Blog 3: Things I Won't Miss About College, A List.

Blog 3: Things I Won’t Miss About College, A List.

5: Parking. Given, in a community college this isn’t as big of an issue as students at UT might encounter. Even so, at times, it was more than a hassle to find a proper place to park. And apparently, a somewhat risky venture altogether—a fact I discovered last semester when returning from lunch with friends. We saw dark smoke billowing from the direction of the school. “The school’s on fire!” my friend joked. “It’s probably just something the culinary class is doing,” I conjectured. Turned out, a pickup truck had exploded and burst into high, wild flames. Before the fire department arrived to stop the conflagration, several surrounding cars were damaged to the point that they had to be towed away.  There was broken glass and other debris everywhere. It was great news for me as Editor-in-Chief of The Pellissippi Press at the time (literally, great news), but not so fantastic for other members of the student population, I’ll wager. I was fairly wary of the campus parking lots from that point on, I’ll admit.

4: Freezing/Sweating profusely between every class…or IN every class. Whether it was a problem with thermostatic control that made classrooms stifling hot/icebox cold, or having to walk from building to building through rain, snow, sleet, hail, or blistering sun—it was rarely (if ever) a reasonable temperature.

3: Narrow stairways. There’s nothing worse than rushing up the stairs to class first thing in the morning and having to wedge yourself and your giant book bag into a tiny corner on the landing to avoid being crushed by a big fat guy wobbling slowly down. Of course, hurrying up 3 flights of stairs with at least 20 pounds of books is not very fun in and of itself.

2: Apathy. Now I will admit I wasn’t always the model student. Nor was I passionate about every class. And yet, the rampant lack of concern regarding every aspect of education and life flooded the halls with so languorous a presence that I’m not sure how we all stayed awake. It seemed oppressive enough to lull us into an enchanted sleep like that of Sleeping Beauty’s kingdom after she pricked her finger on the spindle. It’s my excuse for the (obviously infrequent) nappi—I mean, eye-resting I did in my semesters at Pellissippi State. The disinterested even filtered through some of the professors into students already embalmed as part of the “whatever” generation—a group that goes with the flow to a damnable extent. It was rare that an engaging discussion occurred in most classes.

1: Ignorance. You’d think that once people have moved to forms of higher education, they would have at least a little knowledge under their belts. And yet I was often shocked at the complete (excuse this term) willful retardation of so many of my peers. I recall being particularly struck by this while peer editing for an English Composition class. I am, at heart, an editing fanatic. I am not terribly critical as some artists are, but I give good instruction and take note of errors. I was reviewing a girl’s essay and found that not only were the paragraphs short, punctuation awkward, and formatting amiss, but the paper illustrated a complete

lack of organization. Rather than following the classic format of a formal essay; which includes a strong introduction with a thesis statement, followed immediately by three body paragraphs (each devoted solely to one of the three thesis points), and then a conclusion that restates the thesis and makes a compelling general point to close; this girl decided to implement her own method, guided by the philosophy (and I quote) “There is creativity in writing”—a phrase which here means “Any sense of either grammar or coherence is optional.” (And yes, I realize—if you have not—that sentence was both wordy and probably ill-punctuated, which is ironic. But it had to be done for ranting’s sake.) I wasn’t even sure what her main idea was, honestly. As kindly as I could, I corrected about 60% of the spelling/comma errors before giving up and writing: “I see that you may have some very good points here, but you might stick to traditional form so that they become more clear. Keep supporting arguments with the claims they support.” The girl became outraged. Clearly, I had it out for her. I mean, my words had been so scathingly cruel! She wrote a note on the editing form saying: “I can muck up all the rules of English if I want, you wapplegowzer! I is way smarter than you is could ever condescend to be. So if you don’t be liking my papers don’t be reading it.” Of course…I may have paraphrased a little just now. Another instance in which a fellow student graded my paper afforded me the opportunity to receive some stellar advice. “Don’t use such big words. I’m not really sure what you were trying to say.” Oh, I’m sorry, little buddy. I thought we were taking a college-level English course. No? This is elementary school? Hm. Must’ve gotten my wires crossed.  

…I’m not bitter about all that money I spent on “higher education” at all…haha.