Dear [college I attend]:
We’ve had our disagreements in the past, I know. You let people who don’t have any business operating blunt instruments teach 300- and 400-level classes who clearly stopped thinking in the 70s (including one of my “professors” who believed Christianity was the required religion of the State of Rome). And there are professors who, let’s face it, really shouldn’t be teaching, but they got tenure and as such they can sit on their thumbs failing people all day if they like*.
However. As you have noticed, there are over twenty-five thousand students at your school. And a fair number of them are psychology majors, since the program here has somehow escaped the mediocrity that is [college]. It is therefore a curious thing that this term you offer five sections of a class everyone must take, and one which apparently many people wait to take until their senior year.
Five sections. For a department with almost three full pages of class listings (third, I think, to the English department and possibly the math as well). Now, given your recent financial troubles (more on that later), I would think it would behoove you to have as many big sections of this class as possible (don’t want to have small sections because that’ll mean more hours for professors, which means more money spent). I would even be willing to pay for one of these big honking sections. 200 people in a stats class? Not a problem. There’s a lab, so I can ask the TA there for help, or if I really need to know something I can ask my friend Lance’s sister. She’s a psych major.
Now then. You, [college], have this delightfully irritating habit of letting people know things just a little late. When I was placed on, ah, academic leave (long story … let us say that depression got the better of me too many times), I got the letter informing me that my presence in class was not only not required but not allowed the day payment for classes was due. So if I hadn’t been one of those procrastinators I would have been alllllllllll set to go to class and I’d have gone and everything and they’d have been like “um, no … see, …” and that would have been most interesting. In a “I’m going to nearly sever your testicles from your body with egg shells and then boil them in oil while they’re still attached to your body. Dig?” way. And when I was a day late (my fault, I know, it just still pisses me off) paying for classes, you inform me roughly four days before classes start (bill was due the 14th, letter came the 22nd or so) that the courses I requested back in, oh, May or so, have been unrequested. Meaning I’m not only not registered for anything but the academic load I’d been planning for will maybe happen next term, or just not at all.
Now. Financial troubles. You, [college], have been facing hard times of late, what with … well, hard times economically in many places. So of course you’ve dropped some professors and raised tuition and admitted more students and the class size is going to be noticeably larger. And I’m glad I’m so skinny, because desks are being crammed into rooms the size of toilet bowls so that thirty students basically have to exist inside each other to have any room. Exams are going to be interesting. This has been the case since I got to [college], and from what I can tell it’s pretty much becoming SOP everywhere. And the sad thing about that is that people are probably just going to accept this as it is because there isn’t much of an alternative and not having a college degree can make it difficult to get a job that pays enough to live in this area (not that I plan to stay here. But some people do).
You also make the intelligent fiscal decision of buying some flat-screen monitors for a computer lab. Theoretically I guess you could have ordered them, like, two years ago, when you weren’t in such financial hot water, but here’s the kicker. They aren’t in Expensive Tech Lab “ordinary” students aren’t allowed to use and mostly don’t know exists. They aren’t even in Less Expensive Tech Lab I’m Still Not Allowed to Use. They’re in Grunt Lab. People who don’t know “alt-tab” and how to copy and paste without having to go through half the WP menu bar are using computers with flat screens. This is roughly the equivalent of giving a child a faberge egg and then putting said child on a swing. If you want to throw money away, why not “throw it away” on some decent customer service reps, or give it to financial aid? Or, I don’t know, squirrel it away and let it accrue interest?
A note on that, while I’m here. [college] was recently “featured” in a ranking of college based on some important things and some “we couldn’t think of other categories students cared about, so we threw in some here you won’t believe, but naive parents will love them”. Included are “parties: milk” and “students dissatisfied with financial aid”. somehow we managed to be in the top 20 in “Parties: Beer”, “Parties: scotch and soda, hold the scotch”, and
Parties: milk". And evidently, despite the majority of readership being people waiting to read the latest piece of trash from [college]'s own aspiring anti-Ann Coulter With a Penis (this guy honestly compared the Reagan years to Nazi Germany), we’re in the top ten in student newspaper. I’m thinking this is not entirely based on reality.
But the highest ranking we have is “Students Dissatisfied with Financial Aid”. Yes, that’s right, the same school that got flat-screens for what is effectively a “Don’t know how to use a computer? Come to this lab and mess with this doohickey here!” lab.
In closing, I invite you to dine from the bowels of the dead dog I got to smell yesterday while driving to class. It was a hot day, so it’s probably already filling up with delicious gasses and protein-rich, young insects. I suggest poking it hard with a stick.