it's not a joke

Yes, I am attending a community college, aka a junior college, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

I'm learning, it's fun, and it's what I need to do to get my certification. People can be strangely snobby about things like this. Yes, I have an undergraduate degree from MIT, but it's not as if I think of it as M! I! T! No one else should, either.

Honestly, most of what I learned at the 'tute (which was MIT's nickname back in the early 1980s; in previous eras, it was called "Tech", and I have no idea what it's called now) was intellectually interesting but had very little practical application to my life. What I'm learning now, I've already put to good use in the classroom. I'm already a better teacher, and I'm already enjoying teaching even more than I did before.

One thing's for sure: no one walks around Rio's (admittedly tiny) campus wearing t-shirts proclaiming IHTFP. That kind of ironic disdain is the sort of luxury that elite school students can afford. The rest of us live in the real world.