I think I’ve mentioned once or twice before that I’m going to school because I really don’t know what else to do, not because of some strong drive to get a degree. So when school becomes a pain in the ass I find myself questioning more than ever whether or not I really give enough of a shit to keep doing this. Getting myself into classes for this Fall has, without question, become a pain in the ass.

It started with the residency issue that I’ve discussed to death by now. But I got my residency and got admitted in to PSU. If it ended there life would peachy. Obviously it has not ended there. The process of being getting enrolled included requesting my transcripts from St. Mary’s University where I took some classes back in 1999.

I remembered taking Calc 1 & 2 and a philosophy class; I also took several other classes though I couldn’t remember which ones exactly. Well when I ordered my transcripts I ordered two copies, an official copy sent to PSU and an unofficial copy sent to me. When I got my copy I was pretty surprised to learn that I never took Calculus 2. I was sure I had. I was wrong. Now this throws quite a kink into the plans. The 200-series of the electrical engineering program is a year-long series. So if you miss the first term you’ll have to miss the whole year. Hurdle #1.

So I would need to go an advisor and ask for an exception. I figured things would go better if I was already registered for Calc 2. After I got my admittance letter last week I went online to register for the classes I could take, including the suddenly-all-important math class. Silly me expecting that to go smoothly. Instead of registering for classes I was informed that I was locked out of registration until I attend the mandatory orientation. Fantastic. Hurdle #2.

The next day I headed to campus to find the New Student & Orientation office. Since I (unofficially) went to orientation last year I got them to unlock my account, though I’ll still be (officially) attending orientation this year. I headed home expecting to have access to the regisration system the next day.

The next morning, last Friday, I hopped online and once again logged into my student account to sign up for math class and several other classes I was expecting to take this term. I guess I shouldn’t have been shocked to find the registration system was down for maintenance and would be down until 8:00 pm the next day. Hurdle #3.

So I waited.

Sunday morning I got online, I got logged in, and I actually got access to the class registration portion of the website. Finally I was making progress. Or so I thought. Wouldn’t you know it that all of the Calc 2 classes being offered at PSU are now full. I was offered to get on the waiting list. I accepted. Hurdle #4.

OK. So Monday was just around the corner. It would be much tougher to ask for an override to a prerequisite if I had no plans of actually fulfilling said prerequisite. Not to worry, there was still an option. Portland Community College (PCC) has a co-admitted program where students can take courses at PCC and have them automatically transferred into the PSU system. The next morning I would go talk the engineering adviser and then fight out about getting co-admitted at PCC.

Monday morning I wake up super early so I can get a bike ride in, then head to school. At this point would you be the least bit surprised to learn that all engineering advising staff was on vacation as was the professor for ECE221, the engineering class I’m trying to get into. With time ticking away my only option was to wait. Well that was the only option on the engineering front, there was still math to attend to. I headed up to the admissions office, got the paperwork and spent a little bit of time talking to the person in charge of co-admissions at PSU. She informed me that it was in my best interest to go to PCC in person and turn in the paperwork as their deadline was 2 days away. Paperwork completed I headed home, hopped in the car, and headed south.

After turning in the paperwork at PCC’s admissions office, who instructed me that the next step was for me to go to advising. “I’m not looking to get a degree from PCC. I’m just interested in taking a math class here, the rest I’ll be doing at Portland State,” I explained.

“You still need to go to Advising before you can register for classes,” the lady explained. Of course, advising. She directed me to the Advising Office and I was on my way. Apparently things were going too smoothly and the Advising Office want to get me back in my comfort zone of endless frustration.

“We’re not taking any further appointments for advising,” the lady behind the counter explained. “At this point the only thing to do is wait until September 1st where we’ll be advising student on a first-come first-serve basis.”

So I go home and I wait. School is around the corner, I don’t know if I’ll be able to attend the classes I need to make actual progress toward getting a degree. At worst I might lose an entire year if I can’t get things settled out. That fine though right? I mean I’m super young and super rich, fuck it what’s to worry?

This morning I crawled out of bed at 7:30, showered, dressed, and headed back to PCC. I brought a copy of my unofficial transcripts as instructed. Since I already took Calc 1 I should be admitted in to Calc 2 without any problems I was informed. Today would hopefully go smoothly. Haha…. okok, of course it wouldn’t.

After showing the PCC adviser my transcript I was told that I would have to take a 100-level writing course in order to order to meet the prerequisites for the one stupid class I was trying to take. Never mind that this writing course wasn’t required for me to get my degree at PSU. So here I am sitting at this lady’s desk and I can’t see any of my surroundings because a gigantic “WTF?!?!” was floating in front of my eyes. Hurdle #whateverthefuckitis.

Apparently my face read like a book, a book which didn’t seem to have a happy ending, because Miss Advisor got up and told me she’d go look into whether or not she could waive the requirement. She came back shortly after telling me such a waiver was not an option, however what was an option was taking reading & writing placement exams and possibly getting out of taking the writing class.

“When can I take it?”

“You can go testing office and take them both right now.”

45 minutes I had a printout showing my scores: 99/99 on the writing and 98/99 on the reading. 5 minutes after that I got my waiver and MTH252, aka Calculus 2, was unlocked. Though it’s entirely possible that the courses are full. I’ll find out once I get the email from PCC telling me I can log in.

School starts on September 27th. Correction, PSU starts on September 27th; PCC starts a week earlier on the 21st. As of yet I have no clue what I’m taking. Tomorrow afternoon I head to advising to try and finally get myself enrolled in some college classes.

This whole experience has been a gigantic pain in the ass. Like I said when I started, this is much more annoying to me because I really don’t know that I even give a shit about going to college. If I had a better option I’d be exercising that option without question. But school is definitely better than working and I guess I need to move towards something before I completely run out of money. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get thing squared away and once I do future attempts at registering should be much, much smoother since I’ll finally be “in”.

But for now I can take solace in the one thing I have gotten accomplished: taking advantage of another opportunity to bitch.

Well two more hurdles have been hurdled. I’ve gotten my in-state residency status and I’m officially enrolled as a full-time student at Portland State University.

I’ve got a couple more little hurdles and some paperwork to get done but the seas are looking smoother. This is good. School starts on September 27th and I haven’t enrolled in classes yet, I still need to get that done once I’m allowed to. I guess I need to figure out when that is; I may have to wait until I attend the mandatory orientation first, I dunno.

But the two biggest obstacles are overcome. In 4 weeks my blogging will drop to almost zero again as I become entrenched back the horrors of our education system.

Tomorrow I go out and get a Viking tattoo…

The same morning I published my last post about failing the first uphill climb on my new route I went for a bike ride. I headed south down to Sellwood and crossed the bridge like always. That’s when I had a decision to make, go north and call it a ride or keep going west into the cemetery and actually try that stupid hill again. I was feeling pretty good so I said fuck it and decided to hit the hill again.

Now the first time I tried the hill I started at what I considered a pretty reasonable gear and worked my way down towards the lowest gear as the climb became harder and harder. This time I tried a different strategy; I started pretty low to begin with and just accepted that this would take a while. I wasn’t athletic, I wasn’t quick, and I was by no mean impressive but I made it to the top! I wasn’t even in that much pain and I was feeling pretty damn good about myself.

Last time I got to this point I was walking; and when I got there I abandoned the rest of the proposed trip, turning right and headed home. But on this day I was still on the bike and at the top of the hill I turned left this time, to finish this ride. Stupid, stupid, stupid me.

It turns out that the cemetery hill wasn’t some silly biking challenge but rather the gatekeeper into some hidden chamber of hell reserved for morons who think they’re bicyclists. My vision of biking the hills west of Portland was not at all the reality that awaited me. These weren’t “yay, hills!” these were “holy fuck, I’m supposed to ride up that hill?” sort of hills. This time around I didn’t even feel bad when I dismounted from my bike. Which is good since I would dismount time and again during my ride. There were several hills that I’m not sure I’d ever be able to climb and one specific hill I don’t think any human being could ever climb.

The trip was supposed to be a little over 16 miles. My normal 14 mile ride takes me about 50 minutes. This ride took me 2 hours, 20 minutes. There were multiple places where I could have turned away from he planned course and go home, but I decided that ride or walk I’d finish this motherfucker (Unless of course I happened to run into an angry gang of mosquitoes). I was pretty disappointed when I got home and found that my phone had lost GPS reception and I was missing half of the ride or so. So unfortunately I don’t know what sort of elevation I reached on the climb up. That really sucks because I was pretty high up by the time I peaked.

I said in the last post that using google maps to plan out my routes isn’t ideal. Now I realize that it’s more than “not ideal”, it’s downright stupid. I need to find better tools for planning trips.

Having ridden/walked the entire loop I know for sure that this is more than I can chew at this point. If I’m going to ratchet up the rides I need to baby step it a little more. I haven’t looked at my options yet, but I’d like to find a ride which will incorporate cemetery hill still. Having summitted it once I think I can do it time and again, hopefully getting faster each time.

Maybe one day I’ll actually be able to finish a ride like this one. That would be something. That would awesome. But for now… baby steps.

When you’ve got the sad physical conditioning I do you learn to savor whatever little victories you achieve. One of those little keepsakes came a number of months back when I completed my first apartment-to-apartment bike ride without ever touching my feet to the floor. Hey, I told you it was a little victory.

Two days ago I tried a new route. Usually I just load up a map of Portland on google and trace out a new path that way. ` The problem with mapping a route using google is that there’s no real feel for elevation change. I think you see where this is going…

The first half of my ride is the same loop I’ve been doing for months now. I normally ride down to the town of Sellwood on the west side of the river, cross the Sellwood Bridge, and head back north on the river’s east side. This new route had me crossing the bridge like always, but instead of turning north I keep riding west into the hills. I expected the hills and the climbing, what I didn’t plan on was that I’d get broken so quickly.

The first hill was a never-ending upward trek which forced my gears ever downward. By the time I was in the lowest gear on my bike I was barely crawling along the switchback-laden path wondering why I was so stupid as to want to try a different path. In classic Portland style not one, not two, but three people would pass me at speeds which trivialized the epicness of my uphill battle.

Though I realized that the hill I wasn’t really climbing wouldn’t end I stubbornly proclaimed that I would reach its top even if I did the entire thing in granny gear moving 0.01 mph. But my legs didn’t listen and suddenly they weren’t moving in circles any longer. I was still pushing, they just weren’t moving. So I dismounted and walked to the top. At the top of the hill I decided I was done and cut the ride short. What was scheduled to be 16.2 (ish) miles ended up being 13.7 miles.

The ride broke me, but it felt pretty damn good. Walking my bike up the hill panting along I told myself that one of these days I’ll not only ride the hill but I’ll do it like that calf-intensive lady did as she passed me, asking “Are you ok?” without even hint of being short of breath.

One day, I’ll be a bicyclist.

Although it’s just as probable that I won’t.

I have officially turned in my application for residency as well as my application for admission to Portland State University. Transcripts should also be on the way soon. Now I just wait.

Hopefully smooth seas are up ahead.