Tuesday, March 11, 2008

More Whiskey Tango Foxtrottery

On my way to one of my classes I walked up with a teacher working another section of the same class. He’s a fine old Scottish reprobate who liked me well enough to try to find some kind of Scottish blood in the surname Montgomery. As we walked up the 103 stairs (Yes I counted, and I’m dreading this when the monsoon/hot season comes) he complained about the steps but, looking up to the skirted coeds who were easily escaping us, said, “but you can’t complain when you’re following such fine young lassies.”

We also compared syllabi and were interested to find that my syllabus and his, for the exact same class, were, well, quite dissimilar. Mine had quizzes, his didn’t. Mine was curved, his wasn’t (oh.. sorry.. that was later in the men’s room).

Today I caught up with the uber-director and asked him what was up. He told me to go ask Clerical Employee #1 for the “real” syllabus. I thought this odd, since she deals with the College courses and these were University courses (Tech Voc versus Evergreen Courses, essentially). I went and she told me to go to the University as she had nothing to do with it.

While I was talking to her about the syllabus problem another instructor came in and said, “wait, the syllabus is wrong?” Turns out her mentee (and some day I must write down how charming and feckless MY mentor was) was teaching the same class. The correct syllabus was pulled and it was not the one that either of us had.

Another trip to the uber-director. He did the look over my shoulder to the long-distance and sigh thing. “Ah, Clerical Employee #1 is normally so good with this.” Just at that moment the other instructor came in. He looked over her shoulder and sighed, “Clerical Employee #1 is normally so good with this.” The other instructor looked at him and said, “Clerical Employee #1?” He sighed again. “Clerical Employee #1.” She said, “Clerical Employee #1 has nothing to do with this, it’s a University course.” This occasioned a particularly pained sigh.

The other instructor said, “I noticed something else, on the schedule this is a 1.5 hour course, but on the folder you give to the instructors it is a 2 hour class.” The uber-director must have been, just over our shoulders, trying to see Japan by now. “Oh, well, you should always go by the folder, the schedule doesn’t really mean anything.”

At that moment I realized that CC type colleges are alike the world over. For the entire time I worked at SVC we could never turn out an accurate schedule. Just before I left we turned out one with extra holidays, three different academic schedules, and three different websites for registration. If Genius the world over holds hands a feels a spark of recognition, at this moment of shared clumsiness I felt, at least, a shared desire to find a bar, cliff, or rope.

The uber-director, in closing, thanked me for discovering this and chasing it down, but as he looked over my shoulder and sighed, I knew he wished that he was very far away and that I was very fucking dead.

Another day brilliant day at BPU.

PS.. the weather was good.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

So, let me get this straight... you are going to start wearing a skirt during the monsoon season?

HYS

Anonymous said...

IIR my English History C,

The Montgomery's were always considerd somewhat--oh how do I say this? Untrustworthy? Yes, yes, that's the word. So initially they were "rewarded" with a border posting up to the Hadrian's Wall area. In hopes of being overrun by the warlike and pagan Scots, natch.

They somehow redeemed themselves in the eyes of both the Scots (into whose country many of them moved) and by the 1066 crowd, who then "rewarded" them with the border area spanning England and Wales (which later became known as Montgomeryshire--now sadly subsumed into a few other English and Welsh counties).

Alright, children. That's enough for today. Don't forget to do your homework on the "Experience of the Swedish Immigrant in America". Class dismissed!

yer sis

Anonymous said...

Koreans don't like eye-contact when talking...a sign of insolence! And...the clerical employee #1 is probably an alien from another planet. The school is protecting the alien to keep peace in the Universe. Don't mess with the master plan!

BKF

Charles Montgomery said...

I should note that the uber-director is a flush-faced fellow from Georgia, so the "insolence" thing probably wasn't as important as the "wishing he were somewhere else" thing.

Anonymous said...

He is from Georgia? Then, he must have been a Korean (an expatriate) in his past life.

BKF