Chapter 8

After all the hassles of the day before, it was good for Susan to know that she had her family behind her. It still stank to realize she might not be able to graduate with the classmates she'd been in school with since kindergarten because of that idiot Gingrich, but at least it was good to know that it would be her last year there, graduation or not. And it looked like she not only had a fall-back position for going to college, but a very appealing one at that. On top of that, there were a lot of other options, all of which were preferable to spending an unnecessary extra year at Spearfish Lake High School. Spending one year there was going to be more than enough to hold her.

The first thing the next morning Susan went back over to the high school to talk to Mr. Hekkinan again. She didn't tell him what she had in mind, but took the time to ask him what requirements for graduation she still had to fulfill. It turned out the only real outstanding requirement was that senior English course, which she already knew she could take for high school credit at Riverside. Other than that, it was just simple credit hours of electives, and those could be done on dual enrollment, too. The only problem was to get everything in was going to take more than the six hours that the school system would pay for, but she thought it possible that something could worked out on that issue.

"I can see where you're going with that," Mr. Hekkinan told her. "And it's probably not a bad idea. You don't have to do it today, but you probably ought to be taking a course or two here just to show that you're still a student here. Otherwise the superintendent might get hung up on the same attendance issue that caused this problem in the first place."

Susan agreed that she would think about it, but probably not from the angle that Mr. Hekkinan was figuring, mostly because there weren't any classes at Spearfish Lake High School available to her that she had any real interest in taking. It was a side issue, anyway, and she figured she needed to get the main problems solved first, which was enrolling at Riverside and deciding what courses she would take there.

Mr. Hekkinan supplied her with a copy of her transcript and some other paperwork that would be needed for the dual enrollment, which would have to be completed at the college. It seemed like there wasn't much more that could be done without going down there. So, she went home, called her parents to let them know what she was doing, and changed into a knee-length black pencil skirt and a nice blouse she borrowed from her mother, along with low heels. That should make her appear a little more serious than the typical high school student, she thought. On a whim, she grabbed a copy of her Abitur results and included it in the package of papers she'd gotten from Mr. Hekkinan, then got in the Cavalier and headed for Riverside.

She knew where the community college was – not far off the main road – and although she'd never driven there by herself, she had been there before, so it was easy to find. She took her time driving down the state road, since the sum total of her driving experience in the last year was the running around town she'd done with Megan the previous Sunday.

Riverside Community College was a collection of low masonry buildings, looking modern almost to the point of ugliness, and spread out around a mostly treeless green campus. It was about as far as she could imagine from Universität Albburg in the Buettingenwald of the Schwäbische Alb, which she'd visited with the Hauner family. She had been impressed with the uni, which was located near the historic Albburg Castle, and the view overlooking the plains of the Neckar River and the small but scenic Fischgabelsee. It still seemed a little like a dream that in a year she might be going there herself. It was only a little over four days since she'd been in Germany, and the difference still came close to overwhelming her at times.

The registration process at Riverside was much more complicated than she had imagined. The admissions office was easy. All she had to do was to show them the dual enrollment paperwork from Mr. Hekkinan and fill out some forms – and take some more that her parents would have to sign. From there she was sent to the registrar's office, where she was given more paperwork, and asked what classes she wanted to take. "Other than English 101, I don't know," she told the dour-faced woman behind the desk. "I guess I need to talk to someone about that."

"You haven't been assigned an adviser yet, I take it?" the woman asked.

"No, I had no idea I needed one."

"They should have sent you there first from the admissions office," the woman said. "Maybe you'd better go back there and get them to assign you an advisor."

"Sure, I can do that," Susan smiled, wondering if this kind of confusion was the normal state of affairs around Riverside, or whether she'd just slipped through the cracks. It seemed like an ominous portent of things to come.

After more messing around in the admissions office she was sent to a woman on the next floor of the building; a nameplate on her desk read, "Joyce Thatcher." "And what can I do for you today?" Mrs. Thatcher asked.

Susan explained that she'd come to see about the dual enrollment program, and that she was sure she wanted to take a course that would fill in for her senior English requirement at Spearfish Lake High School and that would most likely be able to be transferred elsewhere.

"I take it you're planning on transferring to college elsewhere once you're out of high school," Mrs. Thatcher said. "Do you have any idea where you're planning on going?"

"It's wide open," Susan told her. "It could be as close by as Weatherford, or as far away as Germany."

"Germany?" Mrs. Thatcher frowned. "That's something I don't hear every day. What made you think of that?"

"I speak German fluently," Susan told her, and went on to explain she'd just returned from an exchange year in Germany without getting into the details.

"Well," Mrs. Thatcher shook her head. "I sure can't guarantee that any of our courses would transfer to a school in Germany, although if you want an off-the-top-of-my-head opinion, I doubt it. But, I just don't know, and am not sure how you could find out other than contacting the school in Germany."

"I guess that doesn't surprise me," Susan told her. "One of the things I've got to do in the next year is work that question out, and there's a chance that I could go to a school here in the States, although I don't know which one, yet."

"I think we'd better work on the assumption that you'll be going to a school in this country," Mrs. Thatcher shook her head. "At least that's the safe way to bet it. In other words, we'd better make sure you're signed up for courses that will transfer to most schools here. Weatherford is pretty good about accepting transfer credit from us, and we have a degree completion program with them here. It's possible to get a degree from here with only having to attend a few classes there, at least in some majors. Do you know what you want to major in?"

"I'm not sure," Susan told her. "I've considered a number of options ranging from video production through journalism and on to international business. You see, I have a skill at picking up languages easily and a taste for travel, and I want to find some kind of a job where I can do a lot of international travel."

"That's an interesting goal," Mrs. Thatcher smiled in such a way that Susan could tell that she thought that Susan's idea was just a big teenage dream and that she'd have to face reality sooner or later. "It's going to take some work to accomplish it. I'll tell you what. Let's operate on the assumption that you're going to continue at Weatherford, or possibly some state school and concentrate on getting you into classes that will transfer to one of them."

"That sounds like a reasonable way to do it," Susan agreed.

"Now, here's the deal," Mrs. Thatcher said. "We have several levels of the English 101 course. They range from what is basically remedial English for high school students who come in with a history of difficulties, on up through a level that is designed to give you the skills you need to research and write papers, prepare citations, and that kind of thing. It's known as English 101e, and sometimes is called 'Research and Composition.' That's certainly what I would recommend for you in your situation. In any college in this country, you will need to take a course something like it, and the sooner you take it, the better."

"All right, let's do it then. Beyond that, I really don't much care what I take, so long as the course will count for dual credit in my high school, and I can transfer the credit elsewhere. In fact, I'd like to take as many courses that meet those requirements as I can."

"Well, since you're coming here on a high school dual enrollment program, you're limited to six hours," Mrs. Thatcher replied. "That's all the high schools will pay for in the agreement we have with them."

"If I have to pay more to be able to take more classes, I'd be willing to," Susan told her. "In fact, I'd hoped to be able to take a full load of courses."

Mrs. Thatcher let out a sigh. "I'm afraid that's not going to be possible," she said. "We occasionally matriculate students who don't have a high school diploma, but they require high school completion courses taken here before we can let them into the regular courses."

This was really disappointing news to Susan – it pretty well meant that she was only going to be able to take a couple courses at Riverside, and was going to have to take useless courses like Spanish I and art appreciation at Spearfish Lake. Six hours was hardly going to be worth the trouble of driving down to Riverside from Spearfish Lake several days a week!

But it was only a disappointment for a moment, just long enough to remember Oma Birgit's words the night before. "But I am a high school graduate," she protested. "Not only did I complete the Oberprimaterm, which is much the same as being a senior, at Johannes-Staudinger Gymnasium in Regensburg, Germany while I was an exchange student, I did it with a high score on the Abitur, which is like a combination diploma and college entrance exam."

"That's ... really different," Mrs. Thatcher frowned. "Do you have some documentation?"

"Sure, I brought a copy of the Abitur certificate with me," Susan said, digging into the folder of papers she was carrying, found the paper, and slid it across the desk to Mrs. Thatcher.

The advisor took one look at it and said, "It's in German, and it might as well be Greek to me."

"I can translate it for you," Susan said. "The important part is that you see here that I passed the tests with a combined score of 658. The passing range is 280 to 840, so you can see I did pretty well on it."