Fast Times at Ridgemont High - A True Story

College Orientation Week

The third week in February was College Orientation Week. For five days, representatives from city, state, and junior colleges came to the Ridgemont campus to speak to the students. Afternoon assemblies were held in the gym, mandatory for seniors and optional for underclassmen.

Brad Hamilton filed into the Thursday assembly entitled “The Advantages of Higher Education,” sponsored by University of Southern California. He took a seat in the bleachers with the rest of his period-four English Composition class, and watched as David Lemon, one of his old Carl’s buddies, tested the podium microphones.

All year long Brad Hamilton had delayed making any decisions about his life beyond senior year, though somehow he knew he would end up in college. To him the thought was like a dentist’s appointment or a visit to a crotchety relative—he could always put it off another month. This, after all, was to be his Cruise Year, and he had intended to consider life beyond high school only after he had a maximum amount of fun. Now everyone was going around talking about college applications and essay questions, and Brad hadn’t even gotten his cruise year into gear. College Orientation Week made him nervous.

The presentation began with Principal Gray. “Now, I realize,” he began, “that it’s getting near prom time and the end of the year . . .” The audience of seniors laughed and cheered, interrupting his prepared speech, and Brad joined in. Somehow Principal Gray had uttered the magic words prom time and end of the year.

Principal Gray smiled and acknowledged the cheers. “High school is about having fun,” he continued, “but it’s also about preparing yourselves for the crossroads of life . . .”

The laughs and cheers died out.

One thing about Principal Gray, Brad thought, he sure knew how to kill a good time. He talked for several minutes about the importance of college, and mentioned that many students, like Cindy Carr and Steve Shasta, had already been accepted by the college of their choice.

Then Coach Ramirez took the podium and, looking like he had been lobotomized for the afternoon, said that “even big-time sports takes a back seat to big-time education.”

Halfway down the bleachers from Brad, a group of guys started laughing and nudging each other. Brad knew them from Mechanical Arts. They were another group from the outskirts of lunch court, the construction workers. They drove Datsun pickups, and their common refrain was, Construction is where the bucks are. You could bet they weren’t headed for “big-time education,” Brad thought.

The main speaker of the afternoon was a red-haired woman, fortyish, wearing a smart, peach-colored suit. She was the head career counselor from University of Southern California, and the first thing she said was, “Don’t believe the jargon about Ph.D.’s driving taxis—a great education will get you a great job.

“It’s easy,” she went on, “to ignore the issue of college while you’re having fun in high school. But going to college, especially a school like USC, is like making a big investment. There’s a lot of work involved, but the dividends you reap are enormous. And who’s to say we can’t make college fun for you, too . . .”

Brad Hamilton sat there, listening, and in the back of his mind he realized what was bothering him about College Orientation Week. It was one long parade of adults, and the thrust of all their presentations was, Yeah, we know high school’s one big party, but now it’s time to get serious. Didn’t they understand how tough it was to work, to go to school, deal with teachers, and then with assistant managers, with parents, and with customers, and then with the lunch-court crowd, too? Hey, he felt like saying, who’s having fun? Life isn’t like “Happy Days.”

“The important thing,” the woman from USC concluded, “is to fall in love with your work. There’s always room at the top for the best. You’ll suffer for your vocation, but you’ll be happy.”

Now that made Brad feel better. He was already several weeks into a new job, and even though it wasn’t the best location in Ridgemont, it was at least a job that gave him fryer duty. That was his specialty. That was what he did. He was a fryer, and he was the best!

Still, after College Orientation Week, Brad Hamilton began to get a nagging image in his mind. In it he was forty years old, wearing an apron and working in a burger stand. He was surrounded by junior high school kids, telling him his fries were still the best.