College: Part I, Suffolk Community College

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• January 4, 2015

In high school, I was a slightly above average student.  I had mostly A’s, except in Math where I struggled to a get a B.  I grew up in West Islip, a middle class to upper middle class town on the south shore of Long Island.  When senior finally came, the buzz was all about who was attending what school.

I would be attending Suffolk County Community College.  My parents firmly believed that kids should put themselves through college, and buy their own cars, and get jobs by the age of fourteen.  I had good grades.  I could have gotten into a lot schools, but my grades weren’t good enough to merit a scholarship, and my parents would only co-sign enough money that was needed to go to Suffolk.  Suffolk was my fate.

My generation is full of entitled little pieces of shit.  This is why a lot of my best friends are a lot older than me.  I generally cannot stand people my age.  But I too was a bit of an entitled piece of shit back then.  I did not want to go to Suffolk County Community College.  I thought my parents reasoning was unfair.  Out of their three kids, I had the best grades.  I was the smartest.  I deserved to go where I wanted, where I would thrive on campus.  I had visions of myself studying in the quad, wearing a quirky outfit, that people would think was cool instead of weird like they did in high school.  Every time I told someone I was going to Suffolk, it was followed by a “wait… aren’t you smart?”

It wouldn’t be too bad, since some of my best friends were also staying local.  I set a goal for myself.  I did well in high school, but I never pushed myself to my potential.  I knew that.  I didn’t have great confidence back then.  The main thing that made me realize my intelligence was that I was a lot smarter than some of my teachers.  This, though, didn’t make me feel intelligent, it just made me lose all my faith in the American educational system.  Before I even set foot on Suffolk’s campus, I said from the start that I would obtain a 4.0 GPA, and I would get a scholarship to the school of my choice, and my number one pick was NYU.  But I had to make one major adjustment.  I had to stop falling asleep in class.  In high school, I was a notorious napper.  During my junior and senior year, I spent an equal amount of time sleeping in class as I did awake.  It’s amazing I passed, let alone got A’s.  For the most part, I was so quiet, I don’t think my teachers noticed I was sleeping.

Writing was my first love.  I enjoyed doing it, and I was always told I was good at it.  Er go, I decided to pursue journalism because I thought it was a practical job to get when one likes to write.  It was my dream back then to write sitcoms, but it seemed more likely I would meet a genetically engineered dinosaur in my life time than write for a sitcom.

My first semester, I dragged my feet to classes, still being an entitled piece of shit thinking I was too good for SCCC.  Unlike high school, I sat in the front in every class, and I developed a dum-dum’s lollipop addiction, as that’s what kept me from falling asleep.  I joined the school paper as soon as I could, and Suffolk’s honors program.

The thing about SCCC, is most of the student’s don’t care at all.  So, the ambitious student’s stood out.  And the professors and staff quickly took notice, and they were always willing to go out of their way for the student’s who cared.

Thomas Tartaglia was a psychology teacher and a guidance counselor at SCCC.  In one of my freshman courses, he came to speak to the class about the college and our potential futures.  He had such a positive energy to him, that he became my go-to guidance counselor for my college needs.  Tartaglia gave me the best advice when I was there.  He said, that if you were going to go on to a four year college, don’t bother getting the associates degree.  Figure out where you want to go, and take credits that will transfer.

I took a statistics class because a lot schools required that you take statistics if you were going to major in journalism.  I suck at math.  Statistics was no exception.  I had no idea what was going on in that class.  Math tutors are expensive as hell.  I started to panic.  I reached out to a high school teacher of mine, Kristin Doerr.  She was one of the few math teachers actually succeeded in teaching me how to do math.  She tutored me for free for the entire semester.  I will never forget her kindness, generosity, and patience.  There were over 30 students in my statistics class.  Eight took the final.  I never got an A in the class, which is why I was surprised to receive an A in that course.  Turns out, I had the highest average, so I set the curve and got an A.

My English professor was great.  But the kids in my class must have hated me.  She often would read my work, and brag about it.  A part of me was embarrassed, but most of all I was proud.  My public speaking teacher was also very supportive.  I was super shy in school, but if I prepared a speech, I nailed it.  I knew all the facts.  I spoke clearly with conviction.  When giving a speech, I was the exact opposite of how I was in life.  In life, I mumbled.  Giving a speech, I was cool and confident.  My public speaking professor begged me on a daily basis to join his debate team.  I never did.  Partly because I was taking 18 credits, working two jobs, and writing for the school paper, but partly because I was afraid to.  It’s too bad, I probably would’ve great at it.

After my first year, I no longer hated Suffolk.  I became editor in chief of the school paper, and I was a 4.0 honors student.  It was like I was a celebrity at Suffolk among the staff.  The Dean, a very charming, very tall black man, would call me his “god daughter.”  Like I said, ambition is lacking on the campuses on SCCC, so when you had a lot of it, people noticed.  And I was gaining a confidence I didn’t have before.

I feel like it’s important to interject here, that despite my success at SCCC, I had become a huge pot head.  I smoked way too much.  See, when you don’t go away and have that “college experience,” our college experience involved a lot of driving around smoking blunts.  While that may seem wasteful, and idiotic, I don’t regret a single moment getting high in cars with my friends.  We just got high and talked.  Sometimes about meaningless crap, sometimes really deep conversations.  I loved those times.  I feel like that time spent with my best friends was equally important as my education.  Because 18 is a weird time when you’re trying figure out who you are, and I didn’t know yet, and that was okay.

Going into my second year at SCCC, I was a pot head, a 4.0 student, editor in chief of the school paper, and I was actually looking forward to going back to Suffolk.  I liked it there.  I wasn’t part of the radio and television program, and if you’re not part of that program, you technically weren’t supposed to take classes within it.  But because of my reputation, they allowed me to take classes in the TV program.

I took an Intro to Screenwriting class.  It was taught by a Vietnam war veteran, who got involved in the film industry after he was recruited to do so when the military funded some Hollywood films to basically create military propoganda.  On one of the first days of class, a student complained that an assignment was hard, and he said, “Hard?  You think this is hard?  Try living in the jungle and not cleaning your asshole for seven days.”  Well, no one complained about anything being hard after that.  He was a strange dude.  He never stood up.  He sat in a chair, and it was impossible not to notice the large bulge in his pants.  Not only was he terrifying, but he was huge.  Towards the end of the semester, he told everyone that being a screen writer was extremely difficult, and everyone should quit now (you’d be surprised at how many teachers gave this same advice).  “Except for her,” he said, pointing at me, “she’s pretty good.”  Like everyone else in the class, he terrified me.  He wasn’t big on compliments.  He was big on telling you how much harder life was in Vietnam.

My creative writing class was one of my favorites.  Adam Penna’s class was like a workshop, and I looked forward to going to that class because I wasn’t the stand out one there.  There were a lot of good writers in that class.  Adam was a great teacher and mentor.  I took another advanced writing class where I wasn’t as fortunate with the professor.  He was such an asshole.  He said he didn’t give A’s because they were seldom deserved.  He would read student’s work and bash them in front of the class.  He made students cry.  He was horrible.  But I always got A’s.  He didn’t like me, but he liked my work.

Depsite my changed attitude towards SCCC, I was becoming really stressed as editor in chief of the school paper.  Not only was it  a lot of work and incredibly stressful, but I started to realize that I hate journalism.  I hate it.

I had haphazardly applied to a bunch of internships, and even though the semester had already started, I got a call from Comedy Central to interview for an internship.  I still remember this as being one of the best days of my life.  I threw up in my mouth a little bit from excitement.  Comedy Central?  I loved Comedy Central.  I watched it all the time!  Have you ever been so happy that you threw up a little bit?  It’s amazing.

I went on the interview and I couldn’t have been more nervous.  I never really interviewed for anything before.  I had jobs, but those jobs didn’t require real interviews.  I was interviewed by a woman and another dude.  They asked the basic interview questions.  I answered them, but I could tell I was leaving no real impression.  You’re blowing it!  Don’t blow it!  Then the woman asked me what made me different than the other candidates that also interviewed for the internship.  I replied, “I don’t know.  I didn’t meet them.”  I wasn’t trying to be smart or funny.  That’s just what I said.  In fact, as soon as those words left my mouth, I wanted to take them back.  There a moment of silence that seemed like forever, then the interviewers started laughing.  They hired me right there.

I skipped out of Comedy Central’s office that day.  But I ran into trouble at SCCC.  We were already three weeks into the semester when I was hired as an intern at Comedy Central.  I needed get into the internship program and I needed to switch classes.  I was told I could not do this.  It was too late.  I went to my trusty guidance counselor.  I was taking a psychology class that semester, but not Tartaglia’s.  He had a night class on a different day that I wanted to switch into.  He said, you couldn’t just switch a class three weeks in.  “Please,” I begged, “this is my dream.  I’ll take an extra test right now.  I’ll get an A.  I promise you.”  He switched my class.  But the administration was still giving me a hard time about joining the internship program late.  The Dean just happened to be in the area.  He asked me how I was doing.  I told him about the internship, about how I got it late and needed to join the internship program.  He put his hand on my shoulder and told the people in the office that I was his God daughter, and to let me in the program.

The Comedy Central internship was amazing.  I did a lot of gofer work, but I got to work on some promotions and meet cool comics and writers including Demetri Martin.  Amongst my time stapling story boards together, and making endless copies of copy, I read everything that came my way.  And I started to think, I can write something like this.  It wasn’t like a “I’m so much better than these guys attitude.”  I always wanted to write scripts and comedy, it just never crossed my mind that maybe I could actually do it.  I hated being editor of the paper.  I would be miserable as a journalist.  Comedy was calling my name.

Before Tartaglia’s psychology class, I thought going to therapy was for the weak.  But psychology quickly fascinated me.  A lot of his teachings were like a therapy session, he taught psychology in a way that you could use to make your life better.  Tartaglia had such a positive energy (admittedly, I had a bit of a school girl crush on him), and he believed that life was about finding true happiness, and we have the ability to achieve this within ourselves (something I wouldn’t really understand until years later).  The combination of English teachers who praised my work, my hatred for the school paper, my Comedy Central internship, and the life lessons of my psychology class, I knew what I had to do.

At this time, I was nominated for all types of awards at Suffolk.  Other schools started seeking me, like Cornell.  I got a phone call from Cornell every week.  An NYU rep came to the honors program to meet with some of the students.  He said he couldn’t officially tell me I was in, but based on my grades, recommendations, and reputation, I would get in.  I quickly asked about scholarships and getting money.  He told me certain scholarships were reserved for transfer students like me, and I’d be a candidate for up to a $10,000 scholarship for the year.  Up to $10,000?  I knew what this meant.

I was a different person than I was when I first went to Suffolk.  I didn’t think my parents owed me a college education or anyone.  Everyone at SCCC was so supportive, I was so greatful for that.  I wanted to be writer.  I wanted to write sitcoms.  I realized this would mean I would be broke for a long time.  I didn’t want to be burdened with debt.  Fuck NYU.  Fuck colleges, in general.  They are big businesses that rape parents of their life savings, and then kids can’t even get jobs.  Colleges in this country are scams.  I decided to go to Hunter College for their Media program to study television writing and production.  I decided to try stand up.