Saturday, January 25, 2014

Sleep and college admissions

I just don’t sleep anymore. I wake up at least four times a night and am wide awake at 7:00AM. Steve had to work overtime last week and we had a new, weird schedule that was just taking a toll on me.

I’m so not good with change.

I think a lot of it is the fact that Steve’s going to a new job soon and he’s having stuff at work that really ticking both of us off. (Crummy management, no organization, shady people, promises made and broken, money not paid, and generally all sorts of bad juju going around that place.) But this week he’ll be back to his normal schedule, then he’s done with that office. Hooray!

Of course, it’s Saturday and we went to bed at 2:30AM. I fell sound asleep, woke up a couple of times, and now am wide awake at 6:30AM. Very irritating.

I don’t understand it, since I thought one of my biggest hurdles was over: college.

Now, I’ve mentioned before that I worked at a local college for one day and it was so bad that I would categorize it as the worst job I’ve ever had. (Supply teaching is up there, but you have the option of Primary and some nice Secondary Schools.) Anyway, I want to take a Teaching Assistant course, just to give myself a U.K. based certification so I can have (hopefully) a better chance of snagging a job.

The supply teaching thing has only been last minute, or really bad situation jobs, which neither is appealing.

If I want to get the course done this term, in preparation for next school year, I’d like to take my course soon. The only nearby place was said college, so I applied. I was really nervous about going because I’ve seen what a miserable place it is. But, I went for an interview anyway. Of course, I couldn’t even get on campus because the tiny parking lot was full and you had to ask permission of a parking attendant who couldn’t understand my accent to give you a permit to park in another business’ parking lot. Not having my Garmin on me, or any clue how to get in and out of the place, I went home. (I can drive as long as I know exactly where and how to get in and out of my destination.)

I rescheduled the appointment for last week, hoping to take public transport. Happily, the local council called me last week as well, saying that they were opening up TA courses through their Adult Ed programs, so I figured if this college thing didn’t work out (again), I could register there. But I went to the college with the intent to give it a good look around again.

I arrived at reception (which I specifically asked about in my reschedule request) only to be told that since the course started that week (it was Thursday and the courses started next week) I had to go to the office for the Child Minding courses. Slightly bothersome, but not really that big of a problem. I walked across campus to a large building, intending to go to the fourth floor, but, surprise, I couldn’t get up there. In fact, I couldn’t go anywhere. There were at least twenty students waiting in line just to use the two, tiny elevators. I mingled around the corridors but found no staircase. I contemplated walking outside and trying to figure out where the outside stairs went to, but figured that I would not only have to climb four flights of stairs outside in the cold after I’d just hiked up  a hill from the Metro station, but there may not be any access from the outside. I mean, none of the students were using any stairs. They all went inside and waited in line for the lift.

Now, since the appointment was for 11:00 and they’d cancel it if I were five minutes late, even if I were waiting at the elevator for 20 minutes, I decided to leave. I could already see how much of a pain trying to take a course there would be. Not only is it really inconvenient to get to, it’s really inconvenient to get around once you do get there. I was given a list of times when the courses would be (all next week start dates) but an office clerk told me that the course would be only offered at night. I can imagine what “fun” that would be to fight rush hour on the Metro, just to fight kids to get on the elevator.

That was my main problem when I worked for that day at the school too. It was overcrowded and there was no place to sit, or get around.

Plus, and I can’t stress this enough, the place gives me the creeps. As you can see in the picture from the street, the place looks like it’s on the set of some zombie movie. I don’t understand that either because the other buildings near there are nice, but even some of the parking lots have graffiti on the walls and flimsy metal gates like it’s a car impound lot. The college buildings themselves look run down too. (Not all of them, some are quite nice inside but some have yellowing walls and miserable vibes.)

None of the students look happy to be there. The place is just depressing, and I am glad I went down there to finally decide that, no, I don’t want to attend classes there.

Even if I can’t get into the adult ed courses through the council, I’ll go to one of the other local colleges that offer the course in September.

Now that that’s all settled, I still want to know why I can’t sleep at night.

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