April 2005, I decided to try to better my life, so I enrolled into a non-traditional college, Brown Mackie College. I wasn’t looking to live the rich life; I simply wanted to support my daughter and live comfortably. With Brown Mackie’s two year Associate degree program, I figured I’d get the education I needed to make a little more money. I chose the pharmacy technology courses because I thought, if I like the program, perhaps I’ll go on to pharmacy school.
Classes started and I was excited. (I’ll admit it, I’m a geek, I love school.) My first class was Professional Development; it’s the first class everyone takes when they enroll. Right away, I had a wake up call. Every class is one month long, as I stated before. But, as a night student, classes are only held 3 nights a week, 4 hours each night. So there is only a total of 12, 4 hour classes. People weren’t showing up! I thought, since I’m paying for this education, I’m going to class. And as my time went on, the more disappointed I was…
After talking to some of my classmates, I gathered that more than half of the students enrolled were welfare mothers. My first reaction was positive. I, myself, am a struggling single mother on public assistance. I thought, this is great, all of these people trying to better their lives for their families. Until check time rolled around, then I realized how naieve I had been. After being in class one hour on Thursday, students were allowed to go to the library to pick up their student loan checks. And most of them picked up their checks and left; they didn’t bother returning to class for the remaining 3 hours. The college turned into a ghost town on check days.
After attending Brown Mackie for about 1 year, my feeling about the college turned negative. I felt out of place. Students ran around like they were back in high school. Women were fighting over men. Men were fighting over women. People were skipping class and leaving early. There was always someone cursing on a cell phone in the hallways during class time. Some of the college’s teachers were unprofessional also. There was a male teacher living with a younger female student. There was a female teacher that passed a failing student in her class because the student gave her Vicodin. It was like a circus; all it lacked was an enormous tent.
As my time passed on, I not only felt out of place, but I started to feel uncomfortable in class. My last few months at Brown Mackie, I started asking myself why I enrolled in the first place. My GPA was a solid 3.8. But I wasn’t working that hard. I wasn’t feeling challenged. And my classmates noticed. Some of them started making fun of me. I was the teacher’s pet, and the know-it-all. But I was just having fun learning and helping those who weren’t getting the information. Some of the women in class were nasty to me. And I asked myself, just what are the qualifications to enroll in this school?
My chemistry teacher approached me and saved my self esteem. He asked me what my goals were. He told me I was too intelligent to be wasting my time at Brown Mackie College. He said my grades were outstanding and he was glad to have someone in class that understands what he’s teaching. He told me to continue with my education after Brown Mackie. Oddly enough, he quit his job.
A friend of mine enrolled and I was happy to have a friendly face around. But the stress of Brown Mackie captured him, too. When we would meet after class, neither of us had anything positive to say. He became ill and failed one of his classes. A student in the same class missed as many class sessions as he did, and they passed him. The college decided to save some money and replaced paper with an internet site for students to access class schedules, account information, and so on. My friend had trouble logging on to the site, so he asked the registrar’s office for a paper copy of his class schedule. They wouldn’t give him one. And without a class schedule, he wasn’t able to get his book. He asked for help to log on to the site, and nobody, not even the man responsible for the site, could get him logged on. He dropped out.
Finally, the time came for me to look for an externship site. I was in my last class, and I felt relieved to be finishing up the last two years of Brown Mackie with a degree. I had to complete 120 hours at a pharmacy to graduate. They gave me a list of places I could go with whom they were contracted: a total of 3 hospital and 2 retail pharmacies. Two of the hospitals were too far for me to travel. The other hospital denied me; their schedule was full. One of the retail pharmacies never called me back, no matter how many messages I left with them. And the other retail pharmacy denied having a contract with Brown Mackie for an externship.
The feeling of relief I had suddenly turned into panic. I told my department chair I was having trouble, and all he kept telling me was “keep trying”. Keep trying?! I had tried all of the places on the list! By this time, I had already signed a two week extension. I was running out of time. So I turned elsewhere for help: the career services department. She told me the less I worked to find an externship site, the harder she had to work. She had the contacts. She had my resume. But she simply didn’t do the work.
So here I sit, two years later, with no degree and in debt. After my extension was up, I was withdrawn. My financial aid would no longer pay for my externship, and I don’t have a month’s worth of tuition in my bank account to pay for it myself. Had I known I was enrolling into Clown College, I would’ve worn a bright red foam nose. I probably would’ve fit in better.
