November 08, 2006
Registration fun
So today I had to go in to see the head of the English department to get some classes set up, since the online registration had already been filled by the time juniors were allowed to vote. Basically, the process involves a whole lot of groveling and explaining the hell out of your situation in the hopes of generating a little ball of pity somewhere in the department chair's soul (questionable existence anyway, but what other choices did I have?). The result was this conversation:
Me: I just entered the education program, so my class schedule is limited from working with that. Also, I need to work at least 10 hours a week to be able to afford to go here.
Chairwoman: Well, it sounds to me like you've made a personal choice, and that you just don't want to work with the classes available.
Me: What? You mean the education program?
Chairwoman: No, of course not.
Me: So then...my job? But I have to work, or I can't afford my rent.
Chairwoman: Exactly. You've made a personal choice, and I can't do anything about scheduling problems that are choices. I can only help if it is something you can't change.
Me: ...
Of course! I understand now! At some point in my past, I chose to not have the resources to be able to afford to go to college without having a job. How silly of me to forget that fateful day when I picked not having money over unlimited wealth. Now I fully understand your decision to assign me a class from 11am to 12pm, when I would typically be at work doing something other than screwing people over.
And sadly, this is not an opinion that is contained solely within the English chairwoman's wretched soul. In fact, this seems to be the norm here, with most of the students and professors just kind of assuming that anyone that goes here is comfortably nested in a big, green pile of their daddy's money. Case in point, an extra credit opportunity for one of my classes involves going to Chicago to see some musical or other. Ticket price? "Oh, not much...around 40 or 50 dollars."
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO POOR COLLEGE STUDENTS?!?
I do seem to recall stories being told by friends and acquaintainces not many years my senior...and if memory serves, most of them involved a lot of cheap noodle-substitute, bought in bulk, which could easily be bought with the proceeds from a part-time hobby of collecting cans. But then again, those were the early years of 2000...we have progressed so far since then! Then, we had only XBox. Now, we have XBox 360! What do you mean it doesn't really do anything different? It has extra numbers in the title, DUH! Everyone knows that makes things better! I mean, come on...how else could you explain the exponentially increasing awesomeness of the Rocky series? Hell yeah, the new one will be the best yet! It has a roman numeral six!
In some sort of bastardized conclusion, this episode serves to support my theory that small liberal arts schools are not, in fact, located in the same space-time continuum as other colleges. Or, for that matter, the rest of the known world. God, sometimes I hate rich white people...
Posted by larry at November 8, 2006 09:08 PM