It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times. The dates, somewhere where the end of the nineties dropped cocoon and developed the colors of 
the dos-thousands, and the setting, your average college metropolis with a majority of the population likely under legal drinking age. Third Eye Blind and Sarah Mclachlan gripped the reins of your radio stations with firm resolve for worse and better, as Nickelback had yet to infest the weak minded with their special blend of yell-singing and the napkin ballad. The iron-gutted Matthew D. Jordan and his hetero-life-mate Toby R. Schroder are en-route to night classes at a community college. The goal: survive class to enjoy second-dinner at any fast food establishment still open and willing to exchange American dollar bills for taco shaped edibles.
It is cold, and dark, and while the work day has finally come to an end, the pre-sleep learning sessions are about to begin. Your protagonists arrive to the small community college, mere yards from seemingly endless fields that grow actual real live corn, silver coffee cups in hand – the beverages inside treated with a variety of sugars, syrups, and assorted dairy. They find the class, yawn, and produce notebooks. One sip of coffee. Two. The teacher begins to lecture, then, spying the coffee mugs, asks the two night-schooling gentlemen to remove them from the class as drinking coffee from safety mugs is not only dangerous and disruptive, but might endanger the continuum of space-time. “Take the mugs to your car, and then quickly return.” The men return to the car, place the coffee mugs in their respective cup holders, then hop in and simply drive away. Second dinner is now closer at hand.
…
Some who read my ramblings have made the mistake of asking me for preparatory aid when choosing their college class schedules in an effort to squeeze out any class that might help a future career in freelancing. My answers have hopefully been clear and precise: I have no idea. My personal flirtation with college life involved learning how to write archaic server code on graph paper, then receive it weeks later covered in red ink and messages like “please try next time” and “your kind don’t belong here”. The graphic design program was down the hall from where my attempted tutelage took place, and from my passing hallway glances I didn’t see much computer use happening. Even as little as the beginning of the two-triple-zeroes, to my knowledge there wasn’t a degree or course specifically designed to teach you how to appropriately design good looking and usable websites. Mainly, this was due to the infancy of the webernet’s usage as we know it today, and also because the internet was where programming happened. You needed to, you know, know – like, code, to make graphical websites, right?
The little community colleges I attended taught me almost nothing about computers, or design. I’ve been a bad student for the entirety of my time in classrooms, and my ability to fail every test I’m given aside – I’ve still managed to pick up a few things in my formative years if merely by accident. My old high-school English teacher was a pompous and arrogant bastard, with a magnificent beard, who managed to find reasons to dislike and ignore me even before I provided them, an inevitability he hadn’t the courtesy to wait for. If you need something drawn on, farted near, or covered in boogers – I was just a hand-wave away, and they knew that. As a non sequitur once during his “my thoughts are fact” diatribe on The Fall of the House of Usher, he once mentioned that sitting up straight after lunch – as opposed to hunching over – will make you less tired in class as your guts n’ such have less work to do. Brilliance. I’ve never forgotten this. Oh and yes, I actually did read 1984 by Orwell, sans-cliff-notes, you unbelievable asshole.
Toby and I transferred to our second community college together, and I believe the “associates degree” we were attempting to achieve changed titles somewhere along the road. Something like a “degree in computer networks” or a “degree in network technologies” or a “degree in ham-fisting your way around Windows”. I remember signing up for classes behind a little window in the one “open area” of the campus when a guy I went to high-school with walked up next to me. As I finished signing my name on a series of whatevers, he turned to me and said “Oh, hello Matt.” I replied in kind, and then I remembered his name and how poorly his brain developed when his second question was, “Where do you go to school?” I replied, “Right here man.” He smiled and walked off, likely into the nearest wall. Toby had registered earlier than I, but neither one of us had yet the money to pay for it. We were banking on our financial aid to arrive sometime that decade, so we did what every twenty year old does when they pay for anything – we floated a check.
I remember a week later sitting in the financial aid office in a pastel padded chair while Toby pounded his palm on the receptionist’s desk and demanded to know why his financial aid had still not arrived, after filing twice and twice more for things he’d apparently forgotten in his first attempts. It was this lady’s unfortunate duty to tell Toby that his financial aid simply hadn’t been filed yet, the office just… didn’t do it. He yelled right up until he reached the point where a “sir, you’re going to have to leave” was inevitable, then we left. Shortly after, I learned that my financial aid had suffered the same fate. For some reason they simply took our applications for government monies and used them to make one of their paper piles bigger or something. I imagined my application landing on the financial aid lady’s desk, and as it floats to a light touch-down, a trap-desk-door swings open and where her legs would be visible, it’s just black and stars. Off floats my application into the great nothing, and as the door returns to it’s closed position, the financial aid lady pops the tab on a Diet Coke and cackles loudly into the ceiling. I wasn’t sure what I’d have to do to get my financial aid before my grandchildren could drive cars, so I pulled an old Schroder trick and threatened to sue the school, with my not-lawyer and all of my not-dollars. Toby did some face-to-face yelling, and when I went to do the very same with the Dean, he wasn’t in his office. I took a paper from his assistants desk, tore it in half like a man with fever, and wrote the following cryptic note:
“Why don’t you want me at your school? Where’s my financial aid? Expect a call from my lawyer tomorrow.”
I signed my name, then used scotch tape to affix my completely empty threat to his door. The next morning at 8am, I received a call from the Dean letting me know my financial aid would be ready in two days. “Wow” I said to my door after hanging up the phone, “That actually worked.” The check arrived as he promised, and I immediately purchased six dollars worth of school supplies, then paid rent with the rest.
…
The classes were a fat-fingered attempt at barely qualifying for whatever rules and whatever regulations the state tells the school it needs in order to legally say they offer “computer degrees.” In the kind-of-a-pro column, at a community college you’re usually only taking classes that pertain directly to your future career. Unlike the infamous “well rounded” four-year universities, a class on sausage-making or classical music wasn’t a prerequisite to earn a degree in mathematics. This community college though, really seemed to toss this degree together after a quick wake-n-bake following a night of heavy alcoholism. I called Toby prior to writing this article, and we still couldn’t remember all of the classes they wanted us to take. From the lot, we’re nearly certain that we took a class on how to assemble, from scratch, RJ45 network cables, an online class on statistics or on writing technical papers, and another class on the topic of network security, and how to modify the IP settings of your modem in Windows 95. If you’re wondering at this point if I passed these classes, I’m mildly offended. Of course I didn’t. I failed with a splendor and magnificence that is reserved only for a presidential funeral.
The degree wasn’t supposed to be all that hard to obtain for even the average student. They were night-classes, ten weeks in a term, and we only had to go to school twice a week. I think I physically attended three classes. You’d sit in an hour or two of class, take a break for ten minutes, then go right back in to copy notes from an overhead projector they likely found in a hospital from the twenties. It’s funny how little you remember when you simply didn’t care about what was going on at the time. Toby and I sat and struggled to piece together the classes and everything that we did there shortly before failing out. Sure, it was almost ten years ago, but it’s not like it was the roaring twenties and we were trying to remember the formula to our bathtub whiskey, it was just a few classes at a community college. I do have a clear slice of memory of Toby and I, notebooks under-arm, standing before one of those vending machines that rotates a stacked pillar full with apples, chips, and sandwiches prepared likely the week before. It was one of those instances where payday wasn’t for another forty eight hours or so, and we barely had change in our pockets. In this moment, we were starving. We stared longingly as a tuna sandwich slowly moved in front of our faces, inches from the glass. It smiled and waved, then turned the corner on it’s parade route. One palm on the glass, Toby mentioned it was time to return to boredom, time to learn about how to create a new folder on the desktop in Windows.
Toby and I have a running joke, and it involves a fictional person named Gene. In one of our classes was a man in his late thirties that I used to work with at a computer repair store when I wore my day costume. He had a wry, dry, and strange sense of humor, and you weren’t entirely sure if anything he ever said was true. I remember talking with him briefly about class and he mentioned how much he didn’t like one of our professors, an older woman with large glasses, a bowl of tight curly hair, and while she wasn’t orca-fat, she definitely had front-butt. He said, “Ah, yeah, Gene – really don’t like her class.” From this, one might assume that her name was Gene – as I surely wasn’t paying attention, and neither was Toby, so this weirdo I worked with had to have picked up at minimum – her name. I mean, he actually passed his homework where as I took it home to use as a heat coaster for pot pies or, on a particularly desperate evening, toilet paper.
Toby and I showed up for, at most, four nights of class out of the entire semester. One of the nights was for a test we weren’t even sure we knew the name of, and when we approached the computer lab, the following exchanged occurred:
Toby: We’re here to take a test for Gene.
Lab Guy: For who?
Matthew: For Gene. Computers, networking basics. Or something.
Lab Guy: Uh, I don’t have any tests on the calendar for today.
Toby: It’s for Gene. Gene the computer teacher.
Lab Guy: Okay we don’t have a Gene that works here.
Matthew: At all? Are you sure?
Lab Guy: Yeah, pretty sure. What was the class name?
Toby: Uh, computer basics. Networking basic- computer networks. I don’t know.
Lab Guy: Here I found a test for yesterday on network security. I’ll let you take it today if you’re cool about it.
Matthew: Deal. What’s the test on again?
…
As you can see, we were pinnacles of higher learning. I do remember the test involved moving and unzipping files from the command line, and during the test I remember asking myself what in the world I was actually doing here. My lack of interest, steady girlfriend, and recent debilitating addiction to online gaming (the MMORPG Asheron’s Call came out in 1999) kept my attention firmly away from school of any kind. Toby was as equally uninterested, and as we shared an apartment together we basically kept each other from going to class. If I didn’t come up with a reason to not go, like, “I’d rather watch this marathon of Benson,” Toby would find an excuse like, “I’d rather stay home where it is fun, and not go to class where it is not fun.”
I can’t imagine these classes would prepare you for anything remotely close to an actual computer, networking, design, or tech-something job of any kind. The subject matter was barely understood by those teaching, and the strange amalgam of people who (like the elderly lady who kept telling Toby that AMEX cards were the single future of online business and the balding competition weight-lifter who kept telling me all about whey protein) attend night class at a community college weren’t likely to use it anyway. We were all here under false pretenses, and not the fun kind of false pretenses where a banner with your name appears when the lights turn on. No, the bad kind of false pretenses where you enter a steel room without windows and before you can ask what’s going on, you here a grumbly laugh and the sound of the door locking.
I’m not sure why we didn’t leave earlier. From what we remember, our low grades put us on “academic probation,” which also disqualifies you from receiving more financial aid from the government. We just stopped going after a few months. Toby usually has a sixth-sense about these sorts of situations, but he handles them far differently than I. Toby once worked as a bus-boy at a truck stop for a few days, and quit his job at Amigos because he didn’t want to get his new black shoes (the ones they told him to buy for the job) dirty. Toby once stood up and left a job at Boston Market in the middle of his orientation videos. He was in the back room watching the VHS tapes on how to prepare the food and deal with customers, when he realized he never wanted this job – so he stood up and left. Later his manager called and asked, “What are you doing – when are you coming back?” Toby’s reply was simple, “I’m not. You can watch the rest of the video if you want, I don’t want to work there.” Back then I would’ve simply tightened my belt, and bit down on the end of a cigarette with depression thinking, “Well, this is my lot in life now.” If there’s anything in Toby’s 1990’s work ethic that was consistent, it would have to be “quitting is always an option.” Today, he’s actually almost complete with his bachelors degree in fine arts, taking night classes, a degree he tells me that still does little to nothing to prepare anyone for a proper job in graphic design. “Watercolors, Matt,” he told me. “I painted flowers in watercolor and took a class on dinosaur bones. Photoshop is a dirty word.” Toby is now an A student.
…
At the end of our conversation, the one where Toby and I attempted to recall as much as we could about our college days, Toby said, “That place man, back then, it was one lizard short of being that weird scene in Fear & Loathing.” I can’t think of a better way to put it. All of my software, programming, and business knowledge today (the breadth of which is easily debatable) came from being self taught, and taught on-the-job by a select few ex-coworkers with far more patience than I. I’m not saying that college is to be avoided for those budding freelancers and designers out there. However, I do encourage anyone to actually review with the professor what’s going to be taught. If the class says “Photoshop 101,” but they end up asking you to paint road signs with fish blood then describe, using ten words, what the experience taught you about the music of Paul McCartney, then you’re wasting your money. Also, it probably wouldn’t hurt to learn the name of your professors, but in a pinch, you can always go with “Gene.”