The College Grows-Up

It's no exaggeration to express that I feel as though I've blinked and 20 years have evaporated. We started as the Norco campus; just a satellite campus of the "real" place, the main campus in the neighboring city of Riverside. We would refer to that campus as the "mother ship." Now the Norco campus is fully an accredited two-year community college.

I'm in my 20th year of full-time teaching, so when the campus actually launched I was a part-time instructor teaching two classes that spring at the "main" campus. The Norco campus was still being built and the classes were held at a local community center.

By September of that year I had journeyed through the grueling hiring process and was one of six very fortunate candidates, out of a pool of almost 400, who was awarded a full-time position in the English Department. Three of us were given permanent tenure positions and three were given one-year contracts. I still pinch myself because it seemed so unlikely. I was told all the way through my university journey as a reentry student that I'd never be hired at the college, that I should aim to teach high school.

So September of '91 I was fairly brand new at teaching and at a brand new college. It was a path I had never walked and I stood at the new campus at the entrance to a path that had yet to be walked on. The campus/college now has many more buildings and the student population has grown enormously.

So today was a celebration on several levels -- the college celebrated its journey and I quietly celebrated mine. That makes two-days-in-a-row of celebrating . . . that gives me goosebumps. I hope that means that the "ho-hum" and the "blah, blah, blah" dullness that I have felt a lot lately is melting. I'd like that because it's been difficult to blip lately, but I continue to because I think that someday when I look back the difficult days will have been as fruitful and as the energy-bursting exciting days. Who knows!

Good night from Southern California where everyone seems to be thinking "earthquake" and "nuclear exposure."

Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol

P.S. Thank YOU blip-friends for the lovely, interesting, immensely meaningful comments yesterday.