Life is full of little deaths and rebirths, beginnings and ends. The fallen tree in the forest makes room for new saplings to come into this world. The bloated, over-the-hill NFL quarterback, who had once been relevant but now only serves as a generator of sex scandals, must retire in shame so that a new player may take his place to be beaten stupid. And here in community college, we too find ourselves caught in this cycle of regeneration at the beginning of every fall semester when we are swamped with a wave of high-school-seniors-turned-community-college-freshmen. 

But just what do these nameless, faceless resource leeches think of the system that they are taking part in?

A great starting point would be to ask a prospective community college student. Michelle Reber is a senior at Mercy SF, who says that she will probably attend community college. She was kind enough to give her thoughts on what she thought of community college, and specifically on Skyline.

“It’s an option,” said Reber. “But I wouldn’t want to go to Skyline because it looks depressing. It looks cold and foggy.”

Reber’s cheery position is not uniquely her own, as I would have fully agreed with her when I was in high school. There is a degree to which she is correct: The windswept netherworld that is Skyline can be pretty depressing. It’s like going to school in some horrible medieval moor. But aesthetics aside, Skyline does have its positive aspects, namely in providing academic redemption.

Speaking for myself, I was a terrible high school student. I barley graduated high school, after which I decided to take a semester off and worked exceedingly hard at nothing. After several months, I began to have grotesque nightmare visions of myself being thirty five, uneducated, obese, and living in my parents’ basement, so I decided to attend community college in hopes of transferring. Several semesters later, I am actually close to my goal. Skyline, and by extension the community college system, gave a means to right some of the ignorant educational decisions of my past.

Many people seem to have an inaccurately negative perception of community college because they view it as merely an extension of compulsory education. They act as if they have to be here against their will, and it is often evident in their performance. I could personally attest that if I didn’t think that I had something to gain from being here, I most definitely would not stick around. But, if you use it as the second chance that it is, you can go a lot farther than you would by being a short-term pessimist.