I started school almost five years ago for stenography. The school just opened a few months before I signed up and it has been a work in progress since the inception. A very long progression. When I first started, I managed to have a 4.0 grade average for about the first year or so. I was really into it. I was 29 and had a baby the year before so it felt good to be getting out and bettering myself for our future. Things have steadily declined since then.
Since I have been there, we have gone through maybe ten or 15 different teachers and I have noticed one constant among them. It seems the more the students like and respect a teacher, the more likely they are to quit, get fired, or just not get the students that really need them on their schedules. Instead, the school provides us with teachers who accuse us of being arrogant if we make suggestions to make the class more productive. We also have teachers who yell at us for not doing as well as we should and when we ask to make up for papers that are really terribly written we are told, "No. You had your chance. My time is valuable." Oh, and when I say yell, I am not exaggerating. One of the teachers literally yells at grown adults. It's absurd.
I understand about time being valuable. I also understand about education being valuable as well. We are paying thousands upon thousands of dollars to go to this trade school and I would think that makes us the investors. I'm not sure how stocks and investing goes, but I would think if I gave my investment banker $10,000 to buy Microsoft and he decided to pull out of there and buy into Ikea without telling me, well, that might be considered bad business. I think that these people think that because we are purchasing our education later in life that they have the right to treat us like we are second graders. As a matter of fact, if I heard a teacher talk to my kindergartner the way some of my teachers speak to me I would pull him out of class and start the witch hunt.
I have been told to lead my class in a prayer. I have been reminded in very loud and slow language that I am indeed taking an English class. Apparently, there ARE stupid questions and I happen to ask them. I politely told a teacher I felt that one of the exercises was doing a disservice to some of us who were behind and then was told maybe I need to go to a slower class. After that, she stopped speaking to me for two months. Yes, she DOES happen to be a grown adult. I had another teacher who gave an assignment and when I turned it in, she decided to change it completely mid-quarter and yell at me saying I heard things the way I wanted to hear them.
I have never been so miserable having to report somewhere four nights a week in my life. It is just so hard to care about making people happy when they live for making you frustrated and upset. The best part about it all is that I got a call from a friend at an agency today saying that none of the new people can get hired in Pittsburgh right now and none of the people already reporting are making enough. My teacher told me last night that I could definitely get a job in Indiana when I finish. That's two states away. The thing that keeps me going is at this point I am not doing it for myself anymore, I'm doing it for everyone around me. I have made terrible mistakes in life but this is the one that I would never do again given the chance. Here's to you ACRT!!
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