Wednesday, August 3, 2011

A milestone . . .

The day is arriving and I can't believe the years have flown by . . . Next week, my youngest son registers for college! He, in my mind, should still be a baby in arms yet the kid walks, talks, and shaves and is no longer an infant. Where do the years go?

Thanks to budget cuts and various other misspending of our government, classes at the community college are cut back and required credentials for certain classes aren't available. In order to prove you can do the more progressive classes, you have to take an assessment test. Repeated requests are answered with 'we no longer have any available openings'. What? In order to get his foot in the door, my son has combed through the catalog and found a few classes that don't require the assessment test, however, he won't be able to take anything in math, English, or History - his subjects of choice. A check in with Biology shows those classes have long filled up, probably because those students couldn't take the assessment test, either. And we wonder why the United States is behind the world in academics!

My son will prevail, somehow, and he has hopes of getting into some classes so he has a better chance in the Spring semester. Right now, he can try for Acting, Ceramics, Humanities, or Spanish. Sigh . . . at least, he hopes he can get into something and begin college. At this point, we aren't too sure he will find any places open but we live and hope . . . and pray!

Things do change as I don't recall having these problems when I attended the community college back in the days when I rode a dinosaur to school! :-) My daughters more recently attended community college before transferring to four-year institutions and they pretty much got into most of the classes they wanted. The prices go up and the educational advantages go down . . .

We are being optimistic about registration and hope we manage at least one class to get my son started on his higher education.

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