Skokie days

Skokie, or more formally, Hebrew Theological College, offers college students the opportunity to take classes on the Skokie campus, an earn a Skokie degree. They have an arrangement with local schools, such as Loyola, where Loyola accepts Skokie credits. They are vague about the national recognition of these credits, although sometime over the past 13 years this may have changed. From experience, I can tell you these credits did not transfer to YU or Wayne State, two schools I attended post-skokie.

But I don't realize that these credits are garbage, and I am trying to take these classes somewhat seriously. As seriously as you can when your college classes are really glorified high school classes, the only difference being the students have much more experience being students.

What is it like to work with a 45 year old retarded man with the intelligence of a four year old, I once asked a friend who worked with the mentally challenged. Imagine a 5 year old with 40 years experience, he answered. That is what Skokie classes are like.

Which is not to say that they are not entertaining. There is an advantage to students who went to skokie for high school. One day two former Skokie high school students "miraculously" get the same answers right and wrong on a test. They are not the only people who cheated on this test, but they are the only ones who walk away scott-free.

We are asked to read poetry. Chimney stuns the class his rendition of Green Eggs and Ham. In Yiddish.

There are English classes and accounting classes and math classes, and they have a common theme. It is a high school flashback.

Skokie allows us to have phones in our room. Maybe this is standard in post-high-school yeshivas, I'm not sure, but it is my first experience with this convenience. We call each other from one room to another to see if someone is standing. Protocol requires that if you are standing up when you get a call from someone who is laying in bed, and they need something from across the room, you MUST go to the other room and get that item.

A friend named Howard is visiting Skokie. He is probably in Chicago to go out on a date, and is crashing on our couch. The phone doesn't work, so he puts both wires in his mouth as he tries to fix it. The phone rings, sending some kind of shock waves through his mouth.

There is a student named Adam, who is something of a BT, although I don't know the level of his committment to an orthodox lifestyle. I think he is still learning and deciding. When he is not trying to kill himself. We walk into his room and see him looking up at a knife theat he is holding over his head. He claims to have a gun in his car, a true claim, as I have seen the gun. He is thinking about ending it all.

I don't know if he ever did get around to killing himself, because he is quickly kicked out of Yeshiva and sent to some kind of therapy program.