Structural Patterns

My first year teaching at Hunter’s Department of Film and Media Studies is nearing an end, just a couple finals next week and then grading. As with any new position, it’s been a great deal of work and I’ve done a lot of curriculum planning.

One of the great pleasures is the quality of work from many of the students. The highlight has been a beautiful animation by Natalya Serebrennikova titled “Cicada”. The animation was executed in my Intro to 2D Animation course (it was the first time I taught the course, but have wanted to do so for sometime). Fortunately Natalya walked in with a story and art work in mind that she developed in Tim Portlock’s Graphic Novel class. With a great story and the aesthetic developed, it was really a matter of conquering the technical skills of animation and a bit of guidance.

I consider Natalya’s work an excellent example of various courses and faculty working together to help a student realize her vision.

Natalya was just awarded a National Board of Review Student Grant! Hopefully, I’ll have a few more great projects this semester.

Several weeks ago, I received a collection letter for about $900 from Midland Credit for a debt that Midland purchased from Bank of America. I was surprised because I have no debts and I’ve never had any account or anything to do with Bank of America.

So I call Midland Credit, they ask me the last four digits of my social security number and the guy tells me that the debt is owed by another Ricardo Miranda with a different social security number and born in 1964. He goes on to tell me that my name and address will be deleted and that the credit bureaus will be contacted with the correction. I ask how such a mistake can be made, after all this is someone’s credit that they are playing with, and he tells me that they just look for people living in the same area as the person who incurred the debt was living and has the same name and then pin the debt to that person and send a collection letter. I was amazed at how irresponsible their procedure at collection is, hell I could do that, get a name and address without paying for a social security number check and just send a collection letter. I can’t believe that this sort of company is allowed to function and to ruin a person’s credit.

A couple weeks later, I receive the same collection letter! I call again, and my name and address has not been erased and then I tell the guy that this can really screw up my credit and I’m trying to refinance a mortgage and he tells me that it can’t possibly effect my credit score as the debt is not associated with my social security number.

A month later, I’m trying to refinance my mortgage and am told that two of my credit reports are a 100 points below what they should be, due to a Midland Credit debt! Now I’m wasting a lot of time, trying to correct information for a debt that is owed by some other guy with my name… This is nuts!