Achieving the Dream

For Tashon
~Julie Malsbury
Its not Delaware County Community College,
also known as 13th grade,
formerly known as high school with an ashtray,
sometimes known as Route 252 U.
Its D-C-cubed,
grammatically and mathematically correct
Saying it all is waste of your time,
pulling each sound from your mouth.
You might accidentally insinuate
that this is real school.
Delaware County Community College isnt real.
DC3 has no real accreditation
least of all for the past 351 years.
It doesnt get reviewed every decade.
There are definitely no follow ups.
Accreditation isnt real.
DC3 has no offer real classes with credits,
real credits, that transfer to a four year university.
Credits arent real.
DC3 doesnt hire real teachers, just adjuncts
They definitely dont have a real masters degree or often a doctorate.
Professors arent real.

1 Institution directory: Delaware County Community College. (2015). In Middle States

Commission on Higher Education. Retrieved from http://www.msche.org/institutions_view.asp?
idinstitution=114

We never prepare syllabi for classes snatched

back when a professor needs to fulfill a contract
Syllabi arent real, and our contracts arent real.
We dont prepare, teach, and then revise lesson plans
for students to email us on days they are absent,
I wasnt in class did I miss anything?
Of course not, my little run-on sentence writer.
Class does not exist if you are not there.
Class is not real.
Have I not entertained you all semester.
Did I not teach you
the joy, the hilarity, the pervertedness,
the evil in poetry?
Did we not learn that poetry come from poisesto create
Creation is not real.
No, Poetry is not real.
Did I not teach you the humor,
the irony, the sadness,
the satire in stories.
No, Fiction is not real.
Did I not show you the humor,
the double entendre, the brilliance of Shakespeare?
No, Shakespeare is not real.
But Professors make a lot of money, right?
Not at a community college, paid for by taxes.
Taxes I pay. I pay myself.
And the vicious cycle makes me pay
professors much less than their worth.
Then there are the adjuncts,
hired part time at various schools,

attempting to carve out a career

teaching freshmen composition
because they want to teach freshmen composition,
not because they have to,
at least not always.
Adjuncts
hired and fired according to enrollment
and sometimes just because.
But its ok. Adjuncts arent real.
I couldnt pay for health insurance, universal or not.
I literally cannot afford to get sick.
I havent been to the dentist since graduate school.
I cant afford new car payments.
I cant pay for my wedding without putting it on a credit card
and transferring the balance to a new one with 0% financing for 18 months,
just like I used to pay my credit card in college.
But its ok. Im not real.
I cant afford a family, and raise my children in the tradition
of all things unholy, but hilarious.
I cant watch them dream, grow up, and start their own family
But its ok.
Dreams arent real.