Thursday, January 11, 2007

The SSHD

Today's schooling story.
The first day of JCOM 4020 was cancelled. Day 1 was moved to today. So, la-de-dah I'm a senior these days and most of my classes are on the same subject in the same building. I stopped "scouting" out my classes after my first semester. Looking ahead to see where classes were ahead of time, forget it! Yeah, so today my class was in SSHD. Now, most of the buildings on campus are appropriately labeled; BUS is the Business Building, AgSci is the Ag Science build, the LC is the Learning Center, etc. The SSHD? I can't think of a subject or building that would come close. I don't have any idea what to do. I have 7 minutes to class and I don't even know what side of campus I should be on. The treasure hunt begins. Do you think anybody has any idea where SSHD is? No. Do I have a campus map? No. But I know where one is, so I troop over to the freshman-crowded map. There is no building labeled SSHD!!
There are a few randomly scattered buldings that are not big enough to contain a label, so they have numbers. So, I check the list. Unfortuntely, the map is covered in rain-stained plastic and you can only read half the letters, but I swear that building number 17 says "storage shed." Are we really to point of holding class in a storage shed? What's next? Holes to relieve ourselves in? I knew the states are cutting back funding, but come on...
So, I troop across the snow to find my storage shed of a classroom.

The real irony of the story, it's a fully equipped technology classroom. The class has a full projector, computer, etc. The desks are pretty decent and the heating really works.

Monday, January 8, 2007

Semester: Day 1 Graduation: 12 weeks left

First day of school.

I surprised even myself and bought a book today.

No longer nervous or excited. Major senoritis has set in. All that wore off 2 years ago. The sluggish 4th year of college passes another milestone and part of me wants to jump and scream and the other part knows, that its only the start of the worst half, and so I yawn and listen to yet another professor who thinks he's going to change the lives of students tell me about his grading procedure as I systematically figure out how little work I can do and still get an A. I can miss 4 questions per test, 1 quiz and write one terrible paper. It's all about getting the grade, maybe learning something that will help me later, really knowing that all my grad school deadline will be passed before the semester is up and job applications will only look at my overall GPA. Just don't screw up big time.

One professor asked a class full of seniors why we were so serious. No one answered. We're not serious, just tired and bored of the same cracks and that dry obscure sense of humor that seems to follow those academic professors. So, we laugh at his jokes. Why are we so serious?