Any way you cut it I’m not afraid/ I know I’m gonna get it
It is nice out today, the first in what the weatherman on TV promises will be a succession of good days. Whether the accompanying day off from work I took today was the result of the weather or the more ostensible reasoning of the college transcripts I have to obtain will likely remain a mystery. But am I ever glad for this good day, if only because the parking lot of the particular college I went to happens to reside way out on the perimeter of the school, like they were building the campus with the solitary purpose of exercise in mind. I imagine the planners hanging around and thinking up this new concept: ah, yes: if you come to college here, not only do you get an education, you also get marathon training in the grueling form of trekking 3 miles to and from your car each day. But all that is quickly forgotten on a nice day. I double check, making sure I have the requisite ID in hand, and then begin setting out in the direction of the Registrar’s Office, raising my head to the heavens and giving thanks for this nice weather. It’s been a little while since I’ve been to college and so I waste no time in pretending that I am a student again. This lasts for about two and a half seconds before I am quickly grounded by the bizarre-looking masses of sweat-suited people walking around campus. I don’t remember people looking 100 percent like this when I went to college here, but it’s been a while. When did humanity bang the right hand turn that has them looking like they are headed for an early AM workout, I wonder? I’ve lived in Albany long enough to be desensitized to bad fashion, but this seems like something else entirely. Few students seem to favor anything but the peculiar breed of sweatpants that make the audibly swishy sound as they walk by. Also, despite it being 50 degrees, a lot of people have shorts on. What the hell is this, I think, before remembering that a lot of people commute, and the parking lot does happen to be a 2 mile walk from the main campus. And so maybe they had functionality in mind all the while.

I arrive at the Registrar’s Office to find a small line waiting. Handing over the appropriate paperwork at the counter, I am looking at my college transcript momentarily, which is stamped with an official-looking seal. I peel back the cover and look inside. Good god, I think, getting a look at some of my grades. I totally suck. A class called Computer Fundamentals and Application, I scored an obtuse D in. I only vaguely remember taking this class, I think, sitting next to a girl who would occasionally help me with my Excel formulations. She seemed to know what she was doing, I thought. Another class involving computers I scored a similarly low score point in. And then, there’s just no avoiding the fact that I withdrew from Desktop Publishing. Nope, that didn’t seem like a good one to me. I couldn’t make a heads or tail of what was going on in there. The classes I whipped ass in are things like Abnormal Psychology and totally esoteric Literature classes, where we read things like Huysmans’ Against Nature, which may have just been that same knowledge overlapping. I had a professor who was hearing impaired and carried a microphone-type box which you would have to speak into for him to hear you. He would stride around the classroom as he delivered his lecture, occasionally springing that device in your face. It was pretty awesome.

I am standing out on the platform, as the noon time bell starts going off. It makes this glorious sound which resonates in every direction. Well, this does not look good, I think, checking things over. Clearly I didn’t manage to learn anything in college, which may or may not contribute to my current situation. I do kind of want to go back to school, though. If only to vindicate the past. Like Saturday Night Live says, though, you have to hustle. And the whole thing is, I don’t even own a jogging suit.