In High School, everyone wants to know where everyone else is going for college and nobody feels uncomfortable asking. However, in my high school, one group of students seemed uncomfortable about answering, for they know that they will be instantly judged, pitied or disregarded—they were going to community college.
In Alamo, California, where I come from, people thought of community college as an orphanage for children over 18, in the sense that it was for kids who had nowhere else to go. Everyone was expected to go to a prestigious university immediately after high school. There was a presumption of chaos since this place supposedly contained all of the kids who used to be in detention. Yet after attending a top university for 3 years, I was waiting in the long, slow registration line of Diablo Valley Community College.
I decided to stay home in California for my last collegiate summer rather than swelter in Washingtonian humidity. The fees of the course were 2 percent of the fees for a Georgetown summer class, and I figured my community college instructor could educate me at least 2 percent as well as a Georgetown educator. The decision was easy, and I looked forward to a different college experience.
Chris Rock compared community college to a sketchy disco with books. “They be letting all kinds of people in: crack heads, prostitutes, drug dealers, come on in!” While one student in my French class offered to sell me Vicodin when I told him I wasn’t sleeping well, the majority of the class was a diverse group of law-abiding citizens. One of my classmates told the class that he was an aspiring rapper focusing on “Hyphy” (pronounced HI-fee) loud, high-energy style of hip-hop which is popular in the San Francisco Bay Area. Another was a very pregnant hair-dresser who was taking the class in order to stay on her mother’s health insurance as a part-time student. An older homosexual couple enrolled in the class in preparation for an anniversary trip to Paris. On the other side of the age spectrum was Max, who at 13 was being forced by his parents to take 2 college-level classes in order to be ahead of the other kids in his grade.
In contrast to the colorful nature of the class, the professor was a very conventional French teacher. Elegantly thin and always poised, she spoke with a gentle whimsicality that would turn to restrained frustration whenever someone struggled with a conjugation for too long. While I never learned any information regarding her professional background, she was clearly comfortable when lecturing on grammar or answering most questions on Francophone culture. Her only glaring flaw was her cigarette habit, but even that added a sense of authenticity to the class.
Despite the class’s apparent diversity, everyone agreed that they enjoyed the teacher and the class in general. I had heard that the atmosphere of a community college class is similar to high school, but none of the students shouted from the back of the room or drew penises on the wall. Everyone appeared to be fairly content and comfortable during each class. We all agreed that 4 hours of listening to the nasal language gave us minor migraines, but we didn’t blame the professor or the class itself for that.
It wasn’t the best class I have taken in my academic career. However, members of an elite academic community such as ours become obsessed with rankings and prestige to the point that we lose perspective on education as a concept. Georgetown and other institutions of its caliber offer resources, faculty, and experiences that cannot be provided at an open-admission school, but it is possible to have a thorough academic experience in the absence of a tenured Ph.D. and an impressive clock tower. When I reflect on Ivy League-bound students who behaved condescendingly towards future Diablo Valley College freshmen during that last year of high school, I realize who really should have been disregarded.
