The title of this page is a quote from this email that I sent to the Dean of Students at Bunker Hill Community College on June 24, 2017, after I had emailed the voice recordings to her:
_________________________________________________________________________________________
I don't deserve to be thrown out of school.
To:
Saturday, June 24, 2017 4:39 PM
I have just sent you several voice recordings of pages from the French textbook. I did all of them this morning. None of them were assigned to the class by the teacher; I did them to try to save my academic career, which seems yet again to be in jeopardy for no reason.
I'm sorry that I didn't have time to try to download them to a computer and send them all in one email as attachments, although I don't know if they all would have transmitted as attachments anyway.
Also today, I sent you certified mail with all of the work that I have done for that class this semester. It includes the written assignments, which are typed and graded, the tests that we have taken so far, which are written on notebook paper because they were translations that we did in class, and all of the workbook pages for Chapters 1-4, which are also all of the chapters that are covered by the class during the duration of the course. I finished the workbook pages for Chapter 3 and I also did all of Chapter 4 last night and today. I have done almost all of the workbook pages for each chapter, including 1 and 2, although most of them were also not assigned by the teacher. Usually, we are assigned 2 or 3 exercises per class.
I don't have enough time to send you an email describing all of my thoughts about the class. I'll have to try to write it tomorrow.
Essentially, you first tried to call me when it was almost time for the bed lottery at the Pine Street Inn; I wasn't sure who was calling me, so I let it go to voicemail, but I could not have had a conversation with you at that time anyway. Contrary to what most people probably think homelessness is like, it is highly regimented; everyone gets up at 6:00 a.m. every day, including the weekends, and the bed lottery is at 3:45 p.m. every day and can last until 5:00 p.m. Curfew is at 7:00 p.m. every day, including the weekends. It requires a lot of organization to be homeless; I feel like I should make that point now.
When you called the second time, I thought it might be you, and I didn't pick up the phone because I COULD NOT face another conversation like the one that I had when I was first in your office last year, in which I was accused of not knowing how to behave appropriately in a classroom setting or not being able to behave appropriately in a classroom setting due to age, mental illness, or homelessness. I couldn't even face the possibility of having another conversation like that, because that's not what happened then, and it's not what's happening now.
I also had not expected you to call me personally; I thought Sartreina might call me again. I don't tend to tell people that calling me is the best way to contact me and then not pick up the phone.
July 12, 2017
When I recorded the pages and sent them and that email, the school had not yet charged me with anything, but I knew that's what the school was going to do, and I was right.
Copyright L. Kochman, July 12, 2017 @ 5:05 a.m.
