Misadventures part 4: "That" Teacher part 2 vs. The Two Greats

So, the last time I talked about teachers, it focused on my middle school years. I am skipping high school because I mostly didn't care about the bad teachers there, though I had some AMAZING life altering teachers there. However, I am going straight to college, where bad a teacher/educator helped me make a life altering choice. Hope you enjoy! (◕ ◡ ◕)

So, one common question I get asked is how did I end up where I did? This question usualy occurs at current profession or just one-on-one conversations with people I encounter. How did I end up leaving Biochemistry and becoming a Social Worker?  Or How did I end up wanting to do Community Arts Outreach? Well that answer comes from childhood. 

LaRhonda asks me this question all the time....

As a child I always loved science. I wanted to do it all. I remember I wanted to be an inventor of some sort. I went so far as to "invent" a present for my mom one Christmas when I was young. It was the crappiest invention I probably ever attempted, but it was from the heart and I loved that feeling. In elementary school I was introduced to more science in the "Science and Technology" club where we used science to take our minds even further. Making Mag-Lev cars, bottle rockets, motors, and so much more. In Middle school I was deeply introduced to chemistry and biology, and we are going to erase that earth science class for obvious reason (*￣m￣).....but, even from that class I remember fun things. I was even apart of their magnet program, which I pushed to continue in high school in their "bio-medical" magnet. I always loved doing science, I still do to this day. It's also important to know that I was always active in not only science things, but  I was an athlete, an artist, a musician, and other various things along the way.

Merry Christmas Mom, it's a coat rack

So Naturally when I went to college, I wanted to do Biochemistry. I was going to go and do Biochemistry so that I could do epidemiology (the study of the spread of diseases) and work with the CDC. In my free time, try to help out with the community with a center of some sort; since I would have made a career and had money. This was my reality at the time. And that's when I met her, my "adviser." So granted my first semester in college was a bust partly because I didn't study and I slacked off to do things with friends. However this adviser didn't help much either. 

The not study game: I usually played Smash Brothers or Mario Strikers with the same friend. 

So She was a general adviser,one was one of many, to help guide biochemistry majors until they progressed far enough in their majors to get a real adviser who was normally a professor in their field. However, I think her job apparently was to make my life hell She would overload me with classes and credits to make sure I was staying on "track." a normal freshman would generally take no more than 12 credits. She had me in the 14-16 credit range. And this was a constant thing. She would stockpile many hard classes into one semester, claiming it was necessary and that I needed to be finished in 5yrs as this was program that dictated this to be so. So to give you an idea of what I did, here's my first year:  

1st Semester

Chem 101-4 creds
English 100- 3 Creds
Human Geography- 3 Creds
Precalc- 4 Creds
Chem discovery (in conjunction with Chem)-3 hours of life wasted

Every living soul in Chem Discovery

2nd Semester: 
Chem 101 (again...)-4 Creds
Bio 101- 4 Creds
Bio lab- 2 cred
Calculus- 4 Creds
Chem group (Again)- The professor started to know my name very well
Bio group (useless space made mandatory by professor or you'd fail)

Again, but this time in EVERY CLASS

and so forth.

Every time I met with her, I would come with an idea of spreading out the courses so that I would die mentally and physically from stress, but she would only approve stockpiled schedules like that. So needless to say, I did a lot of class repeating and some of the easier classes I were able to take, I couldn't live up to my potential because I was brain dead from this full schedule. So at the start of my 3rd year, I went to meet with her and this is where the change happened.


On said faithful day, at the end of Spring semester of my 2nd year, I was getting ready to meet with my adviser once again. After failing Chemistry 102, the second tier up, for the second time, I knew I had to get special permission to go forth from here, so I was already uneasy. Not to mention that whole semester out of my 5 classes I only got 1 A and 1 B...all the others were...not so great. I got 1 C *yay*.  Anyway, I get to the meeting with this lady and she is looking up all my information, when she just stops and asks me, "why are you here. What do you expect to do." Well naturally I started to ramble about epidemiology and working with the CDC. But then she cut me off and said the most unsettling thing that an educator has ever said to me. She said, " No what I mean is why are you wasting your time doing this. With grades like these, you won't be able to do what you want to do in life....Grad school? Not with grades like these. You're just wasting your time and mine continuously doing this....not even trying...."

You know those moments where you hear someone talking and you're comprehending everything, but you're in your own little world. It was at this point in her speech that I came to that place. I never had an educator say something so terrible to me and needless to say I wasn't happy, but I wasn't angry either. I was just now lost... It was like my guiding star I called science just vanished from my night sky and I could no longer navigate my life. That day she cleared me to schedule for classes, but told me I was not cleared for ANY science classes. And I left....I never went back there again...

Yeap, Pretty much my face

The next semester, my 4th or 5th one at this point, I took a couple of art classes and only one social science class, because I knew I would need it further down the road if I continued biochemistry. It was a very long semester not knowing what I would do next. Everyday I enjoyed my art classes, but between walking to classes I was lost in an eternal drift of what will I do with my life now. 

Everyday....

This is when one of my good friends suggested Interdisciplinary Studies. They told me that I'd be able to create my own major and do a whole lot of fun things. Well, it took me a very long time to gather the courage to go to that department, but before the end of the semester, I stepped foot into their department and met with an amazing professor. To this day I still refer to him as Doctor, even though he doesn't have a PhD or is a doctor, but that's how much of an impact he had on me. 

The very first thing he did was look at my transcript and classes I had taken. Naturally I was just waiting for him to kill my dreams too, but this man did not. He looked at all the classes I did well in and formulated a game plan. He then asked me what my goal was. He was then the first to notice that deep down inside I wanted to help people, but I was an artistic soul. For the next 2 weeks I kept meeting with him. He showed me various departments such as the theater department, art department, etc. to make sure I didn't just want to major there. Then, he said the coolest thing. He said, "With all this talent you have, I might be able to help you get where you want to be in life. Don't worry about the science thing, I will show you how that has helped you when you take my class." He also informed me that to do this interdisciplinary (INDS) major I'd need a second, and since I wanted to help people, he escorted me over to the Social Work Department where he got me a meeting with the Dean, the DEAN!

We're meeting people....OKAY!

She was also another phenomenal lady. Though, most would probably mark her as a little cold and forward, that day after hearing my entire story and looking at my transcript, she said she saw potential in what I was doing. She then signed me up for Social work and instantaneously deleted my Biochem major status, denying that one "adviser" to never mess with me again.  

Best feeling in the world.

Needless to say, I fell in love with Social work and produced my own INDS major in Community Arts Outreach. Both advisers stuck with me to til the very end, helping me shape my majors and finding the right classes for me. They even believed in my dreams as much as I did, if not more. They both told me that they saw so much potential in me that they have not seen in a while, and they were expecting me to transcend their expectations, some of which they said I did by time I graduated. To this day, I still communicate with them and they still are very proud of me. I also made plenty of awesome social worker friends (SOWK4LYFE) and met some invaluable people and were placed in the right places at the right time. I now have a whole night sky of stars that will always guide me in the right direction (even my science one is back up there) .

To this day, I'm waiting to achieve my dream, even in the process of really getting it started now, so that way when I get my first official paycheck from MY OWN BUSINESS, I can go back to my university, find that crappy adviser and  just place my check on her desk with out saying a word....and walk out BALLIN' ヘ(◕。◕ヘ).

Where can I rent this choir?

Hope you enjoyed this story. And until next time stay awesome!

"If Tomorrow never comes, then I'll just have to chase after it."~Space Dandy

Misadventures part 3: "That" Teacher part 1

So, this one is not really an "adventure" per say, but another hilarious tale of things that happened to me. This is another story familiar with friends. Afterwards, I want you to tell me if you think I handled this correctly, keeping in mind the age (middle school).

Now, in life we don't always get great teachers. I can say I have a handful of great and awesome teachers who taught me a lot about life, college, and how to make sure I was a good person in life. Then, I can say I had plenty of teachers who just taught and were on par. Then I had multiple teachers who were sub par or even bad. And then there's those few teachers who just, no matter what you did, they seem to just not like you and hate your life. This is one such story....

Back-story: So this teacher we shall call Ms. "M". She was my 7th and 8th grade Earth science teacher and she not only hated me, but like 5 other male students in the class. Now, I am not a trouble-maker or hell raiser, nothing of the sort, but when I'm finished my work and have nothing else to do, I will talk and do things that bored unchallenged minds would do. This teacher would constantly give us packets and worksheets and would rarely teach us. By rarely, I mean  if her actual teaching was a pokémon you'd have to use the masterball to catch it. Or if her teaching was a mythical creature, she'd have less sighting than any of the mainstreams ones, somewhere in the range of 1-4 sightings. So constantly I'd get kicked out for dumb things such as I sneezed to loud, I laughed to loud (though in many cases I wasn't laughing), or I appeared to be doing nothing. It got so bad that the other earth science teacher, Ms. Galitzer, would adopt me as one of her own students when Ms. M kicked me out. The other 5 guys, some of them caused trouble or were disruptive, but for the most part she just had it out for us. One kid "Dez" got kicked out because he was walking down the hallway before class. Another kid "T" got kicked out for walking into class too fast. Like these were the "legitimate" things we got kicked out for.

Yes I did watch iCarly

So before I get to the main story, here are other short stories I got kicked out for:

1) My friend "Gerald" wanted some skittles from a friend across the room, and since you just can't get out your seat, he throws his pencil across the room and says "whoops I seemed to have dropped my pencil" and goes and gets skittles. Since I know this kid, I wasn't laughing but I got kicked out for laughing too loud.

2)I got kicked out for doing other class work in her class, though I was finished with her assignments.

3)I got kicked out for assisting a student with a question she refused to answer

4)I got kicked out for...I don't know she just just told me to get out. I might have been sleep in her defense though.

Main story: So this is the one I think I should receive some sort of award for. I prevented a physical altercation AND I came to her for a peaceful resolution. Here's what happened.  AHEM!

Egoraptor FTW

So, this particular day in Earth Science,it was thick packet day. Since me and my partner were two intelligent people,we decided to get things done faster by splitting the work into ground stuff and air stuff. I was good with the air stuff, he was good with the ground stuff. About halfway through class, we were almost finished our packets, sans like one page. It was about now that  I noticed my friend "Dawn" needed help with a packet even though she was across the class. I decided to help her, after being bribed with a pack of skittles (don't judge me. That rainbow tasted awesome that day.)

As I'm over there telling her how me and my partner found the answers, without cheating I must add, I noticed that "T" was up to something. So he sat two rows in front of me and in between us sat a girl "Sheena." Those two didn't get along that well and T was a known troublemaker at time. At this point, I observe him taking his pen and drawing a rather long line up and down Sheena's packet. She wasn't there at the time, she had left to go to the bathroom .  In my mind I'm going oh crap this is going to end badly for him. WRONG!

Unfortunately for me, as I'm coming back from helping Dawn, Sheena had just came back from the bathroom and assumed that I had did the line on her packet. Now we had never had any problems in the past. I never done anything to her nor her to me, but this time she snapped. Without asking me if I did it, she grabs my packet, goes to the trash can.... rips it up and throws it away. She may have also spit on it too...I'm not too sure, I kind of temporarily lost all my marbles.

To many of you readers out there, "demz fighting werds." (western-cowboy accent), and to me too those were fighting words. BUT...but I knew better. Why hurt someone over something fixable, right? *Sigh and count to 10* I decided since my partner had all the answers, all I needed was another packet, and order would be restored to the world. That is until the fire nation attacked...er I mean Ms. M.

I go to Ms. M, "Ms. M, Sheena has ripped my packet, I don't know why she ripped my packet, but may I have another one to work on so I can finish the work?"

This is her response. Oh, by the way she talked very similar to Ben Stein, so yes read in that voice now. "Ryan, you are responsible for you own packet. I cannot give you another packet. Whatever happened to your packet is your fault."

For those who don't know who he is.

"But Ms. M, I don't know why she ripped my packet, shouldn't you talk to her."
"Sheena, did you rip his packet? [yes] Why? [Oh because I thought he had did "this" to it, but it was T.]Okay go back to your seat."
"So, can I get another packet? [No!] ..........................."

"So you mean to tell me that even though she just admitted that she did this for no reason, and it was not my fault, I can't get another packet. I thought I was doing the right thing by asking you for help, but I'm still being blamed for doing this. I'm out!"

Yeah, I grabbed my stuff and kicked myself out that day, otherwise things would have transpired I wouldn't be proud of. But wait, there's more!

So I go across the hall to Ms. Galitzer's class, the other Earth Science teacher, and tell her everything. She's even tells me that was unfair and that she thinks that Ms. M was wrong. She gives me another packet to complete and so I complete it. At this time, Ms. M comes over and is in my bubble now talking about "I don't understand why you're upset, you just can't leave class like that. You need to come back... blah blah blah." This happened for about 5 mins until Ms. Galitzer stepped in and told her that it was okay, let him stay, that Ms. M should re-think why I'm mad.

To top all of this off, the packet I had received from Ms. Galitzer I turned in to Ms. M. She still gave me a big fat ZERO. That's a F for those who are probably trying to figure out what just happened. Her reasoning was that I wasn't supposed to have another packet.

From Swoozie's "Cheating in High school"

This was my 7th grade year...I had her again 8th grade and couldn't get transfer to Ms. Galitzer's class. To this day, I know I NEVER want to see Ms. M again. She personally marred my middle school life and made sure it wasn't pleasurable.

Now was I wrong for not liking her or doing what I did?  Did I deserve that F on that assignment? Let me know. I'm curious.

And I have been forgetting to leave ya'll with quotes so here's to make up for that: "Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed."- Cavett Robert

Misadventures part 2: Planet Hoth and the Haunted Root Beer

This is one story that people always told me to write down and one I get to tell often. So this is my personal favorite and it all started because of Ramen.

This story starts in 2010-2011 when Maryland had that freak double blizzard. I was attending college at the time and living with my roommates Alex, D.K, and Dan. Now, as any college student knows, you are always poor living on campus, somehow, so a pack of Ramen can be your one meal for the day and you'll be fine. Also, any college student knows that if school closes you have like 2 options: Sit around and do nothing all day or "study" and by study I mean look at your computer screen all day...

On this snowy day, it just so happens that there was only one pack of Ramen left in our whole apartment, which also just so happened to be mine. How do I know? I'm the only one who puts his stuff away in the cabinets way in the corner, plus I've been keeping an eye on it just in case the snow got out of hand-I knew that this was my emergency ration because I don't do the cold thing and I was not going outside until the next day. So I planned out my day as so: wake up late, watch some TV, "study", eat some Ramen, play games, and sleep.  Everything was going according to plan. I didn't wake up until like 10am (because I'm normally up for work at like 7:30) I caught some Teen Titans, and I typed my title on my paper due next week. Everything is on schedule....

At this time I knew it was time to pull out the Ramen. It was close to noon and I figure if I eat this now, I can find some small snacks around the apartment to eat if I get hungry. I open the cabinets, and nothings there. Hmm.... Now I'm slamming through all the cabinets and my buddy D.K comes out his room all pissed like "Why the hell are you slamming things around." Apparently he was sleep and waking up D.K is like the worst thing to do at times cause he gets pissy. It's at this point I'm like "where the hell is my Ramen!?" I turn and D.K is no longer there, and I hear his door close and lock. THAT BASTARD!!! (I knew he had eaten it cause he tried to run). So, now I'm banging on the door like we have nothing to eat what the hell dude, we have to go to the store and get some supplies or else we aren't going to make it another day.

*random aside* This is where in the background you hear the newscaster telling people to stay off the streets, state of emergency blah blah blah....

So, I finally guilt him into walking to the store, but we didn't know if they were open. We call the Giant, which is about 2 miles off campus and they tell us they are closing at 1 due to the weather. We look at the clock 12:15. So we tell the lady we'll be right there and gear up. We put on so many layers of clothing that we looked like Ralphie's little brother Randy from a Christmas story, and we emptied our book bags and headed out. Normally this is like a 30 min walk or a 5 min drive....nope not today. See First off, the apartments we lived in was at the bottom of one steep hill, then the entrance to the University was up another hill, and the entire walk towards Giant was up hill. Fudge.....

So, we start our arduous trek towards Giant, DK and I, and 5 mins of walking up the hill we were already tired, but we see a familiar figure in the distance. It was our friend DS. (We had a lot of friends named David so we usually went by initials because we had a D.A- D.Z literally.)He had nothing better to do so he decides to join us; it was either that or go "study". This was probably the longest walk of my life, the entire time we are making star wars, star trek, video game, and anime references to pass the time (Hence the title). We make it to The Giant parking lot at about 12:50 and we see other college students pushing a cart towards us, full of booze and alcohol. All you heard was, "yeah man gotta do what you gotta do. (Hell yea!)" Now we are walking up to Giant and notice subway is open, do we go here or Giant? How many days might we be stuck? We open the door to subway "What time do you close?" "We Stay open" We'll be right back! Run to Giant, 1pm. Made it just in time. Grabbed as much food as we could and went to check-out. This is when our "college-ness" started to show.

Somewhere in the mess of things we picked up 3 soda packs and were placing everything but the sodas into our book bags, when  you see the cashier face palm herself and say "what's heavier, the sodas or this 'stuff'"? So then we proceed to put the full cases of soda in the book bags. Again she had a face palm moment. "Why don't you take the cans out of the boxes and that way you have more space?" OOOOOOOH. Needless to say she was our savior. After that we ran to subway to take a much needed hour break. This is where the shenanigans happened. Since we had a long walk back I purchased their largest drink and filled it with root beer and started the trek back towards UMBC.

As we are leaving Giant's parking lot we are walking in the street; keep in mind it's not plowed, snow is still pouring out the sky, and you can't really tell the sidewalk from the road anyway, we noticed this car speeding behind us (10mph+) and going towards a huge embankment of snow at the top of the street. So, as fast as we could we are trying to get out the way of this car. And as we do, everyone in the group unanimously looks at the car like what a dick, I hope it doesn't get stuck in the snow.....it got stuck in the snow! Should we help? Okay let's go get this good deed done for the month.

We get up to the window and it's an older lady (maybe early 50s) in a RAV4 with 4x4. As we are putting our cargo down I hear my friend ask "do you have 4x4" while he's looking right at it and this lady says No. *sigh* Alright well let's get this done. Before we started though I made sure to keep my root beer cold by making a snow mound around it on the median in the middle of the street (this is important). Now, we tell the lady when we count to 3 hit the gas as hard as you can. So 1...2...3..... We push as hard as we can but no acceleration from the car. ....................................... soon as we stop pushing she floors it. This happened about 3 more times before a local snow plow with two guys came along. Now we have 5 people and we are going for the final try.  1...2...3... she finally floors and gets unstuck, but guess what she does? Go on, guess. If you guessed she sped off without a thank you, you'd be correct. Even the snow plow people said (and I quote) "wow what a b**ch, she didn't even say thank you, or offer you a ride. We would offer you a ride but you know the salt equipment is in the back." We were cool with that and just vowed that if she got stuck later on down the road, we would just walk passed her. 

Because I was a little irritated, I was just ready to go back, so I left my root beer where I had stashed it. I just wanted to go. So fast forward, we finally get back to campus, make it to our apartment, and me and DK were so spent that we pretty much passed out.

The next day, since DK had a gas powered RC car, we decided we'd go snow drifting, which failed horribly because he didn't have good tired. But, as we are walking out the door, he just stops and points. I almost walked into him about to curse him out until I stop and point too. There, on the chair we leave at the front door, was my giant subway cup full off root beer. I know it was my cup too because I had popped the soda tabs on top in a certain order and you can see the snow marks from the snow igloo I made. Immediately we yell to Alex who has the only vehicle capable of driving in the snow an knew of our adventure. "Did you do this?" No, he was out drinking last night and knew better than to drive in the snow. So we call DS. "Did you do this?" Nope, he had been called by his church to go do something the night before and was all the way on the other side of town. Not knowing how it got there, we called poltergeist and never touched that root beer. 

To this day it would be sitting there if Alex or Dan didn't get tired of seeing it there and poured it out. You know how they say, when you get to heaven you get one question, I am seriously considering asking how that root beer got back in the apartment that night. 

Til next time, Stay awesome

Misadventures Part 1- The Food Fight Failed

It's been a while since I blogged, and I thought I'd come back with stories of things that has happened to me in my lifetime.  Some things are hilarious, some things are embarrassing, and some things were downright, holy crap I could have died or went to jail (which in one case is what happened). *ahem* I'll save that for another misadventure story. So, for my first story I'm going to go way back to high school and the food fight my friends tried to start.

In high school, I wasn't a cool kid nor was I an outcast kid. I was pretty average and had a lot of friends across the spectrum.  This particular story involves  my two friends, Coop and Derrick, who were known around the school for doing fun but semi-suspendable things in our school such as "Matrix day" and sledding in grand case. Now, initially I wasn't involved in the plan but I caught wind of it, in fact EVERYBODY did. In my High school, if people knew something was going down where their clothes could possibly get dirtied or there wasn't a possibility of a fight they would totally avoid it. I forget what lunch period we had, but pretty much no one was there. Half the people who heard about it bailed and the other half suspiciously had their hoodies up or something to say "I want to see this but don't hit me." So, needless to say nothing happened that day.

After that attempt, I pulled up Coop, who is pretty much the mastermind of these hilarious events, and told him we have to keep it small. We came up with this plan: We only need 5 people to start it-one in each corner to throw towards the center, and one person in the center to guarantee that someone gets hit. This was pretty much a flawless plan because after the first one failed no one was expecting another one to happen so soon. Since I wasn't going to be a thrower I decided to be the point-man /spotter and sit in a center location so a friend could easily find me. Besides Derrick and Marcus, I honestly don't recall who else was involved.

A brief look at the plan

Anyway, the next day comes and we are ready to do this. I'm in the cafeteria, I bought actually food, because A) I don't want to look suspicious and B) I need ammunition for when this thing goes down. I note Marcus is in one corner and so I know everyone else is set except the center guard. Turns out that was Derrick, and he comes flying sitting next to me. As soon as I saw this I knew it was going down, so I got ready. Now Derrick had purchased the sub, the 6 inch nastiness they served us in lunch with  a whole lot of lettuce and tomatoes and other stuff so that when it hit it hit and left a mark. This is when everything went into slow-mo.

Over on the far side of the cafeteria is this one lonely white kid. I point out that he was white because we are a predominantly black school so he was like 1 of 10 white kids, so this made him a good target. I see Derrick lock on to him and pick up his sub and fling it over in his direction. The whole time I'm watching this sub in awe floating through the air in what seemed like an eternity. I'm just waiting for this to hit so the rest of the plan could unfold. Moments later (which it felt like) the sub MISSED. It hits in front of the kid and slides off the end of the table, and the best part is the kid didn't even noticed it happened. Well.... *bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeep*. That didn't go as plan...and as soon as that thought came out Derrick tried again with his milk that came with the meal. Again we wait..........And Again same thing. Lands right in front of the kid and bounce off, didn't notice. Well even though he missed what about the other 4? Well I turned and see them all miss too. 5 people all missed. What the hell. I looked around for a bit to see if anyone in the lunch room even noticed what had happened and no one seem to care. It was at this point I said "eff it" and walked out of the cafeteria. I was sure that plan would work and somehow karma proved me wrong.

But to this day, that one sub, that missed an entire being by mere inches somehow amazes me. Better yet I am more surprised he never noticed. If you are reading this and you were that kid, and you did notice, you could have thrown something back. Just saying lol

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Editor's note: Apparently one unsuspecting girl was hit in the neck/back of the head with a potato as confirmed by Coop. Video may be posted soon.