I got through Evergreen from the fall of '72 to the spring of '76 acquiring the credits for a BA I felt thoroughly useless, long before finally allowing one to officially be rewarded me. I’d been the least talented of a couple thousand music majors the academic year of '70-'71 at the University of North Texas; and entering Evergreen I’d planned to work towards a law degree, though several factors mitigated against me heavily.
I think a school which offers opportunity to those without a high GPA entering the place; becomes facetious without significant counseling and/or other considerations, for those without significant personal guidelines to their own advancement. If you get outside of Olympia and Washington state, Evergreen’s supposedly “radical” reputation wanes and instead people talk about the underlying conservatism of the place. I found as I imagine typical of colleges, professors getting financially set up and dug into the local society; ready to welcome those like themselves, assured to advance within the confines of academia or any other empowered liberal interest.
Good to remember, is during the Somoza regime in Nicaragua; they were the liberal faction. Only the reality of the United States being the richest most powerful country in the world makes liberalism here somehow identified with leftism; where battles in the trenches can remain forever someone else’s realms. There is enough hierarchy and structure in the United States people can crawl that for lifetimes and even generations; without touching bottom or seeing sufficiently beyond that, to realize most of the world exists far differently. I think Evergreen isn’t anything extraordinary, other than as a fat prize for those able to be advantaged by the place; including beautiful waterfront homes on south Puget sound if a person is loaded enough to afford them as some faculty are, with quaint local businesses grown up to service the college and those drawn by the opportunities the school represents.
Within a year of my last student days, by the spring of '77 I’d been sucked into the “voluntary simplicity/back to the land” movement in another part of the state, a society then and now increasingly dominated by the reactionary right-wing New Age phenomena; where I was hopelessly trying to support myself as an indigent transient agricultural worker in the orchard economy of apple country, as someone with significant physical disabilities due to spinal diseases early in life and as a juvenile. Since early in '85 I’ve been supported by SSDI/SSI assistance, and for the past ten years also by a HUD section 8 rent subsidy; after trying for fifteen years to get into what is considered the most corrupt program of the federal government-I’ve found well qualifies for the distinction.
A person finds that life as I’ve found that, is largely dominated by conservatism increasingly vulnerable to right-wing reactionary manipulation; and that the comfortable illusions of Evergreen style liberalism haven’t much value. I was able to join the Communist Party USA while a homeless “vehicular resident” in the east bay during '94 after frostbite sleeping in my car in Spokane forced me south January of '93. I’ve been active with the CPUSA as I’d aspired to since the age of fifteen in 1967; and with Voice of Roma: [http://www.voiceofroma.com] Largely thanks to an oral history done with my mother spring quarter of '73 in a student designed term of the year long first year academic program I was part of my first year at Evergreen; by chancing to read 19th century composer Franz Liszt’s The Gipsies in Music in '98 I’d noticed in the Berkeley public library in '95 when homeless there, which finally alerted me to my Romani/Gypsy ancestry upon which I’ve been able to also build a Rom identity of sorts.
I think finding oneself part of societies where even those most prominent and accomplished still live marginal lives; is in keeping with being part of the solution rather than part of the problem: I think Evergreen is obviously part of the latter.
My experience included getting high with half a dozen Evergreen faculty members, as one of their students; Charles Nesbit, Tom Rainey, Dave Hitchens, Don Chan, Cruz Esquivel & Will Humphries.
Often people brought their dogs to classes, who seemed to get along better than the canines’ supposed masters. This was the era when people in the state legislature just across town, spoke of turning the school into a prison; without doubt feeling the best place for most of the students and faculty to be doing what they did.
What got lost in the shuffle for me; was the reality I was paying to be there while the faculty, staff & administrators were being paid for their time.
Hardly at the minimum wage either; which is all I’ve ever earned before or after my Evergreen BA, other than for nineteen long months as a public elementary school custodian in Ojai, CA in '81 & '82 when I had a decent salary and benefits. Also the only time my Evergreen degree was a factor in my getting work for myself.
After over forty employers the seventeen years I worked until the fall of '84 grossing $45,000 in earnings; I’ve been supported by SSDI/SSI since early in '85 and the past ten years also by a HUD section 8 rent subsidy. Finally around '03 I got a medical discharge of my unpaid federally insured student loans.
I think college education is largely a racket in this country; providing for most only what a person should get for free and long before the age of twenty-one or even sixteen. Evergreen manages to sheer some of the worst of the baloney from the process, I guess?
Early 90’s grad here. I pretty much second what Left Hand of Dorkness said. I like your bus-bicycle analogy. My comments below are in the present tense, with the caveat that that is what it was like when I was there. Don’t know what it might be like now.
What I liked about TESC:
Coordinated studies. Rather than take individual classes you enroll in academic programs that are organized around a general theme and examined from the perspectives of different but related fields. This is probably the aspect of Evergreen that had the greatest impact on me. I started out more or less an arts and humanities person. Then one of my programs, a sort of philosophy theme, incorporated some neuroscience. Found out I really liked it, and, what really surprised me, is that I could actually learn that kind of thing. From there I went in a more science direction and ended up going to medical school - something that I never ever ever ever would have imagined when I started out. Now I work as a physician in the public sector doing work I believe in and find fulfilling. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I do feel like I owe that process of self discovery to Evergreen, both the academic environment and the encouragement I got from various professors and other students.
Cooperative learning. A big emphasis is put on doing cooperative group work and learning in a discussion type setting. Sure, there are the attendant frustrations of any group activity, but the real treat was having my mind blown, in a good way, on a regular basis by hearing someone else’s take on something in a way that never occurred to me, sometimes coming from someone like a wanna be skate punk kid or a 70 year old grandma - people who I probably would not have had occasion to engage in much of a deep discussion outside the Evergreen experience. It is also a great benefit to your own understanding when you have to actually explain it to someone else.
Emphasis on developing ideas. The main way you demonstrate your learning at Evergreen is by writing papers. You’re given some topic or broad question related the theme of your program, and your task is to compose a response by pulling in some of what you’ve learned. It challenges you to think, analyze and synthesize in a way that an MCQ or short answer exam doesn’t. As I got more into the sciences this changed a bit, but even there a big emphasis was put on problem solving and understanding/applying concepts and less on rote memorizing information.
Small class size. When I was there, each program was pretty much limited to a max ratio of about 25 students to one professor. Most were smaller than that. That allowed you interact with the other students, as above, but also let you get to know your professors, if you wanted to. It’s true that TESC is not (was not?) a high powered research institution. But, what I’ve heard about those kind of places is that too often the professors tend to see themselves, either by choice or necessity, as primarily researchers who have teaching duties. The kind of academic types who eschew that environment for a place like TESC, I think, are more likely to be people who place a high personal priority on being educators. (Of course, the flip side is that maybe they just couldn’t land a job at the big University, but I suppose you have to have some faith in the college’s hiring process).
Flexibility of path. At Evergreen you do not declare a major. Your undergrad degree is a generic BA or BS. Your major is “implied” by your areas of focus. I suppose this could cut both ways. Some people may benefit by being channeled in a particular direction. For me, this aspect of the college reminded me of what I’ve heard was Thomas Jefferson’s notion of the university as a place where people could just come when they want, study what interests them, and leave when they considered themselves educated. Inasmuch a college in this day and age can approximate that notion, I think Evergreen does. For that reason, it is an absolutely perfect school for people of one of two ilks: (a) Someone who has interests but no clear path and does not care to be channeled one way or another; maybe wants to work hard or maybe wants to just coast through and get a piece of paper for the wall; or (b) someone who knows exactly what they want to do, what they want to learn, and wants to get some formal recognition for it, i.e. degree; within a few limits, you can pretty much design your own higher education at TESC if you want to. Then again, I wasn’t really in either of these camps and it worked for me.
What I didn’t like about Evergreen
Some programs were failures. Just like the students are given flexibility in what they learn, the faculty are given flexibility in what they put together program-wise. This could go either way: Someone could get inspired and put together a fantastic program, or not so much. Most of the ones I took (over 6 years; I’m a late bloomer) I’d say were good to great, some were just tolerable, and a very few were disasters. There were a couple I bailed on after a week or so, transferring out. Not a big problem, but a possibility.
Narrative evaluations. Unlike most people who really like Evergreen (and I really like it, in case that’s not apparent), I have mixed feelings about these. In one sense, it’s great to get specific feedback on what you actually did, and there is something very philosophically appealing about not condensing down a complex and individualized learning process into a bland single digit. But then again, in a way each one of these evals could potentially serve as a letter of recommendation in the future for who knows what position you might be applying. Specific things written about you - or that you wrote about yourself - when you are just starting college, maybe as, say, an immature twit with delusions of great personal grandeur and/or an FU attitude towards the “Man”, may not be applicable years later. But there it is, in black and white. It behooves one to take a long view on these. They can also can get very tedious.
As far as the hippy, pot smoking, hyperpolitical, extreme leftist milieu you hear so much about, it’s like all such stereotypes: True enough to stick, but too unidimentional to be accurate. Yeah, all that’s there if you want it. Sometimes it’s there when you don’t want it. But you can ignore it. Or pay attention only when you please. To put it another way, if you are seeking out that kind of ambience, Evergreen is definitely your place; but if you are not seeking it out, I would absolutely NOT be deterred by it. What always seemed strange to me is that everywhere but TESC, I’m usually considered the resident commie-pinko-liberal, but at Evergreen, I would occasionally find myself cast in a role more akin to William F Buckley-ite standard barer for “conservatism”. Not that I was being deliberately provocative, but just asking people to explain, provided evidence for, substantiate, etc, their “certainties.” (e.g. window calking contains “toxins” that volatilize and cause…bad things, therefore we need to picket the board of trustees, who have big investments in the calking industry, to replace it with a biodegradable polymer made from hemp fibers and goat phelgm.) That doesn’t always please people, regardless of their political persuasions. To be honest, I kind of enjoyed the turn about. If nothing else, it served as an indicator that I was not being sucked in.
Just so everybody knows, this is a five year old zombie thread and the OP has not been active since a couple of weeks after he originally created this thread.