The Dark Side Of Oz

I enrolled back in school maybe a year and a half ago for a culinary degree. I ended up taking all of the degree requirements except for any actual cooking class because I could not find the time for them. They are 8 hour long classes and mostly offered only during the week. I couldn't exactly afford to quit my job to get a bakery/pastry degree. And what exactly was I thinking I was going to do once I graduated? Make donuts at Baker's for $6 an hour? Make croissants for the Holiday Inn continental breakfast? Do you know that bakers have to wake up at ungodly hours and go to work? These are not things that I considered when starting school... All I knew is that I wanted to be a baker for a living and that I was going to open a pastry/coffee shop and it was as simple as that. Oh, what's that? A recession? And I'm essentially broke and 25 so who would give me a business loan? Details, details...

One good thing that did come out of taking classes was that I got graded by teachers. I am a sicko about getting graded and scored. I love it. Especially when it comes to writing papers. I. Love. To. Write. You may have noticed that. I got a really good score on the reading section of my ACTs and I love to work it into conversation. You would be surprised at how little opportunity there is to brag about your ACT score after the age of 18. Really, it's like no one cares about it. Even more surprisingly is that no one outside of the Great Plains states even knows what the ACTs are. You coastal snobs and your SATs...

I ended up testing out of English Comp I when I went to college the first time around, but when I went back for round two at Metro they made me take it. I thought that was completely ridiculous. I took Comp II when I was 18, and now six years later I'm being forced to go back and take Comp I? Surely I've gotten smarter in those six years and I don't need to take it, right? Wrong. Turns out you forget a lot of the things you learned in high school by the time you're in your mid-twenties. It was a major reality check that I'm getting dumber as I age.

But I digress...

One of the papers I wrote for culinary school (humph) was about " The Dark Side of Oz." I find the whole thing pretty amusing. Whether or not it's real, it's still a pretty cool legend. I'm posting the paper here so it's out there as a resource for other people interested in it. Which is probably very few. But also to show off my college-level writing skills.

(I couldn't figure out how to add a "read more" link without adding one to every single post. So I just added the paper to a new post.)