Art School Adventure
I’m back for those of you on the verge of a collapse due to a lack of delightful intellectual stimulation at the hands of my entertaining and cannot-live-without blog entries. I appreciate your addiction and can promise to feed it more regularly these upcoming weeks. I even have a new book review for you – oooohh!
I spent what seemed like the final months of my life in the sunny land of oranges and suicidal highways, assessing the fit between my eldest son and a what-will-remain-unnamed chain college of fast art. The fit between this college, which wanted to make ungodly amounts of money off us, and my very talented abstract artist progeny was akin to Einstein attending Maytag’s School of Dishwasher Repair. No wonder he was admitted within seconds of receipt of his college transcripts.
On Friday, Kandinsky Junior and I raced to the city on the Atlantic Ocean where flocks of squawking teenagers migrate to all spring. This was my first lesson in How Not to Get Killed by the Elderly Driving at Speeds of 100 or more. Of course, Junior could not drive the rental car being only almost 21. In our country, you can legally sign up at a tender young age to go off to war or vote. You cannot have a beer or drive a rental car. These actions being far more dangerous and requiring a significantly higher level of maturity and decision-making ability than the first two. But, I am digressing.
Junior and I had the pleasure of meeting with, let’s call her Old Britney, the real estate agent who smelled like she either went to bed with Mr. Vodka or woke up with him. Old Britney looked like (yes, you guessed it for one million dollars- the grand prize) a weather-beaten 6/10ths of a century old teenage wanna-be. Since I am “young looking and have a young presence” and seem to act “more like Junior’s sister than his mother”, Old Britney suggested we hit the bars after and go drinking. I should add here that Junior is a “hottie” even if I am his mother and tend to be biased. I know this is true as I watch people and the girls who are always checking him out and trying to eyeball it with him. I think Old Britney was hoping to move in on him rather than drink with boring old me.
Needless to say, tattooed and crystalled Old Britney ran through many stop signs and slurred her words, her eyelids drooping like a heroin addict’s, for three and a half hours while she showed us available off-campus housing in her all black, both inside and out, beat-up Beamer in which she insisted on closing our windows and keeping the air conditioning set at 105. Both my son and I had an automatic window war with her until after the “let’s go drinking” request was followed with, “How’s the temperature back there?” and my response was, “the window is staying open.”
Don’t get me wrong, not all of the apartments were complete dumps. Some of them were probably safe between 9 am and noon while the criminals slept and others were very safe – the ones in the enclosed compounds with security guards and locked gates. Besides having to request we stop at 7-Eleven before I keeled over from dehydration and then telling her if she didn’t take us back to the office I would piss all over the crap covering the backseat of her Beamer, I enjoyed the excursion with this character right out of a New Yorker short story. Even the constant chiming of the ginormous copper Buddha temple with bells that hung from her rear view mirror and which she smacked into every time she shifted gears.
Riding with Old Britney was God’s big big, but utterly ignored, warning sign of the things to come the following day at Chain College of Art’s open house.
We had an appointment first thing Saturday morning with Kandinsky Junior’s admissions representative who couldn’t tell you who Kandinsky was if her mortgage depended on it, but alas, so did a hundred other students. She made us promise to meet with financial aid and come back to see her after.
We attended the opening session, informative and to the point, not bad for a chain college and then we attended Junior’s department to be faculty presentation. We were, actually and truly, impressed with the faculty but discovered Junior was in the wrong major for what he hoped to accomplish there. So, we went back to ad rep and she couldn’t, and now I am not being facetious, explain to Junior how to get into the department he should be in. Something about drawings. Now, it is lunch time and there is no lunch served at this open house for a college that wants us to spend almost 100,000$ for a bachelor’s degree and rumor has it that the dorm tour leaves in a few minutes.
Not wanting to miss the dorm tour, we spoke with the Housing representative who couldn’t tell us when the dorm tour was; he pointed us in the direction of the bus driver. There was a bus but no driver. In response to this dilemma, the expert Housing rep said, “Why don’t you just drive yourself?” and proceeded to give us lousy directions.
I said to Junior, “Let’s go meet the professor of the department you should be in, do the financial aid meeting and then go to lunch while we find the dorms.” Junior was crabby at this time and at his mother. He declared I should be able to go from 6:30 am until dinner without food or drink. I reminded him of the decades between us, “No matter what Old Britney said I am your mother and I am middle-aged.”
Then God slammed Junior in the face with the biggest warning sign of all. “No,” the professor of the department he should be in said, “I am not interested in your paintings or abstract art. I only want to see drawings of real-life objects. Your portfolio must not be of the art that drives you and brings you here, it must be of art that drives what I say is the kind of art that brings you here.” At this point you should be hearing a very loud buzzer go off, because we did and it permeated throughout the building.
Did I mention the dorms were nearly impossible to find and consisted of a very decrepit 1970’s hotel converted into dorm rooms? That no one, well only a very small percentage of the student population, lives in those dorms or if they do, they don’t talk about it.
Did I mention this funky unreal college slash really a vocational school forced us to figure out our financial aid before we could leave? And that we got no aid? Zip. Zero. Nada. Oh, I forgot the 900$ a year. And that Junior couldn’t borrow the money to go there – his mother had to. A point he continuously asked for an explanation for, having been to college already and both of us thoroughly familiar with real colleges. Oh and first year supplies, consisting of rubber cement, markers, a book bag, a bin and 3 textbooks and one software was the astronomical price of over 700$. The financial aid officer didn’t know what to say when I said we had most of these supplies at home and were they making a profit off this supply kit? “Ahhhh, nooo,” she said with the deer in the headlight look.
At 2:30 pm I told the ad rep we were leaving and no, we weren’t meeting with her yet again because I was crabby and my blood sugar was low from not getting any lunch at their expensive college. And yes, other parents, when you visit a college expect lunch in the cafeteria. I have had lunch in college cafeterias all across the Midwest and Eastern part of America. A real college gives you and your entire family a ticket and they feed you in appreciation of your visit to them. And dessert is included.
Did I mention we are now on a new quest? To find a good college with an art program where the faculty appreciate abstract art and can engage in a conversation with Junior on Kandinsky’s various color theories? And where his portfolio can consist of the art he creates and not the art they demand? Are we being unrealistic? I hope not. Cross your fingers for Junior.
Let me know if you know where this Nirvana for Junior exists.
