I received the funniest e-mail from a classmate in quite a while this morning. It was a broadcast communiqué to everyone in the class just hours before our first module and exam are due.
Hello everyone! Is it just me or is trying to write half a page for one question a little too much? I have a full course load and tons of group projects due all around the same time and it is a little frustrating to try and come up with additional words when I feel like I have already answered the question! Just wanted a little confirmation that I am not the only one who is having trouble with this.
Cry me a river! This is a Junior-level course at a top 50 university and she’s complaining about having to write 1/2 page for an answer? Welcome to college, little girl. Wait until life smacks you upside the head, because it will some day, and you need to go through something as “traumatic” as this to prepare for it.
Looks like someone should have done school work over the weekend like me.
Right now, I’m sitting in the shade under a huge oak tree on campus waiting for my Spanish I orientation to begin, or at least open the door to the lecture hall. As Monk would say, “here’s what happened.”
I got to campus an hour early because I knew it was going to be a large class because the roster online showed more than 150 people and outlets for laptops are scarce. Of course, being Saturday, the door to the lecture hall was locked so I looked for a bench and found one in the shade about 100 feet from the door.
Ten minutes later, a couple of people (based on age and behavior comparison of the two, I’d say a mother and daughter) came up the walk, looped around in front of the door a couple of times, tried the door, and then kept walking. One would assume that any normal person (like said person on the bench in the shade) would find a bench in the shade and wait for the door to open since they were 50 minutes early.
Not these two. In an act of brilliance, they decided that they would do an entire lap around the building and try to go into Burger King (closed at 9am on Saturday) to look for a rear entrance to the hall. They returned with a campus map open like tourists and I could hear them say, “ULH 101. This is the building and room. Why isn’t it open?” I’ll give them one guess, but I think they need more than that.
Around they go for another lap and stop a woman with her iPod on her arm clearly on a fast stroll to burn calories to ask her why the building isn’t open. As exercise woman passed me, she gave me a morning greeting and told me they were looking for another entrance to the building. I told her that they were 40 minutes early for a Saturday orientation; she laughed and kept walking.
On their next lap and attempt to open a locked door, I shouted over to them that was indeed the entrance and that it was still locked because they were 40 minutes early for the first class of the day on a Saturday. I should have kept my mouth shut, because they walked over to me to sit on a nearby bench and ask if I was a part of the orientation. Then if I was Wesley or someone like that. Immediately telling them I wasn’t but wondering why they assumed I was Wesley, I figured he was a T.A. for the course and resorted to putting in my headphones to stop the insanity.
By the way, according to the roll call, they are mother/daughter. Freaky. I guess age didn’t give Mom an advantage and chronological proximity to high school life didn’t give the daughter an advantage.
Life lesson: a college degree doesn’t mean that much for reasoning or practical functioning.
I got an e-mail from the USF Department of English yesterday that sent me straight through the rook and into orbit. This particular staff person sends out notices of campus functions, the department newsletter submission deadlines, and occassional job opportunities, but is not a professor or dean.
If there is supposed to be a call for the “separation of church and state” (which anyone who understands the intent and CONTEXT of the founding fathers’ design for gov’t doesn’t use that phrase to mean what it is being used for today) then there should be a separation of State-funded educational institutions and politics. Let’s see if anyone can step up to the plate and realize that any staff of a university who sends correspondence to the students is representing the policies and such of the entire governing body of the school. It’s no different than if a music director at a church sends an e-mail encouraging members to join a swingers’ club for his brand of “outreach.” That would be interpreted by the members as an endorsement by the senior pastor and possibly the entire denomination or sect from the very top. If he says it’s cool, someone MUST have approved it and thinks it’s a good idea, right?
That said, here is the e-mail sent “on behalf of” a politically-oriented recruiter.
Progressive Campaign Job Opportunities Nationwide
Sent on behalf of Sxxxx Mxxxx. Please send inquiries to sxxxxx@grassrootscampaigns.com.
We made history last fall. Now that we have Obama in the White House and expanded majorities in Congress, it is time to work for the change America needs. Grassroots Campaigns, Inc. has joined forces with the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, Save the Children, and other progressive organizations to drive forwards a progressive agenda and undo years of Republican damage.
Grassroots Campaigns is currently interviewing top student leaders around the country to join our team as Assistant Canvass Directors. There is no better time or place to get involved and help to create the new generation that will take this country in a more progressive direction.
“We made history!?” Who is we?
“… the change America needs!?” Make your own change without gov’t crutches and taking more of MY money to build a bigger gov’t.
“… undo years of Republican damage!?” Talk about incendiary and alienating to everyone of a differing political view.
This sort of e-mail distribution has no place in the State university system.
“Sir, I am sitting in the smallest room in the house.
I have your letter before me. Soon it will be behind me.”
- Voltaire responds to a critic.
Recent Feedback