Welcome to Astoria, Oregon... I mean Tongue Point Job Corps Page. Here I will tell you about the campus, my experience there, and give you a simi-virtual tour of campus life from my own personal experience on that campus.
My Job Corps Experience...
This is a small sneak peek at the field of our campus before they added a smokers shelter for winter time. This also shows a res as well as sea men ship building as well as one of two entry buildings you have to attend your first three weeks of campus life.
My first day arriving onto the Job Corps was actually pretty intimidating experience to be honest. They sent me a one way plane ticket to Seattle, Washington on September 11, 2007. Great day to hop onto a plane right? Joking though but in all seriousness that was the first day of a huge step out into the world. Boarding a puddle jumper I took flight to Seattle and arrived midmorning at the Sea-Tac airport. Walking around the airport I eventually had to stop and ask some employees where I was to go to retrieve my luggage. (Major Important note to mention. Never bring more then one giant suitcase and a pillow.) Once I retrieved my things, a backpack and large suitcase, I went to the waiting place for the Job Corps center bus to arrive. While waiting others began to show up and stand along side me from very rude teens to a young 20 year old trying to get a fresh start from a bad living situation.
Then here it came... a school bus... a blue prison colored school bus. I looked at it with complete shock and started to think I was going into prison or jail with the cold reception the driver gave us future students. Boarding the bus was a first step into a new life according to the recruiter. In truth it is a step in a direction to get a career that you may be able to progress in life with... or for others not. Arriving at the campus we passed through a gate that was one sided... Later it was explained that the gate only closes one way, in. You can leave whenever but to enter you need your campus id. What they failed to mention is your first month on campus your restricted to the campus so if your a girl make sure your well prepared. The essential comforts you were used to in your home, whether from parents or out on your own will be missing here. Yes, though, you will have the comforts of a bed and roof over your head but you won't have the comfort of homey meals, long hot showers, and peace at mind (for me that was privacy within the room.). I was though lucky to be placed in the residential with their own private bathrooms, res 4. There are four residential buildings on this campus, res 1 &2 are connected into one building. Res 3, also known as the castle, was the only res for married couples who were attending the center could live in the same room, but had to sleep in separate beds. Res 4, also known as the hotel, was the res I got to call home for my eight months of my life. Campus life there was no picnic. Your day started at 6 a.m. with your entire room having to wake up and do morning cleaning and chores. The chores included thorough bathroom cleaning with Windex and comet, to your living space being wiped down/swept/vacuumed/mopped, to finally your beds being made military style. If the residential staff could not pop a coin off your bed then it was not made correctly and your room got down scored. The following Monday during res meetings you would find out who had the lowest score and they got punishment of cleaning the entire residential common space. I did though forget to mention that if it was your side of the res's lucky week you had to get up and report for outside cleaning duties of your res location. Trust me, there were mornings me and my room refused to show up out side for cleaning duty because we were freezing cold and tired. To move along though, at 7:30 a.m. to 7:45 a.m. the food stall as we called it opened up for you to get your breakfast. I highly recommend you do not miss it. The staff that cooked for the center when I attended became my best friends while there and you get treated better by the cook staff food wise if you take time to know them. At 8 a.m. you report to your trade. I can not stress this enough, do not ever be late or you'll regret it. I was late twice my entire campus life there and the punishments were not the greatest to go through. Class room, office, or center cleaning for three hours the very day you were late to your trade depending on what your trade was. I was in basic office, secretarial, trade meaning when I was late those two times I had office cleaning for three hours both days and missed dinner. Anyways, you get a specific lunch and break times depending on the trade your learning at the campus but come 4 p.m. your released from the trade for the day, unless you were late. From 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. the center post office is open meaning you can go get your mail or packages. I recommend slipping in there around 4:30 p.m. because then it is not so crowded to move around in and you don't have to deal with rude people slamming you around as they check their mail boxes or steal stuff off you. Yes there is a lot of stealing that goes on on campus. Most of the time you can tell who are the ones to watch out for by their attitudes and even witnessing them in action. It is a sad part of campus life but when you've been there for over a year your morals change to survival more then civil in certain aspects. At 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. is dinner time. If you miss it and your on your probation month (first month on campus) your out of luck for food that night unless you got room mates who are willing and can go off campus to grab you something to eat. Also make sure you have money, they do pay you but the amount is too little to be of much use for food or clothes. Head warning on clothing trips and that sort, if your getting close to your third month on campus start going daily to the clothing trip scheduler and demanding the clothing trip. I was suppose to have four trips my time there yet I only got one because I came into the office and demanded it. To continue on though, at 8 p.m. on Mondays or specific days (your res adviser will tell you) you will need to report to your res. for res meeting night as well as spring cleaning night. |
This was in the rec gamer room. They used to have some old school game consoles there but now days I think you have to bring your own. Games have to be rated everyone though so no GTA or Halo. :(
Around 9 p.m. the campus goes on lock down. That means you can not leave your res to go anywhere. It is also bed time which means you report to your room.
That is a basic layout to the day life but I did forget to make mention about leisure time and where we can go and what we can do. There is a recreation building which used to be an old hanger bay that opens it's doors from 4 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. Now sense they had to have recent repairs due to the winter storm of 2007-08 some of the lay out may of changed. We used to have a small mini movie theater there that sat about 50-60 students. Movies offered would be movies that either the campus offered or students brought in earlier in the week and had them approved to be played. The staff there were awesome and everyone helped each other out from the arts room to the weight room. The only places that fights and arguments seemed to broke out where the rent office for pool table equipment. Of course though if you were wanting to get off base/campus and go out to a public event like hockey game or something there would be sign-ups at the beginning of the week. I used to sign-up for anything that dealt with a trip to Portland. Traveling to Portland was one of the biggest and most rewarding trips to go on. Save your money for mall days because that is where it counts. They take you to Loydd Center Mall in Portland for a all day trip, lunch if I do recall is provided, and you can shop any store in the mall you want.Being a gamer, movie, and anime nut myself I tended to take off to that end of the mall for most of the day. There is a lot more to be discussed about the center and looked at but we have not even looked at the town that the base/campus is stationed next to either. Astoria, Oregon is a extremely small town but filled with lots of history from the Astoria collumn to the buildings and maritime museum. I won't bore you to death with the details but when your month of probation is up and you can leave campus I highly stress that you should and bring with you a camera. On a small note but I guess at the same time a large note, whale spotting seasons are when you will want your camera the most. I won't forget the encounter I had with a young whale to say the least but wish I had a camera to have taken the photo. Over at the maritime museum they had a dock where you can walk out on and sit there and watch the boats come and go on their way to deliver and retrieve goods. Sitting there I saw something huge moving closer to the dock under neath the water. It wasn't until the dorsal fin came out of the water and the air spurt that I realized it was a young orca with her pod. Her pod were out there feeding or something and she came in to see what was up on the dock I guess because she came all the way up to the dock and swam sideways looking up through the water at me. Being a wild animal I was scared to reach out and pet not knowing what she'd do but was in awe that a 15-20 foot long whale was curious about me. Anyways that was my one greatest memory from Astoria. My greatest memory from Job Corps was the storm and how we all on the campus bonded together as a community to help each other and other families who lived out on the point. Now for finishing the program and all you are given a week on center to look online for job openings for your trade. You don't get much help to be honest with job placement. Yes you do get money for having spent so much time on campus but the money doesn't last long enough to help you get your feet under you when your looking out of home town for employment. Most who graduated from Job Corps or at least this center had to turn back to the jobs or lifestyles they had before they went to campus due to no job openings in their home towns. There are though some who managed to use their trade to step around the system and get better education and move onto a better sense of living. For the government site about job corps you can click the link below. This though was my experience and discussion about the campus. http://tonguepoint.jobcorps.gov/home.aspx |