#72 - Community College Changed My Life

The impact of going to community college on everything that came after; Time Machine

Hello, my friends,

We did go camping last week at Serrano Campground near Big Bear Lake. The campground was large and crowded (tents everywhere!) and we shared a dual campsite with some friends who brought trailers. I’m sticking with my hypothesis that camping — particularly with kids — gets better after the second night. On the first night, everyone is getting accustomed to the campsite, sleeping in a tent, and each other without the intervention of technology. The first day is bleary and tiresome. On the second day, everyone’s brain truly arrives and we properly relax into being outdoors. All that is to say that our trip wasn’t nearly long enough!

Coming back to work the next day was a change — I was at an in-person meeting pretty much all day (mostly I work from home) — but it’s really that July 4th fell on a Thursday this year that has thrown my whole internal schedule off. Is it Friday, my brains asks? No. Is it Saturday? No. Is it Sunday? No. What’s tomorrow, then? It takes many little moments remain oriented properly. Our Independence Day celebration was pleasant. In the morning we went to a parade in a lovely nearby enclave (South Pasadena) and then picnicked at a park until late afternoon. The weather was warm, we ate, the kids played and at lots of ice cream and sweets, I knocked a volleyball around with my brother-in-law, James. Then we went home and had jackfruit tacos that Ashley had prepared for camping but we didn’t get to eat. They were delicious!

Again, we opted out of fireworks this year (though I can hear them bursting in mid-air as I type this) which is fine by me. I think in two years the kids will be old enough to make it worthwhile. Thankfully, there’s a high school close to us that has an annual show so I know where we’ll go when the time is right. Speaking of education, on to today’s topic.

These pines are one of the reasons I’m so fond of the San Bernardino Forest.

Community College Changed My Life

Earlier this week I had a meeting with Karin Klein, journalist and author of the book, Rethinking College: A Guide to Thriving Without a Degree, to be released in August. I’ll be interviewing her live online next Tuesday about the book which I’ve almost finished (I have an Advanced Reading Copy). During the meeting, I mentioned how important my time in community college, a subject that comes up fairly often in her book, was to me. You should talk about that, she said. You know, I told her, I’ve alluded to community colleges during my virtual events (this past week was #100!) but I’ve never really gotten into it. In my mind I thought, I should write about it this week. The fact is: Community college changed my life.

I did okay in high school; I was smart enough but immature and undisciplined. I did very well in some classes (humanities) and not so well in others (math). I knew that I could probably get into some universities with my grades, but nowhere I was excited to go. Moreover, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do as a career and equally as important, had I gone to UCLA (where I ended up transferring to later) immediately after high school, the quarter system would have swiftly knocked me on my behind. I would have flunked out.

Instead, I went to Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC), our local community college. The three years I spent at LAVC helped me decide on my career path, gain confidence and discipline, meet interesting people, and attain memorable life experiences. All for a small fraction of the cost of a 4-year university (a lot of which was covered by financial aid, anyway). Had I not gone to LAVC, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.

Part of that was the variety of classes I was able to take. Since I knew I was planning to eventually transfer to a four-year school there were classes that I needed, but there was enough variety that some of those could also be just classes I was curious about. I remember studying from my thick Business Law textbook, how disappointed I was when I got the door of my excellent East Asian Philosophy class only to discover that it was cancelled that day, how I used a pseudonym to make up poems for Oral Interpretation (Forensics), Richard Raskoff’s enthusiasm about Geography and his wife’s Human Sexuality class, which got me started on reading about 2nd Wave Feminism. My memory flows with the transformative classroom experiences I had. Why am I interested in Buddhism now? It started twenty years ago in Dr. Kelley Ross’s East Asian Philosophy class at Valley College.

Beyond my classes, I also had the opportunity to participate in extracurricular activities. I shared a post a few weeks ago that reminded me of the kindness with which I was accepted into the Psychology Club, of which I became the Treasurer, and which eventually won Club of the Year. I was also part of the Valley Collegiate Players (VCP), the college’s drama club, and a member of the student government. In the latter, I was appointed as the Inter-Club Council (ICC) Representative, which means that I chaired a meeting of the heads of all the clubs and represented that group to school’s main governing body. In that role, I created an incentive system that increased both the total number of clubs and their overall participation in school activities. As it happens, I was also the student body Vice President for a little while, but I ceded that role to a deserving fellow candidate in order to return to my previous position as the ICC Rep. It was fun having an office in the administration building — I even had a concert in my office once, but that’s a story for another day.

Community colleges are full of people in various stages of their life and learning and that, in itself, was an eye-opening experience. Both my classes and extracurricular activities were full of role models and the opposite. I met many people who were stuck in community college, unable to move on with their lives. There were lovely people who suffered from mental illness. All ages, political opinions, socioeconomic classes, career stages, etc. meet in community college, and I’m not just talking about the students. I can’t imagine a four-year university where I would have received the education in people that LAVC gave me. And, to think, I was charged no tuition for that!

While I developed as a person at LA Valley College, I know that there are some out there who are clamoring for the tangible benefits of my community college experience. Well, I decided on and planned my path to becoming a librarian. I saved tens of thousands of dollars. And when I transferred to UCLA around the summer of 2005, I felt ready to knock the quarter system on it’s backside.

In January of this year, Karin Klein wrote an editorial for the LA Times about how mega-donors ought to hose community colleges with some of their philanthropy. She said:

So when billionaires squawk about how they don’t want their multimillion-dollar donations going to the likes of Harvard or the University of Pennsylvania because of perceived antisemitism, I can’t help thinking: “I can fix this for you! Instead of forking all that money over to institutions with massive endowments, how about using even half of it to help these unsung colleges educate 9 million undergraduates every year? How about giving private scholarship assistance to community college students so maybe they could get by with just a half-time job on top of their full course load?”

I feel very comfortable saying that while I had many memorable and pivotal experiences in my ~3.5 years as an undergrad and graduate student at UCLA, none of them would have been possible without Los Angeles Valley College. While at LAVC, I didn’t go to football games or wear school colors, I spent plenty of time at school but also had a part-time job (which doubled with occasional freelance web design and other work), and lived off-campus. Basically, I didn’t go in for school spirit in the conventional sense. Looking back these two decades to my time at Valley College, what I’ve written here barely scratches the surface. I will be eternally grateful to Los Angeles Valley College. Being a Bruin is fine, but I’ll always be proud to be a Monarch!

That’s me at LAVC circa 2003 wearing a fur hat that, I think, someone let me borrow.

Time Machine

Here’s what I wrote in HMF a year ago (in issue #19):

• Finding Strengths: A list of my top ten strengths with a survey from the VIA Institute. My top strength was honesty.

• The Birth of StoryGame: A description of a minimalist TTRPG (tabletop role playing game) I concocted for Michael and I to play.

• Describing Mind States: A few paragraphs on our inadequacy at objectively describing mind states.

“He Faces the World Without You” (1927) by Haddon Sundblom. Sophie is starting preschool on Monday and it will look something like this only with a princess dress.