Other than the fact it’s in Boston, I had **Student Driver’s ** experience.
It was in Fairbanks, Alaska. 'Nuff said.
I really shouldn’t complain… I got a full scholarship plus stipend for 4 years, and met people who I’m still friends with today.
But hey, what the hell. 
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Commuter campus/no dorms. Which meant I was stuck at home when I desperately wanted to be getting out. My brother was a huge problem; we actually had government agents come to our house after he derailed a (non-passenger) train. Not exactly easy on your concentration. Lots of yelling.
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Awful psych program (which, oddly enough, happened to be my major). I swear, they should meet with students in all 3000-4000 level psych classes and say, “You know you have to go on and get at least a Masters right?” I was clueless, ended up burning out on psych (but still finishing my 4-year degree) and working at a grocery store for 2 years.
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Campus never closed for snow/ice. This would not be so funny, if we were not in the middle of the frickin’ midwestern U.S., and sometimes the local residential university would close and we wouldn’t. Let me get this straight - the kids at the school that actually has dorms don’t have to go to class - but we, who have to drive/walk/take a bus in this obscenely dangerous weather do have to go to class? Seriously?
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University focus on business degrees. Yes, I know they’re useful. Yes, I know they’re a big money-maker. But it’s really hard to not feel like a second-class citizen when the college was (seemingly) putting a lot of time/effort/money into business degrees - and not your major. Bleah.
They took away my major, a BUSINESS major, and didn’t bother to tell me. I seriously feel fucked over by my dumbass advisor.
My cousin goes to St. Xavier in Chicago and she hated the food there, and its cost. her meal plan ran out a month before the semester ended. She comes to see her aunt and cousins and she would take leftover holiday dinner after unloading. My favorite quote from her “I could get better food being homeless than I get at St. Xavier”
I didn’t much enjoy the library at my college because I could hear every idiot on their cellphone as it was a dippy open-plan airy thing. 3 floors and the sounds carried to every level. Every asshole and all their stupid, annoying, twerpy-chirpy godawful ringtones could be heard clearly from anywhere. One fine day some thundertwat brought their roast beef sandwich and made the whole library smell like a picnic.
Does that mean that the school phased out the major or you somehow got dropped from it?
I liked it fine while I was there, but in retrospect my university was way too big. I forged personal connections with some faculty members and made friends, but there was just no way for them to mandate any sort of personal attention for students, which makes a big difference even for good students.
I can’t really blame the University for this but all the nearby flats were cold, run-down and hideously expensive (with landlords insisting on 12 month leases even though we only needed them for about 9 months).
Oh and we had none of the spoon feeding that students expect these days, just a book list or course readings and a library, no such things as all powerpoints online etc etc.
And I probably should have dialled back the drinking a bit.
Yes, I meant adjunct. Associate, assistant, adjunct, they all kind of blend together if you’re not on the academic track (even though I know they are very important to the people trying to get paid).
Anyway, this thread has knocked loose a few more criticisms from me. Minimal academic guidance, very little career help, and fairly large classes with little interaction with the faculty.
But looking at some of the other complaints, I think I made a pretty good choice for me.
A friend of mine was led to believe he could get a dual major by his idiot advisor. Near graduation, idiot advisor left town. Replacement advisor advised him that he could only get a major/minor and he could have achieved this without a few difficult classes (organic chem 1 & 2, biochem).
My college was very homogeneous. And that ‘geneous’ mostly consisted of white, upper middle class frat guys and sorority girls from NY, NJ, PA and CT. It also somehow managed to combine the elitism of an Ivy League school with the moronic drunkenness of a state college.
Not that it particularly sucked, but in retrospect, I do feel it fostered a sort of conformist mentality as it prepared it’s students to join the ranks of corporate middle management.
I went to Penn State.
Undergrad and Grad school at Stanford University in the mid 80’s. I am not picky when it comes to food but there was a reason that PB&J sandwiches and Ramen noodles were a staple of our diets. Our student house was named after an early missonaryand it looked like the friar himself built it.
Still, I have nothing but good memories. 
No, the school phased it out. Just flat out doesn’t offer it anymore.
Isn’t there any university that doesn’t have parking problems? At Cal-Berkeley, it was made worse by the fact that about half of the classes require you to walk uphill. When I went (early 1980s), only two people had their own parking spots on campus - and only because they had just won Nobel prizes (and even then, one of them had to wait until somebody else died before he got his spot). It wasn’t just the on-campus parking that was bad, either; since the university is located near a subway station, a lot of commuters’ cars line the streets.
The other main problem (well, other than the fact that tuition went up 30% one year, and that was after a 10% increase) was, the dormitories are all located somewhere in the vicinity of People’s Park.
Una, I’m so sorry that happened to you. I’ll never understand how schools can get so worked up over the athletics that they neglect the academics.
Well, honestly, I can see why, since it rakes money in, but it doesn’t stop me from thinking it’s just pathetic.
<rant> If it weren’t for my major–one of the only schools in the country with this particular undergrad degree–I would be much more unhappy here. I can say that I do love my professors and learning about my field, at least. It offsets the rants I have about parking, bureaucratic nonsense, and the worshipping of sports that all make me stop and wonder sometimes about why I chose to come here. Gah. I can say that I’m lucky I can go here though and at least get a degree, since very few from where I’m from have one. </end rant>
Our cafeteria food was pretty awful. Edible, usually, but…uh, that should go without saying.
Most complaints stemmed from the mixed blessing of it being an extremely small college. There’s inevitable drama when you have such a tiny student body, for one (and if you follow the suggestions of not dating anyone in your dorm or who you have 2+ classes with, that rules out a lot of people). The (one) coffee shop on campus was open terrible hours, because there just wasn’t the revenue to keep it open. There wasn’t a whole lot to do on campus, because there’s not the student body to support tons of activities.
Oh, and there was the brief period my…sophomore year I think? When for about three months my floor was without hot water maybe 85% of the time.
Oh, and the year that the residential life director decided to have monthly fire drills…at 4 or 5 AM. That one went over well. (He did eventually learn to stock up the nearest common room with donuts and coffee for us, though, so I can’t really complain about that one. Tiny schools aren’t all that bad.)
Oh, and the cost kinda sucked.
Zero regrets, though.
I had a fake professor. Although, that could have happened anywhere.
His name was “Willy Zeno”, which always made me go :dubious:.
Just before the term was over, he disappeared in the night WITH all his paperwork. We never found out what happened to him, and the school had to throw a substitute prof at us and give us a grade in two weeks time. :rolleyes:
Nothing’s changed unfortunately.
There is/was a Pitt football player in 2008 that was fond of using an elaborate coat hanger to stick under doors and un-deadbolt them (pulling once on the handle un-deadbolted a door, the second time opened it). He would then steal the valuable contents, such as laptops, stereos, xboxes and ps3’s.
He was caught in the act by several students, who turned him into a friend of mine (an RA, or dorm parent), who took the students and herself to campus police to file a report.
Funny, but no charges were brought against him, the stolen items not returned, no eligibility stripped, no student judicial hearing, he continued on with his daily life as if nothing happened.
There are more serious incidents that I can’t go into. A pattern of disgusting behavior on behalf of the administration and the activity groups they back and support monetarily.
I saw tons of Facebook posts after the PSU debacle, being all “hail to pitt! we’re the shit”. I can honestly say that I would not be the least bit surprised if something similar happens at Pitt. The culture is that of hyper-favoritism toward sacred cow groups, including athletes, violence-advocating left-wing groups and the student publications.
This is the same school that routinely sends people to a judicial hearing for bringing an un-lidded coffee cup into the library.
I wouldn’t send my own kid there unless they were in the engineering school, philosophy or were going free (and had no equivalent options).
Edit: Campp touched on something I’d previously forgotten – several professors are hired – and then given tenure – with severe mental issues. Either that or severe laziness, I’m not sure which, but they’re called personal reasons and mental issues by the administration and their superiors. They drop off the face of the earth 2-4 weeks before the end of the semester, resulting in a “substitute” and an A for every student.
I had few problems with teachers (there’s always one…) or other students, so overall I count my college experiences as good.
Junior high sucked, high school was better, college was great, in terms of classes and social stuff. But you can always find something to complain about.
I attended UWSP (University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point) in the early 80’s. It was a bit of a ‘suitcase school’ in that many of the students lived close enough that they would constantly go home for the weekends. This meant that if you stayed on campus, you had to have different friends for the week and for the weekends. It was irritating at first until you realized that your weekend friends were much more fun to hang around with and just focused on studying during the week while ignoring the homebodies. Eventually, you just moved off-campus with some weekend friends and everything was cool.