I stood in what seemed like a hurricane-force rain storm peering into sheets of water that made my limited vision even blurrier. “Yeah, that surely is the white minivan,” I thought as I gripped my umbrella even tighter, struggling to keep it from turning itself inside out and in place over me and my big backpack. “Come on, come on, what are you waiting for?” I mumbled.

The shape wasn’t changing so I knew it wasn’t moving. Was the person in the traffic kiosk giving my daughter a rough time? Or wasn’t it actually the vehicle I was waiting for? It certainly wasn’t the kind of day for a friendly chat so what was taking so long?

After what seemed like hours, the white minivan moved toward me, then quickly turned the corner, and stopped. I opened the side door to toss in the dripping umbrella and heard my daughter’s panicked voice yelling, “Quick, Mom, GET IN!” Continue reading Quick, Get In! →

I got my first D on my first report card when I was six. It was at the end of the column of A’s. I did not know what Phys. Ed. was but I did know that D made my stomach feel weird. Now, fifty years later, as I squinted through the magnifying glass at the C on one of my first college tests, my stomach felt equally weird.  [pullquote]Maybe this Amish grandma would not survive college after all.[/pullquote]  Continue reading More Pathetic →

“Well, if you’re the King of the Castle when it comes to blogs, I’m not even in the castle,” I said emphatically. “In fact, I don’t know where the castle is because I don’t know what a blog is.”

We, the twenty-plus students of English 015, were crowded into a computer lab instead of our usual spacious classroom because we were going to learn how to set up our own blogs. Michelle had just asked how many of us had ever done a blog before Continue reading Crossing the Moat →

I thought I had grown up arguing but a college textbook told me otherwise. What I had experienced was merely yelling, bickering, and fighting. Pathetic arguing is very different, at least according to the textbook for English 015 Thank You for Arguing by Jay Heinrichs.

Fortunately, Heinrichs did not write a traditional, bore-students-outta-their-skulls textbook so I was not the only one who actually learned something in that class. Continue reading Not Pathetic Enough →

“Okay, I think I got what I need to get to my email account, but I don’t know about that other thing,” I said to Don, the person assigned to set me up with the technology I was told I needed for college.

“What other thing?” Don asked. “Oh, you mean Angel.”

Did you say angel? What in the world do angels have to do with Penn State?” I asked incredulously.

“Yeah, it is kind of a funny name, isn’t it?” he chuckled. “But you’re going to need to learn how to use it regardless of what it’s called.”

“Okay, but give me a minute to get past the questions. Why is it called Angel? What does Angel stand for? And is this angel sent from God or the devil?” Continue reading Good or Bad Angel →