I came to PCC by my own choice, and my parents were willing to support me financially, so I never felt pushed into going — and staying —there.  There were times when I really

was very happy there.  Going to PCC certainly been an experience in my life like no other, one that, while it had some wonderful memories, also contained experiences that I would not wish to repeat.

First, I'll list some of the good things.  I made some very good friends — godly friends who encouraged and supported me throughout my college life.  Since I went to a public school for most of my school life, where I felt lonely and friendless much of the time, having a large group of caring friends was a welcome change.  I also had instructors who were kind and fair to me, and sensitive to my needs.  I loved the Campus church and Pastor Schettler's preaching, and some of the music and drama productions.  And the “no-touch” rule between the sexes made me feel safe, since in junior and high school I had been constantly harrassed by guys.  Since I had never been boy-crazy, or even had any guy friends, this rule never bothered me.  However, there are some things that I should warn prospective students about:

1.  PCC is obsessed with rules!!!  I realize that every institution must have a reasonable amount of rules to ensure a safe, balanced environemt, but many of PCC's rules seem to be in place only to maintain control over the student body, enforce a legalistic lifestyle, or simply to keep the school in business.  There are also a lot of unwritten ones as well, like the one that doesn't allow denim dresses for women students except on very casual occasions. 

I surivived nearly six years of PCC because of God's grace and a high tolerance level, but the school's highly structured environment might drive other people berserk.  This is a school that tells you what you can and can't wear, where you can and can't go, what you can and can't do, and incredibly, even what you should and shouldn't belive.  You're not allowed to have private TVs, internet access, e-mail or cell phones.  There are no locks on your doors, so the administration can come into your room at any time, looking through drawers and closets for anything they deem “illegal” by PCC standards.  People have said that it's like living in a police state, and in that sense, it is.  There are TVs in the dorms, but what you can watch is strictly controlled by the administration.  If you happen to be there during an Olympic year, you won't get to watch the women's ice skating or women's gymnastics.

PCC is not a school that will allow you to develop your own convictions — they are literally imposed on you.  At PCC, conformity is expected, individuality is scorned.  Lest anyone get the idea that I'm unwilling to submit to authority,I'll emphasize that PCC had the kind of environment that can tempt even the most submissive indivuals to break a rule from time to time.  In my public schools, I was never tempted to break any rules, and never got a single detention.  At PCC, I was tempted to break lots of rules.  Thankfully, I never did get socialed or campused, or come close to expulsion, though I did rack up my share of demerits nonetheless.  Getting demerits, even unintentionally, is easier to do than you might think, especially if you have power-hungry floorleaders.  It

is possible to get through an entire semester with very few, but you'll probably be a nervous wreck by the end of it.

2.  PCC is not a place for people who are slow learners or who struggle academcially in some way — unless you either have instructors sensitive to your needs and/or you're just really willing to work at it.  The curriculum is extremely

demanding — PCC has a reputation for its excellence in education and is determined to keep it at all costs.  If you've come to PCC from a public school, be prepared for major climate shock, academically and socially.  I got my biggest shock in freshman English.  PCC uses the A Beka curriculm, which contains a LOT of grammar, something I never had in junior or high school.  Thankfully my teacher took it into consideration that maybe I had never seen sentence diagrams before and gave me personal tutoring.

3.  PCC may teach you how to do something, but they will NOT help you to find a job.  With my degree I learned how to write, but no one ever helped or taught me how to get a writing job.  I am currently unemployed because I have no way to use my degree where I live now.  And if you are, or are planning to be a Commercial writing major, don't count on a job writing for A Beka Books.  To be even considered for it, you have to have at least 15 years of teaching experience (being a good writer isn't good enough) and even then there is intense competition.  They won't even train you to write for ABB.  You may the potential to win a pulitzer prize-winning novel, but PCC will never give you a chance to prove it.

4.  PCC is extremely choosy about who it hires to work on its staff.  They are unwilling to train new staff workers, partly because of the large number of people they can choose from, and partly because of its pride.  If they hire you, you have to not only know how to do something, but also to do it extremely well.  They can also fire you for the flimsiest of reasons — you don't have to embezzle money, lie, come in to work late too often, or do something equally horrible in order to get fired.  They can fire you if they don't think you're accomplishing enough for them, or making them enough money.  Yet they can also “play favorites” with people whom they think are really making them big bucks.

I know a lot of this from experience because I worked as a GA for six months.  A few months into the program, I decided that graduate school wasn't working out for me and I wanted to try to get a full-time job working on staff.  The first time I asked for a job, they said that they had nothing for me.  I assumed that they simply didn't have any positions for me, and asked again.  The next thing I knew I found myself turned out of the college.  How did that happen?  Dean Beamer and Dr.  Spencer simply told me, “We just don't have any jobs that we feel that you can do.” I got the impression of “you're just not good enough to work for us.” I had worked for the campus one whole summer and the previous six months with no problems (except perhaps that at the PCA kitchen, the slave-driver lady that I worked for, and the girl who worked alongside me, felt that I wasn't working fast enough and told me so in a not-so-gentle way—even though I was going as fast as I could.) Other than that, I always tried to come to work on time, did my best, and got along with my co-workers.  Apparently, that wasn't good enough.

I felt that appealing to the adminstration was useless — PCC is not the kind of place that advocates its workers.  But I didn't feel like trying to make it on my own in Pensacola at that time either (I didn't even have a car then) so I was forced to return home to Kansas.  PCC did not pay any of my transportation home, or offer me any advantages, alternatives or options that would have allowed me to keep working for the school — I was simply forced to withdraw. 

Having to leave PCC was a devastating blow to me.  Needless to say, I felt betrayed.  Previously, I had been very proud to work for the campus, and was encourging prospective students to attend there.  While I was a GA I had a good singles group that I was just starting to get involved with, an active social life, and I was planning to join the Campus church.  I had been perfectly happy there.  Having to leave PCC the way I did was very painful and took me a very long time to get over it.  Had I not been a Christian — and if I thought I would have had a chance — I probably would have thought about suing them for all the emotional anguish they caused me when they made me leave.  But I knew better —I would have had about as much chance as a chihuahua attacking a Great Dane.  You just can't take up a lawsuit against a place like PCC and win.  If you try, they have a stipulation in place that if you try to take up a lawsuit against them and they are not found to be at fault (and PCC is very good about denying any wrongdoing) you'll have to pay them back every single penny.

4.  Which brings me to another point.  PCC is not a place where you can air your opinions about the school freely.  Even if you try to politely and tactfully address a grievance, it either gets ignored or grandly justified in some form.  If you try to protest something, you get called “rebellious” and kicked out faster than you can blink.  There is no student newsletter or platform of any kind.  There is an unofficial, “underground” PCC newsletter, the Student Voice, that the PCC administration ranks right up alongside Osama Bin Laden because it tells the truth about what PCC is really like.  PCC students and staff members can get expelled for even being remotely suspected of participating in, or even reading it.  PCC can turn you out for anything that they suspect goes against the college — even without solid proof.  I know this because I've stories of other people that this happened to.  You may be shocked that this kind of stuff goes on in America, but it's true.  And since PCC isn't accountable to anyone, they get away with it.  How?  I don't know.  But they do.

5.  At PCC, friends and teachers can simply vanish out of your life, and you won't know they're gone until they've already left.  Two examples:

Case One:I had a friend who went out to the mall with her boyfriend.  Their crime?  Hugging and kissing each other in public, something that's very normal for young people to want to do.  They were both expelled — not even given a chance to plead their case — and they were both very fine godly young people who came from poor financial backgrounds.  They eventually broke off their relationship because they were convinced they had committed the unpardonable sin.  As for my friend, she was not allowed to talk to me or even tell me goodbye.  I had no idea she had been expelled until she called me after she went home to Michigan.

Case two: Toward the end of college, I was taking private music lessons with a teacher I loved and respected.  I had counted on having my last semester of music lessons with her, and returned from summer break to find out that she had simply dissapeared — I had no idea how, where or why.  I didn't even know if she had been forced to leave, or had left of her own choosing.  Apparently the school has a rule that teachers, when they leave, are not allowed to tell their students that they're moving away.  I was not aware of this at the time and was devastated because this teacher was someone who seemed to care a lot about me as a student, even to the point of telling me that I was a good friend.  It wasn't until three weeks later that I found out — from someone else — that she and her husband had simply taken jobs in another city. 

This incident was a devastating blow for me and it took me a long time to get over it.  I didn't take any music lessons that semester.  I still have a good relationship with this teacher today, and I don't blame her, but the administration that imposed this stupid rule.  I wrote a letter to the administration about this but I got no reply.  Later,I asked someone about this and the reply I got was “If a teacher tells her students she's going away, the students don't come back.” PCC could care less about student's feelings in cases like this — what they do care about is their money.

6.  Don't expect to have a spring break — these words aren't in PCC's vocabulary.  Instead, for nearly three days you will be force-fed Bible sermons five times a day — two in the morning, two at night, and one right smack in the middle of the afternoon so you can't even get out to enjoy yourself during the day.  And you have to attend all of them.  You will not get any free time whatsover before classes start up again.  This always wore me out more than the midterm exams which preceded them.  Don't get me wrong —I enjoy a good Bible message as much as anybody, but 12 sermons in three days is just a bit too much.  You also won't get to go home for Thanksgiving dinner unless you happen to live very close to Pensacola.  You will get Thanksgiving Day itself off, but that's it.

I could go on and on about the list of grievances I have with PCC, but these are the main ones.  I won't tell anyone to go or not to go — that is a choice each prospective student must make for themselves.  Find out as much information as you can about the school, and don't rely thoroughly on the college's website and catalog.  PCC will NOT tell you everything in advance.  Some tips:

1.Ask other PCC students and alumni their opinions about their time at PCC.  Ask as many of them as you can, because PCC graduates have varied opinions about the school and their experiences there.

2.Read the “Student Voice” website.  This is a real “eye-opener” about what PCC life is really like, and nearly everything that people comment about on there is true.

3.Pray and make sure that it's really the place God wants to you go to.  The fact that PCC is cheap, offers a wide variety of courses, and in Florida makes it a very tempting

place to go to, but check into it carefully.  Doing so might save you a lot of heartache.

If you're a parent planning to send your child to PCC, don't force them to go there if they don't want to go.  PCC can be an extremly difficult place for students who never wanted to be there in the first place, and some young people actually are capable of determining what kind of college would best suit their needs.  You may believe that PCC is a safe campus to send your kids to, but in the end, it may shelter them too much, and it won't teach them anything about life in the real world.  PCC is nothing like the rest of America — it is indeed a bubble, safely sealed away from the rest of the world.

Anyway,if anyone wants to contact me regarding some of the issues I have raised in this article, I would be happy to reply.