Lessons From The First Year Of College

So Freshman Year’s Over.  Let’s Recap.

 

Right now it’s 1:44 AM (I know, I should be in bed, but for some reason even though I’m tired as hell I can’t sleep) on Thursday, June 16 2005, but I’m back at my parents’ place in Hayward and there’s no Internet here, so I don’t know when this will actually be up on Xanga.  I guess whatever the date at the top of the column says is it.  Anyway, I’ve finally left San Diego and am back in prison- I mean, with my parents, so freshman year at UCSD is finally over.  I learned/observed/thought/obsessed over/worried about a bunch of things the past 6 months there.  Here we go.  College-freshmen-to-be: take note.

 

1. Unless you actually want your parents to know what the hell goes on in college, don’t take them to orientation! (I cover this in greater detail in “A Long Weekend”, December 7 2004.)


2. It’s nearly impossible to actually make friends in class.  I only did it once and I never even got the guy’s phone number, so we’re not “friends”.


3. It’s nearly impossible to make friends if you’re living off-campus.  You’re just in your own little unit and you actually have to take action to make friends rather than just immersing yourself in a dorm and making friends by osmosis.  Plus you have to cook your own damn food.  And La Scala (my apartment) doesn’t have an individual washer and dryer so you have to haul your clothes down to the first-floor laundry room (I feel sorry for all the people on the fourth floor.).  And the bathroom ventilation doesn’t do shit.  And there’s always random crap on the kitchen floor that I step on.  Okay that’s the bad part.  The good part of off-campus living: Complete freedom from the school (as opposed to dorms, which is nearly complete freedom from the school).  You have a place to stay whereas dorm people get kicked out like… like a ho ejecting her latest man-whore.  The feeling of being an “independent adult” rather than some dorm nerd.  I think that’s about it actually.


4. It’s nearly impossible for me to make friends, period.  Yeah I know, I should go out and talk to people as my roommate said, but that’s a lot of work for a guy like me.  I guess I just have to find my “niche”, though that particular term makes me feel like a lab monkey in some experimental rainforest.


5. ERTH 20 (The Atmosphere) was fun.


6. BILD 3 (Organismic & Evolutionary Biology) was fun.


7. Most of my other classes sucked.  Warren Writing was okay, even though it feels like a giant liberal propaganda octopus (I’ll write about that in a future column.).  PHIL 32 (History of Modern Philosophy) was okay but it was a quarter of material that could really be summed up with thirty-four words: Descartes was a dumb ass.  Spinoza was a dumb ass.  Malebranche was a dumb ass.  Leibniz was a dumb ass and he just had to go and invent calculus, screwing me over for eternity.


8. MATH 20 (calculus) sucks.  Really bad.  I hate calculus.  Oh, and some professors at school really suck, and their name is John C. Wheeler.


9. I hate acne too.  And for some reason it flares up right when I want to look good or when I want to shave.


10. I also hate the fucking fungal infection or whatever that’s on the right corner of my mouth.  It comes and goes and makes my Lamisil treatments look like a bitch’s errand.


11. I hate walking to and from classes when I have to walk across the entire school.  And I hate how some classes are set up to ensure that I’ll have to walk across the entire school.  By the way, going from Warren Lecture Hall to York Hall (which I’ll have to do next quarter) is like UCSD’s equivalent to the Bataan Death March.


12. There are a lot of hot girls at UCSD.


13. None of them pay any attention to me.


14. Some girls can be really weird – in a good and bad way.


15. Love sucks.


16. Concerts are a pain in the ass- actually, make that a pain in the chest.  But Ludacris was worth it. (See “Friday The 13^th”, May 14 2005)


17. What the fuck is up with the 34 bus line?!  The buses always come at least 15 minutes late.


18. I hate taking the school bus when it’s crowded.


19. I have no idea how I’m gonna explain the huge scars on my feet to my parents.


20. I’m so disappointed by May Gray and June Gloom (the persistent cloudiness caused by SoCal’s marine stratus cloud layer, which is itself caused by a temperature inversion resulting from a shift in a high pressure zone.  I learned that in ERTH 20!).


21. Am I really a nerd?  Okay maybe, but I don’t want to be one.  That in itself should make me NOT a nerd, cuz real nerds never seem to actually care about their nerdiness.


22. Darth Sidious rules. (Not being a nerd, just making an observation…)


23. Why Venator-class Star Destroyers instead of Victory I-class? (Okay, the anti-nerd efforts are going out the window…)


24. I need a car, dammit.


25. I need money, dammit.


26. I need a job, dammit.


27. I need motivation to get all those things, dammit.


28. Why don’t people at the airport ever think of checking in their suitcases?  I know, it might get lost, but think about the rest of us, dammit.  Especially poor souls like me who (just yesterday) have to check three suitcases and bring three carry-ons disguised as two.


29. College is way better than high school by default because of the lack of parents/being away from home/independence.


30. My life can and does still suck, even at college with all the freedom and what not.  But college is awesome, and I can’t wait to go back this fall.  For once I’m actually looking forward to school?  It’s gotta be good.