The Interview

5 and a half hours.

Yesterday, I received the rough schedule for today. It got moved to 9 from 10, but ended at 2. "A half day."

I started with the assistant director and the family counselor sort. The latter is also a parent of a kid in the program. We met for about an hour.

I moved on to two folks in the host school's fund raising department and their admissions director.

After those three, I went on a tour, as my next interview was postponed - but the tour included dialogue with the admin. asst., who is also leaving. He has been there more than twice as long as anybody else!

Ooh, ooh! For those of you who have heard about and remember the tweezers... my workdesk is still there.

Next up was the business manager. Then the outgoing director and then lunch with 3 teachers in the program (high school and college students) two of whom were alums of the program.

A bit of a chat with the incoming director (curren asst.) and then an hour+ with the head of school.

Long enough for you? It was nostalgic, heartening (I could have written much of their philosophy) and mayeb even positive in the potential job front..

Thanks for all the good wishes - they helped and help!!

Where did I come from?

The time - Late Spring, 1972
The place - Northfield Mount Hermon (NMH)
The situation - I am about to be required to go to summer school to be able to saty at NMH, because of poor grades, caused by, variously, poor attendence, lack of turned in homework, and inability to figure out how to learn that which was hard.

June 6, 1972
Tuesday

Dear Josh,

I want to thank you for the help you gave me this term in Math. I assure you that your efforts are certainly appreciated and that if it weren't for you, my problems in Math would have been magnified...

The grades have not arrived yet, but hopefully I passed; I'll let you know what happens when the report card come.

Nothing much left to say, although I hope you are having a fun vacation and that your brother had a good wedding. By the way, my father let me drive home from the airport last week! He wouldn;t have if I hadn't tried, so thanks for encouraging me when I needed it.

Good luck.

Sincerely,

(signature of R.S.)

P.S. I start my Algebra course next week. I should "ace it."

*****
R.S. was a junior while I was a sophomore. I was going on academic probation.

He did pass that term, and went on to graduate on time and go to college. He was much better with language than with math - and I think he is a professional writer to this day.

Where did I come from (continued)

Time - Spring, 1975
Place - Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Circumstance - I passed two course that year (though my annoying current version of transripts say I only passed one!) out of the twelve I took. I loved being there. My roommate passed one.

The excerpts below are from email messages, back before I had email or knew the word email. We exchanged messages back and forth, quickly, at times. At 10 or 11 at night. Or 1 or 2am. Not on monitors, but on printers, because that, too, was what was available to us. I was typing on a TTY. We would have been IMing, then, if it had existed. She was at a different college from me.

Dear Josh,

It is 10:00 wednesday night, and of course I am sitting here without having answered my mother's phone call of this morning. I don't even want to go back to my room... I have this dread that she and my father are there, waiting for me to come in that door... Melodramatics never helped anybody, but they certainly illistrate my point, don't they?


I hope I wasn't annoying you or getting in your way today.


Escape... I wonder if pressing this escape key here would help me any??? Just a psychological gesture, I am afraid... $$$ [editorial - those are the symbols from hitting an escape key on a TTY]

Would you really want to meet my parents, Josh? "Mom, Dad... guess who's coming to dinner?"...

I'm going to try to stand up to them, Josh... I have to. IF I don't, I really don't see how I could ever face myself or anybody else again... I mean, what kind of a person do I claim to be, if I can't stand up for my own rights? I can't always have someone do everything for me...



The more I think about it, the more I feel terrible about dumping all of my problems on you like this... Something more to add to my guilt complex... Because, after all, you are not "Uncle Josh" and I have no right to go and ask you to think about my dumb problems when you must have enough of your own...



...I should just talk myself into not caring any more... I dunno.
********

She wasn't unfair then. It wasn't unreasonable. I wasn't bored. Or annoyed.

But her worries then sound strikingly familiar.

And so does the conversation as a whole. Not the specifics, but the tone.

On both sides, now that I think of it.