To celebrate surviving my first four weeks of teaching at not one, not two, but THREE different community colleges (and one ‘college for working adults’), I bought myself a little gift—and it wasn’t even shoes! I ordered season one of the TV show “Community.” This show is currently in its second season on NBC and is HILARIOUS. I am actually kind of surprised that it is on mainstream network, as it is quite ribald and I just assumed it was on cable. I recommend it for you and yours if you like comedy that is sometimes super intelligent and sometimes super silly and if you don’t mind an occasional inappropriate joke.
One thing I’ve noticed walking the halls of DMACC is that it is often hard to distinguish between the students and the faculty—and sometimes even the janitorial staff. Probably due in part to the recent economic downturn, the majority of students I teach are not “traditional” 18-year-old, fresh-out-of-high school kids, but people thirty and older pursuing higher education to change their lives for the better . More than once I have been mistaken for a student—which is flattering and disturbing at the same time.
“Community” does a decent job of enacting the truisms I see in the classroom every day. Pierce who is played excellently by veteran actor Chevy Chase, is a conglomeration of many of my older students; thank Heaven I don’t have one single student as . . . complex as Pierce.
Another character, Shirley, is a recently divorced mom of two. She is attending community college to “get her business degree so she can sell brownies and whatnot on the internet.” I have many students like Shirley: single mothers who not only have to complete mounds of homework every night, but also have to deal with snow days (no childcare), sick kids, and lack of a quiet place to study. More than once I’ve had students bring their children to class because the babysitter bailed at the last minute. Many of these mothers also work full or part-time jobs—I have no idea when they find time to sleep.
In general, the non-traditional students generally do better work for me than the “regular” college students—probably because they value the education more—and perhaps because they are paying for it out of their own pocket instead of handing the bill to Daddy and Mommie.
The teachers on “Community” are also iconic and hilarious. My favorite prof is Senor Chang, who is played by Ken Jeong of “The Hangover” fame. Remember the naked Asian guy in the trunk? That is the Spanish teacher at Greendale Community College. He’s not a professor, however, and is constantly getting flack from the psychology teacher, who is a “real” professor because he holds a PhD.
I can relate to Senor Change because I can’t technically be called Professor Breitsprecher (or, my personal favorite, Professor Goddess as Josie calls me when she wants something really badly). I still LOVE it when a student refers to be as Professor or even calls me Dr. Breitsprecher. I know it isn’t accurate—but why take the time to correct such an AWESOME mistake?? There is also an English teacher who is obsessed with the movie “Dead Poet’s Society” and runs around shouting “Seize the Day!” Too bad I don’t know of any over-enthusiastic English teachers I can compare him to.
Other people at Greendale are the Dean, who is obsessed so much with political correctness he changes the school’s mascot to the ambigious “human beings,” permanently cynical Jeff, who used to be a lawyer, but was disbarred and is now taking classes at a community college, very pretty blonde Brita, who wants very much to be feminist, but only succeeds in taking herself too seriously and becoming a “buzz kill,” and many other extremely quirky student and faculty.
The show isn’t a perfect representation of a community college (it is apparently a four-year community college which awards bachelor’s degrees—something of which I have never heard), but it does give a nice (albeit funny) picture of what a community college can be. Just as I recommend this television show to any up for a quick laugh, I recommend Iowa’s community college system for anyone wanting to further or enhance their education. Heck—to take my composition classes, you don’t even have to leave your house or change out of your jammies, as they are online. However, online students get don’t get the chance to hang out with characters such as Pierce and Brita and Senor Chang—and that’s half the fun of a community college.
In just a few weeks, I gone from a community college skeptic to a community college fan. Care to join me??
