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Bureaucrats and hangovers and registrars, oh my!
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As an incoming freshman way back in 1997, I was inclined to listen to all the advice they give you in high school. I bought every required textbook. I tried to study two hours for every hour of class. I joined in class discussions. I got “involved” on campus.
Then a new millennium dawned, I turned 22, and I still was not a senior. I thought I’d be a degree holder at 21. One piece of advice I never got was that to graduate from Boise State in four years you cannot take 13 credits a semester.
So I’ve decided to create a list of helpful, realistic suggestions for incoming freshmen and sophomores for whom it’s not too late to change.
If you must drive, show up at least two hours early:
Some of you might not trust me on this, since I don’t drive to school myself. Considering I live two blocks from campus, and everyone else in my apartment complex drives to school, I only have sympathy for some people’s parking issues.
To be fair, everyone else who lives in my complex is an athlete and probably has valet parking in a secret garage/bar & grill, but it doesn’t give me much faith in our football team when our players lack the stamina to make that three block hike.
Suffice it to say: If the pope comes to Boise State and parks in a reserved lot, his ass will get towed.
If you want to gauge the difficulty of an Area III class, count the number of athletes attending:
I walked into Anatomy 101 my freshman year, thinking everybody’s got a body, how hard could it be? I soon learned that in that huge auditorium, 95 percent of the attendees were nursing majors. There was only one football player in the place. I should have gotten out while I still had the chance.
Observe the 10-day add/drop deadline:
The 10-day deadline is your god. If you’re not in the classes you want or out of the one you don’t within 10 days, the bureaucracy will make your head spin. This is particularly crucial for financial aid recipients, who told the government they would be attending full time and expect their financial compensation to reflect this full time status.
Full time means 12 credits, even if you ultimately end up with 24 past the deadline. How do I know this? Because the bastards sent me a bill for $600, and I did 15 credits last semester. Not only that, but they sent it to me months after the fact, when the last vestiges of my award were earmarked for rent and I was back to living off macaroni and cheese.
Don’t expect your professor to drop you if you never bother to show up:
I received my grade report recently and discovered an unexpected treat – an F for a class I don’t remember signing up for and never attended. I remember thinking I was going to drop the class at the beginning of the semester after seeing that “Moby Dick” was on the list of readings. The only Moby I need is the one who sings with Gwen Stefani. One would assume the professor would drop me from the roll since every class in the English department was full, and I’m sure some students wanted to add. But, it was held in the liberal arts building, and the professor probably didn’t have enough desks.
What I want to know is how this guy came to the conclusion that I deserved an F. Did he call up Miss Cleo to figure out how I would have done had I attended? Did I do a half-assed job of not attending? On the contrary, I was a natural at missing class. I deserved an A.
Credit card debt (don’t do it):
I know those free cotton T-shirts the credit card vendors give out on the Quad look mighty tempting. But those shirts will end up costing you dearly. Mine cost me $3000.
I thought managing your credit meant not spending extravagantly. Actually, they say credit cards should only be used for emergencies and major purchases. I made every mistake. I put rent on my credit card and groceries. I’m still making payments on a carton of milk from 1999.
Don’t think the nightmare’s over once you’ve maxxed out the card either. Since I’ve reached my limit, my balance has actually gone up.
Now I get friendly phone calls from the fine folks at Providian Visa. They call and check in on me more often than my mother. I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell them when what I owe is two-thirds of what I earned last year.
Take more than the bare minimum of classes:
I wish somebody had told me that I would not get out of this joint until I was 24. When my mother was 24, I was approaching five years old. I cannot get over the idea that 24 is so close to 25, and that 25 is the beginning of the end, the bold move into the second third of your life. I still haven’t seen Paris!
Do not irrevocably screw your GPA:
The BSU GPA will haunt you forever. They said that about high school, and I ignored them, and that’s why I’m here. If you must drop out of school, do so at the end of the semester, so you’re not left with five F’s that will follow you when you decide to return to school in your 30s. Now we have a lovely new grade replacement policy, so if you flunk a class you can retake it with another professor. In the old days, we had to resort to idle threats, bribery or blackmail.
Do not drink too much the night before a morning class:
This is why I flunked Shakespeare. In my heart of hearts, I know the Bard would understand.
Eat:
Eating is a necessary survival function. After four years at work-study wages, I’m thinner than the plot of “Freddy Got Fingered.” Legend has it a foreign exchange student at BSU once died because he subsisted on nothing but Ramen noodles. Somebody did once prove that humans could live on beer, but only for a few days.
The Centers for Disease Control recently linked cheap beer prices with gonorrhea:
Think twice before putting down the bottles of Heineken and picking up the 12 pack cans of Milwaukee’s Best. They don’t call it “the beast” for nothing.
Sean C. Hayes