Beautiful, Just Beautiful Vol 3

Beautiful, Just Beautiful. Vol 3

05.09.04 03:43 pm



My sister works at the University Frame Shop and Gallery in Seattle's premeire outdoor lifestyle center (read: strip mall with amazing landscape architecture). She took about three years to frame my diploma, the one you read about in volume 2, the shelf paper? Well, she really did it up, though, when she got around to it. Gilded frame with a purple wash and a three inch purple velvet mat. Very glamourous darling, and extremely self important. Of course we all know the tounge in cheekieness of it but, picture me carrying the damn thing through the halls of Seattle vocational institute, into their advising center, into the recruiter's office and handing it over as proof that I really graduated. Three people,including Marcelina Ortigoza, the head of advising and recruiting for STI gathered around me and the receptionist who was going to try to make a photocopy through the glass. everyone was SO impressed, it was really humiliating. All this ludicrous adolation of something that was doing me no good: Im here trying to get into your program for heavens sake. The other students (all african american teenagers; future dental hygenists, nursing assistants and multiple tradesmen) in the waiting room sized me up and decided instantly that I thought I was better than them and I should be iced out at all costs. I could already see I was going to get the white gloves treatment by the administration at STI. Marcelina (Marcie) Ortigoza struck me on first meeting, as a very sharp and intuitive woman. I think, in my egotism, that I only felt that way because she really liked me and thought I was the smartest thing to cross her threshold. Not a flattering portrait of my character, but, true nonetheless. In any case, as my contacts with her have grown in number, I have come to see that she is forgetful to the point of senility and may actually say the exact same thing to everyone. I somehow managed to progress with Marcie through several identical introductions of myself and my circumstances (most notably that hell or high water i would be taking a two week trip to NY after the first week of class)and throught the initial registration process. You dont really have to apply, they just check you for a pulse and youre in. Now, let me be clear, you DO have to take the placement test. Nothing they can do about that. You could be Noam Chomsky and, Chomsky Shmomsky, you better show up at 2:00 to begin testing at 2:15. They do assist you however, by making the test so easy that you would have to have severe, massive test anxiety or have stepped off the boat within the last couple of days to do poorly. Let me put it to you like this: How do you spell breeze? Multiple choice. Now, anyione who knows me knows that as far as math goes, I might as well be a day old immigrant from Laos. My fear was that I would do so badly on the math section of the "test" that I would have to take a remedial math class at SCCC to be enrolled in the Cosmetology program. Thank god, somehow I guessed my way through and earned a darkly comic "Brilliant!" written on the test. How you could classify anyone as brilliant based on their performance on that test...I dont know, the system there is some really lowest common denominator type shit. I've tried with minimal success, to put the whole experience out of my mind. Especially the rotund, derisive, pseudo-professorial proctor who took his job satirically seriously. Shame should play no part in test taking.