Head Case by Cole Cohen Read Free Book Online

the Davis school district, since our house is there.
    *   *   *
    Psycho-Educational Report performed by the Davis Joint Unified School District of Davis, California (1998):
    Nicole is a mature, articulate young lady who is functioning in the superior to very superior range on tasks that involve overall oral language development, such as vocabulary, knowledge, and comprehension. In contrast, she scores below average on spatial organization tasks and in the borderline range on tasks of visual-motor integration. These disabilities have impacted her life dramatically as she has progressed through the educational system. It would be logical to assume that such a verbally articulate young lady would be able to make normal progress in all subjects; however, math and science are subjects that are typically adversely affected by motor-visual-spatial concepts.

 
    June 1999
    Sacramento, California
    In order to graduate from high school at Sacramento Country Day, I need a passing grade in chemistry. Despite my backlog of tests and phone calls from both my dad and the Davis School for Independent Study, I cannot circumvent this requirement. I meet with the chemistry teacher after school once a week, a sort of farce that we are both bound not to acknowledge. Mercifully, she grants me a D + , allowing me to graduate. Denis gives me a silver pen in a long box.
    After being rejected by thirteen colleges, I’m sent back to the school’s college counselor, who slides a pamphlet across the desk toward me. With its picture of a pair of feet standing in a river, it looks like an ad for some sort of “back to nature” hippie retreat. This is the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies, housed within the University of Redlands.
    The Johnston Center is a self-designed degree program with a “learning and living community” component. Most important, no grades are assigned.
    My dad drives down to Redlands with me to visit the campus and interview with the director. In keeping with the “living and learning” component of the program, the building where we’re meeting has professors’ offices on the bottom floor and dorm rooms on the second floor. It’s almost the end of the school year, and it’s deathly hot. The building is mostly deserted when we walk up except for a couple of students sitting on the front steps. We pass a large guy wearing a ratty Pixies shirt, his long purple hair up in two buns. Internally, I’m bargaining with any higher power that could prevent my dad from opening his mouth, but I know it’s a lost cause. I’m already preparing to take the hit of embarrassment when he says “Nice hair” to the guy as we pass.
    â€œThanks, man.”
    I leave the campus with my acceptance letter in hand. I can’t believe that someone’s actually going to let me go to college.

 
    2000
    Redlands, California
    The Johnston Center for Integrative Studies was founded in 1969 by a group of young college professors who went into the woods to be greeted by a vision: an intentional academic living and learning community where each participant would be responsible for his or her own education. At the beginning of each semester, all of the students would write contracts between themselves and their professors for the semester, stating their individualized goals and intentions for the class, as well as any part of the professor’s previously established syllabus they wished to substitute or tweak. Students and professors would also have the opportunity to propose classes to be taught. Grades would be banished in favor of written evaluations. In turn, at the end of the semester each student would write a written evaluation for the professor. Students would come together once a week to discuss any living conflicts in the two adjacent dorms that would come to house them. These conflicts would be hashed out and resolved via consensus. No one would leave