A Haunting Less Scary Than "The Others"

My history has come back to haunt me this week - but in a good and fun way.

Real quick - my educational background is Political Science. Or, as it is often referred to, the Would-You-Like-Fries-With-That-Degree. Anyway, I actually put it to some practical use and worked for a variety of elected officials for several years.

Now that I work at a non-profit where typical client is a homeless minority, I don't flaunt my own politics or the politics of my previous employers. First, it's not relevant. Second, it wouldn't be too popular.

On Wednesday, our agency received a site visit from our largest funding source. It's a well-known establishment, as they fund almost every other non-profit agency you've heard of and most you haven't.

The site visit allows what is called the Allocation Committee (read: $$$) to evaluate our programs; their recommendations determine our level of funding for the upcoming year.

As we have several programs funded through this establishment, we receive several site visits each year.

Well, last month during another site visit, I met a lady who dated my previous employer while they were both law students twenty-something years ago. Then on Wednesday, a girl I worked with on a political campaign four years ago was part of our site visit. It was good to chat with her and catch up on what she's been doing the past couple of years; it was also good to re-hash old stories.

More haunting -

Melissa's cousin is enrolled in a Political Science class in a local college. I think the standards are quite lax - maybe too lax.

The tests are taken over the Internet and can be taken as many times as you want. Apparently, the professor has a pool of over 200 questions. Each time you re-take the test, random questions are extracted from the pool so that most questions are new each time. But, if you take the test several times (as said cousin does), the same questions reappear.

I helped her with the test a couple of weeks ago. Her score went from the mid-50's to a respectable 84. I helped her with another test a couple of nights ago but haven't heard word about how I, I mean she, did.

But I remembered what it was about college I hated so much. I was always the George Bailey type throughout school ("Then, I'm comin' back here to go to college and see what they know").

Her teacher is sometimes careless and vague in the wording of the questions. Let other subjects teach however they want, I'm partial to PoliSci and History. And if political science is supposed to teach about government and law, and that those laws are technical and have specific meaning, then the multiple-choice tests that teach those principles should also be specific and not left to individual interpretation.

Or maybe I just like to argue too much.