College Prep

“Hey! Logan right? Have a seat.” The lady motioned to a chair next to her desk.

“You probably know why I called you down. I just wanted to take some time today, talk about future plans and colleges you might be interested in. It shouldn’t take that long. Let me just find a copy of your transcript.” She shuffled through some files in a drawer by the desk.

“Here it is.” She said, handing it to me.

I focused my eyes in and out of the paper. I didn’t know what a transcript meant. Then I realized I was holding a copy of my grades in each class for every year I’ve been in high school. At the end of each year’s grade was my GPA. At the very end of the paper was my total GPA for my 9^th, 10^th, and 11^th grade years. It said I made an eighty three point five GPA. Not terrible.

“What do you want to major in?”

“Well…I want to be a writer,” I mumbled.

“What?”

“I want to be a writer.”

She seemed to mull that statement over in her mind for a bit. “Well I’m sure we can find something for you.”

She reached under her desk and grabbed a huge volume with both her hands, picked it up, and slammed it down on the desk.

“If you like to write, you will probably want to major in something like journalism or communications, and minor in writing. That will broaden your scope with potential jobs coming out of college and into the job field. Also, not many colleges around here offer writing as a major. Do you have any specific area you want to go to college?”

“Ummm, Oregon? Or maybe I’ll stay around here. I don’t know if I could pay for the tuition if I go out of the state.”

“Ok. Let me see here.”

She opened the volume, and ran her finger down a page with a large list of majors on it. She got to Journalism/ Communications, and flipped the volume to the page number it said. I saw her pass the “Writing” section of the volume while getting to Journalism/ Communications. She started writing on a slip of paper, with her finger still running up and down the page.

“With that GPA, here are some potential colleges you can get in to that offer the major you want. Oh, and the one there on the bottom is in Oregon, if you want to look in to it.”

I looked at the slip. They were average colleges. For my average grades. My sister actually went to one of them.

I walked out of the office, saying thank you with patronizing smiles she wasn’t aware of. She shut her office door, and all the papers she gave me found their way into the nearest waste basket.