college

[Max Whittaker]

How is(or was)college?

a.Fun
b.Care-free
c.Boring
d.Bad
e. http://www.sitcomsonline.com/ubb/frown.gif


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Can't we all just get along?

[coily2]

I will have to add F - SO unbelievably cool, that after 4 years after my masters, I still have never come close to the experience.

If you have any doubts about going off to college, I will do everything in my power to change your mind. I seriously would not trade a single day of the experience for anything.

[lesliem14]

I have one year left of undergrad and I DON'T WANT TO LEAVE!!!!!!! I hated high school, but I went to college and my parents didn't think I would come home. It's fun most of the time (except around the last week of classes), it's not care-free because I stress too much about grades, and it's definitely not boring (just observe all the drunks on Friday and Saturday nights- good, free entertainment) or bad, but as coily said it is unbelievably cool!

[Bootsy Whoosh]

College can be incredibly fun. But if you have too much fun you'll find yourself not in college anymore http://www.sitcomsonline.com/ubb/smile.gif

College will never be care-free.

College SHOULD never be boring. Maybe a class here and there will be boring, but overall your classes should make you think about things in a way you never have before, and hopefully all the new people you meet will also broaden your horizons.

That said, be sure to study something you LOVE, no matter how many people tell you how impractical it is, and if at all possible choose a school you like. I am currently at a school that I am none too fond of, which may be why I am not like coily and leslie, in that I want to get the hell out and never look back! But then I suppose I have never had a taste of the "real world" so maybe I will change my mind once I have, lol!

[coily2]

OK, Bootsy. You are forcing me to do this! Consider this an intervention. This is what my daily regiment is:

5:30 AM: Time to get up. No, I am not kidding. Every morning.
6:30 AM: Need to be out the door and running to catch the L to work (that's Chicago's subway/elevate train).
7:15 AM: Come into work. Spend the next 45 minutes doing everything I was supposed to finish the night before but didn't get a chance to.
8:00 AM: Start a new day.
12:00 PM: Realize that I have not had lunch yet.
1:00 PM: Realize that I still have not had lunch yet. Also realize that I have not had a chance to collect my thoughts since 7:59.
4:30 PM: Start to wrap up for the day. Finish what I am working on so I don't have to worry about it at 7:15 AM tomorrow.
4:59 PM: Have my coat on and am on my way out the door.
4:59:30 PM: All hell breaks loose before I get to the elevator. Head back to my desk.
6:30 PM: Look at my watch and say to myself, "Good, it is still early."
8:00 PM: Nearly 13 hours later, I can leave.
8:45 PM: Walk into the house. Need to cook dinner. Even dorm food beats having to cook after a 13 hour day.
9:30 PM: Must do dishes, feed my pets, clean my house, do my laundry. Luckily, my husband can help with that.
10:30 PM: Sit down with my husband to take care of finances. This is what I miss most about college life - how care free it is. You don't realize how easy you have it until you are writing checks for the home owners insurance, the car insurance, the car note, the rent, the credit cards, the gas, the electric, the water, the phone, the trash collection, well, you get the point. Writing a check for $1500 in rent really ruins your night.
11:00 PM: Finally, some downtime. Too bad I'm exhausted.
11:30 PM: Barring an emergency page from work, I go to bed.

Gee, the real world is a whole lotta fun, ain't it?

That being said, I'm sorry your college experience isn't as much fun as you hope. Do what you love and love what you do. That is the key to making it work out for you. Remember, you get out of it what you put into it.

[Bootsy Whoosh]

Well I am already writing checks for rent, telephone, water, gas, electric, cable, credit cards, etc. I disagree that college is carefree. I have to worry about all those bills plus my grades and my G.P.A., and then there's all those loans looming in my horizons that I've got to pay off.

I realize the real world is even less care free, but I think if people get the impression college is totally care free they will be sorely mislead.

And your day does not sound like fun, but *hopefully* if all my plans work out, my day won't be that hectic and I will be doing what I love.

I don't hate college as much as I may sound like it in my first post, it's just that I am going to be a 5th year senior next year, plus I have 4 more years of professional school ahead of me if I get in. And my University has recently made all these changes, gotten a new President that doesn't care about the students at all, an organization that claims it wants to clean up campus has closed all the businesses in the surrounding area making it a ghost town, which is NOT what any of the students want, and basically just about every student here feels blighted by a University and a community that doesn't care about them. Which is why I really want to get out, if I was going to a different school things might be different.

However, the thought of having all my friends scatter all over the country and hardly ever seeing them after we graduate is kind of depressing too, which is one reason I would like to stay in college.

[dawsongirl]

I'm probably the only person on the board that will say this, but I hate college. Never have liked it. High School was so much better!

[Max Whittaker]

Originally posted by coily2:
I will have to add F - SO unbelievably cool, that after 4 years after my masters, I still have never come close to the experience.

If you have any doubts about going off to college, I will do everything in my power to change your mind. I seriously would not trade a single day of the experience for anything.

What are the down sides?

[lesliem14]

Leaving a 10 page paper up until the night before it's due. Keep the radio on and the Mountain Dew cold!

Three of my four roommates. I have some good stories! If you can get a single, that's the way too go. Also, not a good idea to room with good friends, although nothing would have saved that friendship.

American University food-I thought the food at my school was descent, but it looks like gourmet after spending a semester at AU.

[This message has been edited by lesliem14 (edited 05-22-2001).]

[coily2]

leslie, we'll have to exchange stories sometime, lol!!!! I had the worst luck with roommates.....

Downsides: I have paid off all my loans, but I still have to pay about $100 per month for my husband for the next 10 years. It is expensive.

You are broke all the time.

Sometimes it seems that all major papers, projects, and examinations fall on the same day.

Roommates suck. As leslie said, the surest way to kill a friendship is to live together.

Despite what anyone may tell you, there is no remedy for a hangover.

Murphy's law - when you go to the library to check out a book that will be perfect for your research project, it will have been lost somewhere and you are out of luck.

Dorm food is barely edible.

College towns generally aren't very friendly to students. The whole town vs. gown thing.

[Max Whittaker]

I see...
Well I won't have to worry about dorm trouble. I can bring my own lunch. And I can try to avoid unfriendly people.




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Can't we all just get along?

[dawsongirl]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by lesliem14:
Three of my four roommates. I have some good stories! If you can get a single, that's the way too go. Also, not a good idea to room with good friends, although nothing would have saved that friendship.



Hey, same thing happened to me! Roomed with my best friend because I really didn't want to end up with the luck of the draw, and now I hate her guts. Actually, I couldn't care less if I ever saw her again since she turned all my other supposed friends against me, but that's a different story.



[This message has been edited by dawsongirl (edited 05-22-2001).]

[Bootsy Whoosh]

Hmm...I can understand the "never live with friends thing" but at the same time, you can make it work if you try, I think. Unless me and my friends are just a bunch of freaks of nature, which is entirely possible.

I currently live with 2 of the friends I made my freshman year. I lived with them last year too, with 2 other people. (and those 2 people only left because they graduated, not because of fighting)

We have had our ups and downs, but we still remain good friends. The key is, as it is with many things, good communication.

The thing is, people will get on each other's nerves, and then they won't say anything. Then anger gets pent up, and feelings get hurt. Last year, when there was 5 of us, we had weekly or bi-weekly meetings where we would just get together on a Sunday night and ask if anyone was ticket or annoyed about anything. Now that there's only 3 of us, we don't have meetings anymore, but we still talk things out.

I also think it may help if you have a mix of girls and guys, as I do, even if it's only 1 guy or 1 girl. Something about having a member of the opposite sex in the house seems to help. If it's a bunch of girls the guy can help squell the back-stabbing meanness, and if it's a bunch of guys, the girl can keep the testosterone-fueled ego fights in check.

[Devon King]

Bootsy -- Just read your "...at a school I am none too fond of" comment and had to chime in to say I understand. Boy, do I understand!

My college was a really pretentious place that believed all its own press. Small classes added to the competition among students and the adminstration/faculty were a little too kind to folk whose parents pumped money into the school.

All of that just ground on my last nerve. I hated it.But I stayed because of the people I'd met, the cool instructors (there were some) and because I was too damn stubborn to quit.

Now, years later, I get a certain satisfaction from just hanging in there. That place and those experiences taught me more about myself than I might ever have learned elsewhere.

Oh, and I did manage to have fun, too.<grin>

[lesliem14]

I'm going to type out my roommate stories on Word and paste them here in a couple days. It will take me awhile, but I sort of want these things typed out so I could pull them out in like 20 years and laugh about how stupid it was. Coily, you brought up a couple things I don't want to think about! My professors really do have some kind of ability to all schedule everything the same week and I have to send off my financial aid papers accepting my fourth loan. I think I'm at around 12,000 now. My college also has some problems between the town and college. Doesn't help when we refer to people from the town as "townies".

[coily2]

Originally posted by Max Whittaker:
I see...
Well I won't have to worry about dorm trouble. I can bring my own lunch. And I can try to avoid unfriendly people.


Well, the best advice I can give you is DO live in the dorms (unless you just cannot afford it). College is more than just classes - there is a whole campus life that is harder to participate in when you aren't living on campus. Looking back, my fondest memories of school were from living in the dorms. Living off campus can be fun too, but make sure you are living with a couple of people you trust. Don't have to be best friends with them, just make sure that they are going to pay their bills on time and such.

And don't sweat the food too much. You do get used to it. My trick? I took a job in the dorm cafeteria. I didn't need the extra cash so much, but it got me back in the kitchen so I was able to see what was prepared fresh and what was industrial packaged food. I can honestly say that I never once ate a pizza or a hamburger from the dorm after watching it be prepared, but I found that the chicken cordon bleu was not too bad!

Leslie, I've been writing my stories down as well. Some of my friends are trying to get me to write a book of my bad roommate experiences. I throw a few stories up on my online journal that I keep on my web site. I'll post the link after I clean a few of the stories up and do a double check for nasty language, since we have a younger crowd in here.

[triple19]

Looking back just four and a half years since I graduated from college, I can say that it was one of the best times of my life. I wouldn't trade it for all the money in the world. It was definitly one cool experiance.

What made it cool for me was most of the classes I took, the friends I made, the experiances I had, and of course the parties and footbal games.

Was it carefree? Not as much as I wish it could have been. I had bills, homework, grades, and a GPA to worry about.

Speaking of homework, I too agree that many of my proffessors seemed to wait until the week before final exams to dump a whole mess of assignments and papers on me. Writing a 10 page paper and studying for an exam in a weekend was not fun.

What was fun was dorm life. I lived on campus in the dorms and at the on-campus student apartments.I have more than a few roomate tales.(Anyone who has attended college has a few of 'em) I've had some good roomates,some bad roomates, and a couple of roomates-from-hell. But on the other hand, I made a lot of great friends thru the dorms, and I'm still in contact with a few of them.

As for dorm food, I agree that at my college,it wasn't the greatest. I learned to deal with it by just cooking at home, very convienent and cheap when you live in an on campus apararment.

FOr those of you who are reading this
board and are thinking about whether or not to go to college, definitly GO. You'll learn a lot about yourself, the world, and you'll have a blast. You may have a lot of college loans to pay off later, but you'll never regret the experiance.

[This message has been edited by triple19 (edited 05-23-2001).]

[This message has been edited by triple19 (edited 05-23-2001).]