I just bought tickets for Zumanity for Feb 16th. But really I’m posting to list my grades from high school, the transcript for which I received today. It’s kind of messy but I’ll try to make it make sense.
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I want to write about my 18-hour workday yesterday but I am still processing it. So here’s some college grades instead, for fun.

Western Maryland College

Northern Virginia Community College

I went to my company’s main office for my annual review today; it’s pretty much the only time I get over there anymore. I’m basically entirely cut off from them, I knew the office had moved up a floor but I didn’t realize so many of the major admin people had left. I said hi to a few people and then told the president of my plans for going to Gallaudet; he suggested I could stay with the company and work part-time VRS around my class schedule, so I may do that.

My annual review went pretty well. I don’t know exactly how big my raise is, probably between 3.5-5% - they use a mathematical formula to calculate it but I wasn’t there for the math part. I was invited to join a few of the supervisors (including my own) who were going to a workshop at Gallaudet - 0.15 CEU’s for free! Since it would end at 12 and I was taking leave starting at 1:00, my supervisor said I didn’t have to go back to the office. The workshop was about the structure of personal narrative in ASL, and I learned a bit. Next I went to the bookstore and bought a jacket (to replace my ratty old WMC jacket that A’s been bugging me to get rid of) and a license plate frame (to replace the one that broke when I took it off the Saturn). After that I had lunch with my friend :R:, who I hadn’t really gotten to chat with in a long time. I used to see him every single day for lunch because we worked a block apart, but then I started interpreting and he switched jobs and we never saw each other. He got a job at Gallaudet, so we had lunch in his office.

Afterward I went to Fort Belvoir to pick up my DTG food. It only took about 20 minutes to get there, and I was home within about an hour of leaving Gallaudet. I watched the woot-off some more, and ended up buying a Navman iCN 330 in-car navigation device for $200. I’ve been wanting one for a while anyway, and after my adventures in Philadelphia I really wanted one, so I got it. It’s usually about $230-250 elsewhere, so $200 was good. It’s “remanufactured” whatever that means - I don’t know the difference between that and refurbished - but hopefully it’ll work!

I know all I’ve been talking about lately is my car and college. Well, the car is pretty much taken care of. I got my registration and title yesterday, and today I went to the Pass & ID Office and got the new DOD decals that make my car truly official again. Tonight I will put on my new plates. The bumper sticker I ordered still hasn’t arrived (shipped on 11/2/06) but I happened upon a whole bag of other stickers I might decide to use.

My college application is sent. *falls over* It’s hard for me to describe how scary it is to be applying to college 10 years after the first time. I hope I get in. I heard back about the SAT scores; apparently you need to have 12 credit hours and some of those might have to be Math and English in order to avoid needing the SAT scores. I can’t tell from the fee table if the $17.50 “retrieval fee for archived scores” is just for them to find it, and I’d have to pay the additional $9.50 to have it sent out, or…I dunno. I am going to wait until Gallaudet tells me if they need those scores or not. I took the AP English test when I was in high school so I “tested out” of English 101, and I got a low grade in English 102, but I took it…I don’t remember what my math situation was. But anyway, the application has been sent, transcripts have been requested from high school, college, and the ITP program I was in for fall 2003 - I got a 4.0 so hopefully that will be attractive to Gallaudet. One of the recommendation forms has been sent to the person who’s filling it out for me, and I’ll be handing the other forms to my supervisor at my annual review on Friday.

My annual review is on Friday?! I need to focus on that for a while.

I’ve got two sets of papers I’m working on right now.

The first is the title and registration documents for my car. The PDF forms from the website were fillable, so everything is all nice and tidy except for the handwritten parts of the sale price form. I hope I haven’t left anything out; I’m planning to go to the DMV after work tomorrow and then hopefully by Wednesday morning I will be able to get replacement DOD stickers for my car so the guards don’t have to keep peering at my temporary parking pass every morning. I’ll also be able to get on base if I need to, which I haven’t been able to do for a couple of months now.

The other forms are my application to Gallaudet. I’m trying to figure out how to handle being a returning student. I can have my transcripts sent from WMC (freshman year) and NOVA (evening classes in interpreting), but the application has a section for my high school information. When I e-mailed the admissions department to ask about that, they said “oh, well, they keep records for 10 years, they should still have yours.” So I found the e-mail address for a teacher I knew who is still there, and e-mailed her to ask who I needed to contact to see if they had my information. Hah. The forms also ask for my SAT scores, and those are no longer available online, I have to get them by calling or something. I don’t see why my college transcripts aren’t enough. Fortunately I’ve already got a few people who are willing to write recommendations for me, so at least that’s taken care of.

Harvard University has been around longer than the United States - a lot longer. Only sixteen years after the Pilgrims came to Plymouth Rock, they established an institute of higher learning that has lasted for more than 350 years.
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In recent times, deafness has not been regarded as a barrier to learning, and deaf children attend mainstreamed schools and deaf schools across the country. But this was not always the case. In fact, prior to the early 19th century, deaf children received virtually no formal education. Certainly some were taught to read and write by family members, but many worked in jobs that valued physical skills over mental ones. The person who was instrumental in changing this situation would later lend his name to the world’s first liberal arts university for the deaf.
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My alumni giving association has put out the best “give us money” letter I have ever seen. The envelope had the phrase “Had your fill of winter blahs?” in fake handwriting on the cover, but it was the inside that made it so cool. Note that I have typed this in verbatim.
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I only attended WMC for a couple of semesters, but I have very fond memories of my time there as it was the only time I “went away to college” and lived in a dorm, etc. So I was quite pleased to get a reunion notification letter in the mail yesterday - I would have graduated in 2001, so they have me in with that class and the five-year reunion will be next April. I am hoping to attend if it doesn’t cost too much money, but I probably won’t know many people there. Still, I remember my friends well, and I’d love to see them again. The only problem is that I also had some good friends who were a year ahead of me, so I won’t get to see them. Anyway, I mailed the form back and I’m looking forward to hearing what’s next.

I went to Western Maryland College from fall 1997 to spring 1998. I haven’t been back to school full-time since, so that remains “my” college; that’s where all of my college friends were, and so forth. A couple of years ago, the college decided they didn’t like their name anymore. The name originally came from the college’s major benefactor, the Western Maryland Railroad, which ran from the college’s location in Westminster out to…well, the western part of the state of Maryland. But for several years, WMC suffered from misunderstandings. People mistakenly believed it was a state school, and others thought it was out in the western part of Maryland - it’s actually in Carroll County, in central Maryland. So a name change was announced, and despite protests from alumni, the trustees selected to rename the school to McDaniel College in 2002.

In the past month, I’ve seen two cars driving around my town with WESTERN MARYLAND COLLEGE stickers. I think they were actually driven by the same woman, so somebody around here went to my college! The second time I saw the sticker, I got the inspiration to visit the college bookstore’s website and get in touch with the bookstore manager. I sent a polite e-mail asking if they had any WMC stickers left - I don’t want a sticker that says McDaniel College, because I didn’t go there! - and mentioning that I’d be willing to pay for them. What I didn’t say was that I’d be willing to pay more than list price…after all, these are collector’s items now! I got an e-mail back almost immediately asking for my mailing address, so I responded. A few minutes later an e-mail came in saying not only were the stickers in the mail, but that he’d included an extra in case I knew any other alumni in the area!

The envelope arrived yesterday, and inside were not one, not two, but five clear window stickers! He had also thrown in three little add-on stickers that say ALUMNI in the same font, but I’m not adding one to my car because I didn’t graduate from there. (I haven’t graduated from anywhere yet, actually.) Unfortunately the stickers are adhesive, not cling, and I can’t put them inside the rear window (they’re inside-application style) because when I turn on the rear defroster in winter, it’ll melt the sticker onto the window! (I put my Gallaudet sticker in the rear window in the summer, and in the winter I move it to the front window above the rear-view mirror.)

So if any WMC alumni are reading this and you’d like a sticker, let me know. I can try to hook you up with one of the many I’ve got!