I’ve never been much of a table-setting connoisseur.
I don’t care if I’m using the “right” fork to slice and dice my ribeye, or the “wrong” one to down my salad, as long as the utensil at hand does
the job.
“They’re arranged in order, or should be,”
my patient wife often barks at me. “Think, ‘outside-in.’”
My response is always the same. Eating shouldn’t be this much work.
This explains why my interest was piqued recently when I learned that the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) Career Development Center can teach you such things. I suppose it has something to do with your career—maybe eating in front of your boss who, if you use the dinner fork instead of the salad fork, would be so embarrassed that he’d fire you on the spot.
Learning that one could be taught how to use dinnerware made me wonder what other hidden jewels lie beneath the surface of our city’s university.
Our tour guide, a lovely senior named Averi, had already touted the excellence of UTA’s engineering department, the top-notch social work and nursing programs, and the fact that architecture draws in students from practically everywhere.
She mentioned that UTA is now the third-largest producer of college degrees in the state and offers over 180 baccalaureate, master’s, and doctoral degree programs, and at a fraction of the cost of, say, a Texas A&M.
Our group consisted of excited parents and their teenage offspring, who looked mildly annoyed; their only bodily movement was shrugging their shoulders.
It was impressive, though, how they could stay glued to their cell phones and not walk into one of those fiberglass horses scattered about the campus.
Just as impressive was Averi, who, like all good tour guides, has mastered the whole walk-and-talk thing, answering questions and tossing out UTA factoids and doing it backward for most of the tour.
The senior criminology major mentioned that during her first year at UTA, she struggled with sheer boredom, partly because she chose not to participate in any of the activities she now raves about during the tour.
“I didn’t do anything,” she said. “I just kind of went to class and went home. It was a very miserable experience.”
Becoming a tour guide introduced her to the UTA she was missing.
“Now I love this place,” Averi said. “And I love answering questions people may have about it. Many people drive past here, saying it’s nice, but that’s about it. There’s so much to UTA.”
What’s great about tours is the opportunity to learn about all of that, as well as things such as security, as one dad kept bringing up, and the male-to-female ratio, which a mother inquired about for her daughter. (It’s 60 percent female to 40 percent male).
A tween wearing a backward cap and looking like he was searching for an escape hatch didn’t come alive until Averi mentioned the basement gaming center in the library.
“Wow,” he said, smiling.
“We have Xboxes, PlayStations, anything you can possibly think of,” Averi said. “We have Guitar Hero, vintage video games, tons and tons of board games, and Dungeons and Dragons. If you love playing games, that’s the place where you’ll want to come and hang out.”
In the Fabrication Laboratory, where anything you can dream up or make, you can dream it and make it. Sewing machines. Wood and metal cutters. A dark room.
“If you are not trained on the equipment and don’t know how to use it,” Averi said, “there are people who will show you how to do it.”
As we were headed back, Averi, still walking backward, told the incoming freshmen that finding your place means “getting out there.”
Her biggest advice?
Eight a.m. classes. Don’t, under any circumstances, take them.
“I know you think you can,” she said. “You’re like, ‘I‘m up at 7 a.m. for school every day anyway.’ Being in that classroom that early will be a battle of self-will.”
There you go – good advice from someone who has been there, done that, and knows what she won’t do again.
Kenneth Perkins has been a contributing writer for Arlington Today for nearly a decade. He is a freelance writer, editor and photographer.
