Campus
mania, long lines begin
Lines
to get into parking spots, lines to get
in-and-out of the bookstore, lines at Brotman
Hall, lines for the bathroom. Waiting at
the food court, waitlists for classes, waiting
for the last day of school.
The
first weeks of school can make anyone feel
like a head of cattle trying desperately
to avoid a stampede. If it's not the
crowds around the backpack tents at the
bookstore, it's a class so full of people
waiting to add that nobody can breathe.
This
school seems to be filled to the brim with
students, there's not enough of anything.
Not enough classes, not enough parking spots,
and there's certainly not enough left-handed
desks. And yet they tell us they're
going to increase enrollment to stave off
the budget crisis, but at what cost to the
student?
They're
already taking over one parking lot this
semester to build another parking garage
that won't be completed until when? If it's
anything like the new science building it
will be an awful long time.
We
all know they're not going to offer us anything
more for our increased tuition and they're
increased enrollment. We'll be forced to
put up with less available classes and less
services for more people.
At
this rate a four-year school will actually
be a six-year school, if it isn't already.
Unless your on some high-speed track where
the university make sure you get the classes
you need, freshmen will surely spend long
worrisome hours trying to figure out how
to make Marine Ichthyology and Russian Cinema
count for general education credit.
Every
class that you need to graduate will only
be offered once a year, and if two happen
to coincide, oh well. Smaller departments
will go even lower and offer a class only
every odd year at exactly the same time
as another class you need to graduate.
Classes
that share a common thread will be conglomerated
into Beginning/Intermediate/Advanced Biochemical
Engineering. So that really you just
end up taking the same class three times
and learning nothing because your in a classroom
the size of the Hollywood Bowl and your
professor looks like a raisin from where
you're sitting.
By the time you graduate you'll be middle-aged.
But worse yet the system will have broken
you into tiny little compartmentalized pieces
and you'll expect all things to be run so
shabbily. Everything you learn will be obsolete
by the time you enter the job market and
your clothing will be a decade out of style.
But
on the bright side you won't have to start
paying the interest on your student loans
until 2010.
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