8
After rupturing my left eardrum from a case of walking pneumonia, a
specialist appointment had been scheduled for me by the emergency
room staff. Given the Monday doctor's appointment I ended up taking
the night off from classes as well to have that extra day to heal up
before returning to school. The specialist's advice was the same as
the 'SwiftCare' doctor of using a Vaseline slathered cotton swab to
keep my left ear canal dry when taking showers with the addition of
returning in a few weeks for a follow-up. Though functionally deaf
in my left ear, I
returned to the Business College after almost missing a full week and
checked in at the office to let them know I was back.
Business College was a blessing compared to High School in that they
accepted computer typed in and printed up homework and reports.
During my spare time between arriving at Colorado and before I
entered Business College in the Fall, I had felt inspired to get back
into writing Science Fiction for fun and became very familiar with
the TRS 80's text editor as a result. Now I was using that
skill to write up my college work. Where before I would keep my
written work to its barest minimum to avoid the pain in my hands from
hand written work, now I gushed all I wanted into the keyboard
without any limits. I soon had to learn the new skill of editing to
cut back my work to ensure it had focus, but with the excitement of
this new flow, I didn't mind. Neither did the instructors at the
College who would get a variety of hand written work of all types
from everyone else, then get nice crisp and clean print-outs from me.
As with High School, when it came to picking up and mastering the
subject matter for tests, there was no problem. Remembering my final
high school experience of 'testing out of a class for credit' I asked
the Business College if they had something like that as well for some
of the more basic courses needed to gain my certificate, such as
basic English and Math classes. They did, but the catch was it would
be the same price as taking the full class and what I'd have to do is
take the Final. If I wanted, I could buy the associated book and go
through it on my own before taking the test, or I could just take it
cold. As a result, rather than taking four classes per quarter, I
would select three courses to take in person and one course to test
out of, thus I seemed to get four courses for the time commitment of
three. I thought it was a fair enough deal and I received the grade
for the tested out course based on the grade of the completed Final.
There were two computer instructors for the College, one who handled
the daytime classes and the one who handled the nighttime classes.
The night teacher was soon impressed with my computer programming
skills and the way I'd pick up a new computer language in the first
week, then spend my class time helping my classmates as they were
coming up to speed on the language syntax and logical structures,
themselves. By Summer, the night teacher told me he was going to
recommend I have the job as the Saturday computer lab monitor. They
already had one, but the night teacher found that while he was
technically capable of keeping the computer running on the
weekend, he really didn't have any interest or patience when it came
to helping out the students who would come in for extra time. I was
neutral to the idea, but willing to do it if offered to me.
What
I didn't realize was I was being used in a little power play where
the night teacher wanted his
guy
monitoring the lab and thus prove his dominance over the day teacher
by having his guy kicked out of the job. This resulted in my being
called to the office as the two were arguing it out with the current
lab monitor watching from the side. When I came in, the daytime
teacher decided the fastest way to put the kibosh on me in the eyes
of the headmaster was to ask me obscure technical questions about the
TI 990 minicomputer which, of course, I didn't know all the
answers to. But I was honest about that fact as I had only been
using the school's computer for the past few months learning
languages, not the technical details of the hardware or system
software. While my lack of knowledge of the ins and outs of the
TI 990 put an end to the tug of war as to whose guy would be in
charge of the computer lab, the headmaster was very impressed by my
composure and honesty and said he'd keep me in mind if other
opportunities came to light. While the night teacher didn't get his
way on the matter, he also seemed happy with the outcome as he had
proven himself not to just be the daytime computer teacher's
nighttime lackey.
By
this Summer of Nineteen Eighty-Four there was 'good news' throughout
the campus. The private company that had created the 'American
Business College', and
had many other versions of it sprinkled across the country,
had bought an ailing, though nationally accredited,
College. This meant they could now create branches of that College
through the country which would all be accredited themselves
and thus we students could transfer to the new College at some point
and transfer with us our credits from the Business College. Now, I
was told, instead of a certificate
of completion,
I would actually be able to get a degree for my time and money! At
the time I was a little oblivious to all this stuff, but in
retrospect I had lucked-out big time...
I continued at the little Business College for another year and a
half before I transferred to the new accredited, branch College in
town.
As for my eardrum, I returned to the specialist's office a few weeks
later as requested. He looked into my ear and then used what were
like long tweezers to reach into my ear canal and peel away the dead
tissue clogging it. It had all the fun of pulling scabs off of one's
body, except it was all happening on the inside of one's ear. I
fought to keep sitting quietly & still as he reached in again and
again peeling out more dead tissue. Then he was done and I
discovered I could hear again on the left side. He told me I
wouldn't need to use the cotton swab and Vaseline trick any more and
I was thrilled on both counts!
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