back to school.

My paying work had evaporated. I had a bank account. I had COBRA. I had an equities account. I had skills. The grant at Fosdic was going to pay an aerodynamicist. I had no dependents. I job hunted hard for about ten months. Not even a nibble. Marla and I looked at my resume. On paper I looked very light. The only thing that even approximated a degree to an H.R. type was an Old Parsons certificate. Know that any school that bears "institute of technology" in its' name graduated students with three year certificates until ~ 1900(?). Qualification creep begins about then. I was still not writing more than absolutely required. My computation skills had not advanced. The original arguments applied. Art School. Where? Parsons was still extant. They did not offer industrial design but did offer product design. I just wanted a degree to show. Close enough. The ten k per semester was a stretch but reachable. Loved it. Aced most of it.

continued. time to go to work.

Parsons under The New School was very different from the organization I had known twenty five years earlier. Design was a poetic practice. There was no attempt to consider whole systems. Logic was ignored. Inductive logic was unheard of. The workload was heavy but the serial all nighters had disappeared. None of the old staff were there. When I signed in with the registrar, her comment was "You're Old Parsons. We don't see you people." I learned that rusty as I was, I could design faster and better than any one there. What they were offering was design flavored liberal education. I quickly shut up and concentrated on passing the courses. This was a joy but relearning the writing of the English language added plenty of sweat.