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Gladstone Ghosts by Zazou Hoffman |
Do you believe in spirits and phantoms? I do, now. Imagine the venerable rotunda of the headquarters of the Olympic Team in Gladstone, N.J. I was laid over there for a couple of days until the Pennsylvania National Horse Show in Harrisburg. So I cruised the hallowed halls looking at black and white photos of famous riders—a show jumping Hall of Fame: Chapot, Steinkraus, Mairs, Fargis and my friend Kathy Kusner. It is said that she was the youngest one on the team then, so how old was she exactly? In the photo she doesn’t look much older than me. Hmmm… I continue on. Where’s the next gallery? Maybe here? I try the door and it swings open. Suddenly I am in a dormitory for the riders in the days when they actually came to Gladstone to train. It looks as if they just went out to tack up their horses. Beds are unmade as if the riders just rolled out of them. A box of cornflakes is still sitting there in the antiquated kitchen with linoleum on the floor and fixtures from the 50s or 60s. I wonder if it was harder or easier to make it in the sport back then. Kathy Kusner never owned the horse that she rode in the Olympics. The pairing of horse and rider was a subjective decision made by the powerful individuals who ran the USET. What was it like for the riders from the West Coast? I’m sure that technology and equine airlines have made things easier.
Me on Catwoman at USET Headquarters in Gladstone, NJ I can no longer ignore the fact that riding competitively seems to go hand in hand with mediocre academic performance. I think that the USHJA and the USEF should really take the time to address this matter. Many of my fellow competitors are enrolled in poorly conceived Distance Learning Programs that originate from Mid-Western colleges. It is a completely unregulated and profitable business, thus the need for closer scrutiny. I now know first-hand which programs work and which don’t so here’s my rundown: Stanford’s program is a dinosaur. For all the money and genius that they have to create a great program, they haven’t. Even the website is impossible to navigate and confusing. By contrast the UC system has spent the last decade refining their approach to distance learning. The classes use a variety of media and are cleverly laid out so that reviewing the material is easy and I am quizzed regularly. I interface with the teacher on a weekly basis. The last program is APEX, a Washington state-based program that seems to have been spawned by a consortium of tech moguls. It is more corporate in feel and makes licensing agreements with schools throughout the U.S.
My computer, without which I would be lost. My AP English class is very well thought-out and I have an Internet dialogue with my teacher and submit writing assignments and take tests. With the exception of AP Physics at Stanford (which is an embarrassment to Stanford), my online classes are not much different than my high school AP classes. They all require concentration and hard work. I find it heartening that Presidential candidate Obama has promised to devote more resources to online education. Here are links to the programs I’m enrolled in. I strongly encourage you to take a look at them. • UC Davis: http://extension.ucdavis.edu
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