Today I had to go down to Pepperdine to get an added authorization on the credential. Technically I was supposed to mail my test results down to them and then they would return my originals after making a copy. Many of my classmates had horror stories of dealing with this office and papers getting lost so I decided to go down there and take care of things myself.
The drive down was pretty uneventful, I was able to miss most of the morning commute. Because Pepperdine is in West LA, parking is at quite a premium so you have to park in their structure next door. Half the spaces in the structure have signs announcing that they are reserved for 24 hours, so I ended up going all the way up to the top floor. Also, this structure has different addresses depending upon where you enter it, so you actually have to be careful to go out the same entrance you came in or else you'll have to pay a different rate. Anyway, I got to the top and got out of the car and could hear wonderful cheezy jazz music wafting across the quad area. I was contemplating this idea when I noticed that the music was actually coming from a man playing the trumpet on the top of the structure. He seemed to be a professional player who was employed to serenade the area. Yes....
So I enter the Pepperdine building and have to stare at the signboard for a while to figure out which floor the education school is on. Despite the fact that that school is headquartered there, they managed to make it difficult to figure out where they are. I went up to the fifth floor and approached the front desk. I asked the girl where the credential office was and she looked at me with a totally blank face and started shuffling papers around. I guess I was the first person to ever ask her that question because she was totally flustered. Right then some other woman walked by and the receptionist asked her where the office was. She realized that I was looking for Vicki and pointed me to the right. The receptionist apologized and once again vaguely pointed to the right.
I walked down a hallway with large glass doors, each office marked with a business card of the person inside. Not a very easy way to find someone. There were no markings whatsoever as to where I was supposed to go so I wandered down until I reached a small open area with two cubicles. One said "Credentials" but was totally empty and abandoned. There was a woman who sat at another desk there and she said that that was just where the assistants sat. She very kindly directed me even further down the hall to an office labeled "VICKI" which was indeed where I found the person I was looking for.
Vicki knew who I was and started explaining the procedure and somewhat started making a goodbye when I asked her if she could go and copy my original now while I was there. This sounded like a very good idea to her so she went off to copy my test scores. I waited for a little bit and then she came back with my test scores. She had to apologize because the copier had eaten my scores and they were all crumpled up now. She said the machine usually takes a bite out of them so I was lucky. Yeah...........
I think because she realized that I was going to continue to pester her if nothing got done, she decided it would be best to actually submit the recommendation while I was there so that I could be sure everything was done. She entered in all the information and sent in the recommendations to the state while I got to be her gofer and had to fetch the papers she printed from the group printer in the hallway. Anything to make sure the process got done correctly. Finally, everything was all set and she wished me luck in getting a job so that I could have one of their student teachers soon.
As I was leaving I asked her about parking validations. She said they don't validate them any more but if I went down to the second floor then there was a machine that would give me a discount. I thanked her and took the elevator down to the second floor. This was the party floor where they hold gala Pepperdine lunches and there was certainly some event going on. I walked away from the elevator bay in search of the validation machine and I ran into Jay Guidetti. We said hello and he definitely recognized me but we didn't have a full conversation. I wandered around more bizarre hallways with business card labels, found only a hand sanitizer dispenser that looked like it might have been a parking validator, and headed back down.
As I was taking the elevator down from the 2nd floor, there was already a group of people in the elevator so I rode down with them. As we got out into the lobby some woman at the end of the elevator bay was shouting "ID CARDS!" and I think she whistled to get my attention, thinking I was lost and was supposed to be getting an ID card. The rest of the people who were in the elevator all looked like they were in the business school, so I looked like the lost outcast with them. Anyway, at this point I went back outside and up to my car. The trumpeting had stopped because the man who was playing the trumpet had received a call. As I walked by he was having a serious discussion on his phone about "we're taking it to the Supreme Court" which only added to my already strange perception of his presence up there.
Out of all this, I should now have three credentials in the next few days. Let's hope that at least one of them will come in handy in the near future.
No comments:
Post a Comment