4/22/17

The first community college I went to was Wright College, the Chicago Community College nearest to my parents’ house.  I went there straight there after graduating from a Chicago Public High School, one of where I needed to repeat my junior year.  I remember my first day of school there- it was in early or mid September, and I had just been suspended (my Dad said that the last school I was going to practically kicked me out) from another school.  As I remember it, my parents had a meeting with the principal or vice principal of the school, and since I was doing bad scholastically and it was a private school, I needed to transfer.  So I went to a public high school, so that when I graduated I was accepted to all of the community colleges of Chicago.  I remember some of the classes I took there vividly, some not so much.  One class I took was a Math class, which I eventually dropped, but I remember how the teacher taught the class.  I remember I spaced out a lot, I struggled to pay attention because my mind wondered, to what was going on with other classmates and whatnot.  I remember the teacher had a kind of funky teaching style—one time he was putting problems which needed to be graphed on the board, and he kind of went off on a tangent and got funky, so that he did stuff like point to a point high on the graph and then to a low point, and I got kind of confused me because I didn’t even, among my other classmates, know if he was serious or not, if he was trying to be funny or if he was just going crazy.  I love classes and teachers like that, and moments like that, where the teacher acts so nuts that you almost don’t feel safe but it still is kind of exciting.  Another moment I had in that class was when I was studying and/or working on a problem with another person, a girl, and I’m pretty sure she was wearing a ring with a bright blue stone, and the color and the depth of it got my attention so much that it looked surreal, like it wasn’t real, and it was like I was dreaming because it seemed like the stone of the ring didn't belong in reality. 

The halls of that school were usually fun to walk down.  I remember seeing a boy I went to high school with, who had really red eyes, and was wearing a white t-shirt, a wife beater type, but with short sleeves, walking down the hall.  It was either him or someone who looked like him, like a relative of his. 

Red is a color I like to write about, pertaining to people and animals with red eyes.  A boy I remember a bit from high school had red hair (I think it was actually orange, but the correct term is red hair).  He had really curly red hair, like my sister did when she was younger.  I had curly hair when I was a kid, but it got straight over the years, as did my sisters- whenever I see her it’s straight, so I don’t know if it’s naturally straight or she uses an iron on it.  Anyways, I remember I had speech class with this boy, and he was a transfer student, who kind of sat in the corner of the room, to my right.  I have memories/a memory of him looking at me, and I remember his eyes were kind of cloudy, so I don’t know if his eyes were naturally like that or if at the moment/those moments he was just mad at someone/me.  He kind of had the stance/demeanor while he was sitting like he had a certain amount of authority, like pertaining to what was going on in the room, and what people thought of each other and/or me.  Now, if I look back at that moment, I would classify him as a jerk, but now, after getting older and living in the same city as him, my opinion has changed.  A lot happened in that speech class- people studied for math and other stuff before class started, speeches were given (mine of how to bake a chocolate cake failed miserably after I tried to melt the chocolate in a metal pan in the microwave in the school cafeteria- I didn’t know metal doesn’t belong in microwaves), one of which I remember being where a boy showed the class how to make a smoothie, I think I remember it being a purple smoothie- I don’t remember what it was made of, probably fruit.  He gave the speech with such ease now I am jealous I couldn’t do the same- but I guess it’s ok because I graduated high school and have my bachelor’s and now I am working towards my master’s.