book; read one chapter, do the test at the end of the chapter (but not in the book), and so on. Subsequently she went to pull out the photocopied test only to find they didn’t have any more copies. So she took the master copy and we walked down the hall to the photocopier. I’m not sure what she was doing since the room was far too small for more than one person to be in but she seemed to be having difficulty with the machine. My teacher soon walked in and attempted to create the copies the way that they wanted them. The two of them were in disagreement over how to accomplish this and then I heard my teacher say “Don’t tell me how to use this machine. I know how to use this machine.” I’m guessing she said it with a slight bit of sarcasm because they weren’t actually arguing over it but I wasn’t really paying attention.

      After the photocopier pandemonium was over my teachers superior gave me one of the copies of the test as well as a folder and told me that the book can’t leave the room. This meant that I couldn’t take it home and complete it. I would ascertain that this was a measure to keep people from cheating however one could easily turn the pages back, search for the answers in the previous chapter, and no one would have any idea. Finally she told me that whenever I was going to leave I was to place this folder into a green crate on a desk by the wall.

      My teacher then said to me that before I could take the online classes I would need to come back tomorrow and take an instructional course to learn how to do it. I thought that’s what I was there to achieve today but evidently not. Since I was only really interested in getting the online work out of the way as fast as I could I surmised that I wouldn’t get anything finished today and I should just come back tomorrow.

It always seems like I can never get anything accomplished especially when it’s not in my power to accomplish it.