Minion Mailbag - Community College Edition.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader loves it when minion-folk decide to write a whole post for him. As has loyal reader/minion "Powermfn." Powermfn is a longtime reader of this humble weblog (if your Maximum Leader may quote the Crack Young Staff). Well, Powermfn has a bone to pick with the good Smallholder concerning his recent Community College post. Let's see what Powermfn's message says...

I reckon it all depends on the community college itself and where it is located. It has been my experience that those CC's located in and around places like D.C. or, for that matter, wherever there is a military installation such as the naval installation at Norfolk, you are likely to find the following:

1. A preference by the government to send their officers to the local CC's to get their tickets punched.

2. An absolutely amazed group of officers already with with undergraduate and graduate degrees in hand who discover that the math classes being taught today at the CC level are so tough that it is like "trying to nail Jello to the wall". (A quote from a naval commander)

Further,

1. Some of the private and even some of the public high schools in the northern Virginia area especially choose to send their AP and IHP students to the local CC's for certain courses such as calculus, etc.

2. The influx of immigrant students (mostly those from Asia) has made for some of the most incredible academic competition, again in any class with anything to do with math.

3. Big state universities like Tech are actually recommending that at the very least those students on the waiting list enroll at the local CC and take the state required courses which would leave them free to really immerse themselves in their chosen major once they ever do get off the waiting list and onto a big state u. campus.

4. VCU actually recommends to their student body that if they can swing it at all financially to take summer courses at the local CC for credit transferable back to the big alma mater.

5. For a fact, I have seen with my own eyes that the campus of the community college in Lansing, Michigan, right next to Michigan State University is a far more modern and attractive place than many of the sites on the big u. campus and certainly far more modern and attractive than the state capitol building. Worse yet, there was such an atmosphere of total seriousness from the CC student body as they sweated through computer science, etc. courses that the whole effect was rather off-putting. This was college! Where was the good old rah-rah stuff in the halls and on the green?

6. Check out in different states where those states insist that one go to obtain Board certification and licensing in such areas as optician. Yup. The CC.

There you have it. Thanks to Powermfn for the thoughtful comments. It seems as though Ally isn't the only one who likes a little "spanky-spanky" of the Smallholder's (aka Mocha's) tuckas.

Carry on.