Thu: I miss MCC

So the New Year is here, and with it the spring semester, which will hopefully be my last semester (barring any last second, degree pathway, bait-and-switch stuff). I’ve enjoyed my time at ASU and I’m sure for the most part the spring will be pretty cool. That being said, I would never say (and I’m relatively sure you’ll agree) that ASU is the hands down best schooling experience I ever had. There was another I school I attended a couple years ago that also holds some good memories. At the time I was actually going to this school if you asked me to put together a list of good things about this school it would have read something like this:

Good things about Mesa Community College
1) It’s only for 2 years
2) Ummm….it’s close to my house?

Thankfully I’ve had some time, and one of the many wonders of time is that it can sometimes give you a new perspective. With that new perspective I’ve started to realize that I miss taking classes at Mesa Community College.

I’ve always been jealous of the people who came out of high school knowing exactly what they wanted to study at college. I wasn’t even close. Coming out of high school I decided to study to be a Music Educator, which at the time seemed reasonable. I liked music, I appreciated some of my band teachers, and I had no better ideas so I went with it. I think had I decided to major in Music education at ASU there’s a possibility I would have felt somewhat pigeonholed into finishing it out. MCC for good or for bad doesn’t pigeonhole anyone. You could basically take classes in whatever you want till kingdom come for all they care, which for me was a good thing because it let me take that time to try some stuff out and find a major I liked. Which it turned out was not music education.

Really there was only one reason I found that major; the teachers. The teachers I’ve had at ASU have been really good for the most part, but there were very much teachers. The MCC teachers never really felt like teachers, sure they taught the material, but they always felt a little like that Substitute teacher who comes in and feeds you all the answers and then spends the rest of the time talking about their life (I was homeschooled so my exposure to Subs is pretty limited, but the few I'ev sen usually do this). If I was going there for serious education this probably would have been beyond frustrating to me, but I was really just there to poke around and get direction. When you’re looking for direction their really is no better assistance than talking to people who have lived a life, worked a profession and now just teach and try and direct a bunch of aimless college students. They were frank, they would tell you if your major was stupid, or the classes you were taking were a waste of time. I think they could be so honest because they knew they couldn’t get fired for something stupid like hurting a student’s feelings by hitting them with some cold reality. Sometimes I feel like university professors are stepping on eggshells to appeal to the students, telling what they want to hear and such.

The students were different there too. I like the students at ASU for the most part, but they take everything so seriously. Every group project there’s always one kid who is just up the wall emailing everybody 6 times a day to make sure our project (that was usually worth 5% of the grade) is still going well. The kids at MCC all had bigger things to worry about I think. That 5% project takes a backseat to keeping your job or raising your family ( I took lot of classes with people going back to school). It put things in perspective for me, it allowed me to understand where school fits in life, how important it is, and un-important at the same time. It was cool, and sometimes I miss the honesty and that constant reminder of proper perspective.