March 27th, 2010
College provides many challenges aside from just maintaining a decent GPA. It’s the extra inconveniences that come along with your daily routine that make life a bit more difficult. These are the things we don’t remember years down the road when we’re in a haze of nostalgia, reflecting on the "dream" that was college life.
The worst for college students is when we have to take an early slate of classes, which is usually a result of shoddy scheduling. If you’re an underclassman, you’re in the back of the line when it comes to course selection, so you take what you can get. The best sections of your required classes are inevitably filled, and even when one becomes available, it probably conflicts with another class. Patience is a virtue – you have to keep in mind that by the time you’re a junior and senior, you’ll be rewarded with four-day weeks and an abundance of afternoon classes. Parking, on the other hand, is a problem that can’t be resolved by patience. You have to wake up at the break of dawn each day if you want to get to campus on time to find a space. You’re in a perpetual competition with you fellow students and all social conventions are thrown out the window. They come between you and getting to class on time. When you lose, you have to park in a reserved spot and pray the tow truck driver is still asleep. By now you know the $100 parking pass wasn’t worth it and the trouble could’ve been avoided by making use of the campus transit system.
Some departments on college campuses are bureaucratic nightmares, especially those that deal with your money. Ever experience the repercussions of an incompetent bursar’s office? If you don’t like early classes, look at your next schedule after the first has been purged. Applied for federal grants and loans months ago and still haven’t heard anything back? It’s probably due to your school’s department of financial aid. Paying for college is expensive enough, but it’s when you get little in return that sets you off. There’s nothing worse than professors who expect their students to put in tons of work, but don’t do any themselves. They’re unresponsive and disrespectful and there’s nothing you can do about it. However, you can take the opportunity to teach yourself the content if you don’t want to drop the class and waste money. It might be more difficult, but like you heard in philosophy 101 – what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.
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