I had to laugh as I drove up Universal Avenue in North Kansas City. It’s a route I took nearly every day for almost two years on my way to work at Metropolitan Community College-Business & Technology, just off Front Street and somewhat hidden on the west side of Interstate 435.
I realized immediately that it looks nothing like a community college campus these days. Of course, housed in the old Butler Manufacturing Building in an industrial area, it never looked like a community college campus, at least from the outside.
These days, the facility I knew as a technical school is a truck driving academy. That actually makes senses considering the BT campus did have a CDL program, one I wrote about a few times, including a story about a recovering drug addict who turned his life around by learning that trade. Sadly, that story left the Internet when the campus left for a new location as the Advanced Technical Skills Institute on Troost Avenue.
As I turned right onto Executive Drive, I drove past the Butler Manufacturing sign in front of the building. It reminded me of touring the facility with my supervisor not long after starting. He had high hopes for the north part of the campus, which was vacant. Those dreams, and others the powers that be at MCC had for BT, never came to fruition.
The Metropolitan Community College-Business & Technology Business sign on the east side remains, one of the few remnants of the college. The small office building just off the highway is vacant, and the Smugglers Inn, a shady bar with an even shadier reputation, is gone. So is the highly suspect Ramada Inn that became a squatters’ paradise toward the end of my two-year run as campus communications coordinator.
As I wrote last year about working at MCC, it was a difficult job and a difficult time. I learned very quickly that it was going to be incredibly hard to match the culture I worked in and loved at my alma mater, Washburn University. Years later, a going-away Thanksgiving get-together organized by former co-workers was perfect closure.
Life at MCC got off a bad beginning. Less than a week after I started, my father had his second heart attack. Combine that with the stress of adjusting to a new gig and being in the running for another position at a larger college in the area (a situation I recommend not getting yourself into), and it felt like I had the weight of an elephant on my back.
Things settled down for a while once I didn’t get the aforementioned job and started to learn the ropes. It became clear that there was a heck of a lot more to technical education and the trades than I imagined. That meant starting from scratch, essentially like a kindergartener. It took several months to grasp what computer integrated machining and manufacturing, industrial technology and computer aided drafting and design entailed.
Just when I thought I had a handle on the new gig, the college’s recruiter left. For several months, I filled, or tried to fill, that role. Before long, the stress of recruiting, which is insanely difficult, managing another supervisor who I didn’t mesh with at all, and an overzealous workout routine finally proved to be a toxic combination in the form of the Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) that kicked my backside for more than a year.
Things got bad enough that I missed work for several weeks. When I went back just a few weeks before Christmas in 2016. I’ll never forget pulling in the parking lot, taking a deep breath and sitting in my car. It was at that moment that another co-worker and good friend then and in the years since, pulled up next to me. He looked over, his head moving back as if doing a double-take, before he smiled. I knew then that it would be all right.
There were difficult times after that, but not unbearable, largely because several of the folks I worked with went out of their way to help as I slowly overcame EBV. Seven years later, I still send them a message every Dec. 12, the anniversary of returning to the office, thanking each of them for helping me get through that time.
Still, there weren’t enough great stories, whether it was the man who went from homeless to running his own real business thanks to the HVAC program, or the woman overcoming poverty to start a rewarding career in welding, to make the job enjoyable. At the end of the day, it just wasn’t Washburn.
As it became evident that I wasn’t going to find happiness professionally at MCC, I remembered my father’s advice through the years: “Son, never do something that makes you miserable. There is nothing worse than hating your job.”
Dad knew that all too well, of course, after he stopped “working for the man” to start his own crafting business. So, I applied for the occasional job, just missing on a couple. Not until commencement at Washburn in 2017 did the right opportunity come along. It was then, before receiving a master’s degree, that a former colleague told me about a position at my alma mater. Within two months, I was back on Washburn’s campus.
It didn’t work out at MCC, but the bitterness is gone. Now, I remember laughing with the district’s marketing director about an employee on my campus cussing at both of us. I remember watching students who couldn’t imagine a good life working their tails off to learn trades and make more money than they ever thought possible. I remember co-workers checking on me daily during the recovery from EBV. I remember the sense of family many of us had.
I also remember the electronic sign on the perimeter on the west side of campus. That sign was a source of frustration because nobody could figure out how to change the messaging on it. It said “for more information, visit mcckc.edu,” on my first and last day. I spent hours trying to find somebody, anybody, who could help me change that damn thing.
So, as I drove north on Universal Avenue, I couldn’t help but laugh when I passed the electronic sign that still bears the college’s name: “For more information, visit mcckc.edu.” A reminder, apparently forever, of a place seemingly forgotten.
TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS SERIES 2022