Not A Good Day

Like an anxious teenager, I have been planning and thinking about the first day of the semester from the moment summer school ended. Ordering books, gathering supplies, plotting parking strategies, fine tuning the schedule; yes, I have been thinking about this day for awhile.

Of the six classes I’m enrolled in, the two that I know the least about fall on Tuesday, which also happens to be the first day of this semester (why not Monday, I ask?): the Biology lab, a 3 hour humdinger that starts at 10:30 AM and rolls through the lunch hour, followed 90 minutes later by my Spanish conversation class (an option, apparently, but not for me).

As an enthusiastic, motivated student, I was parked at the locked door of the lab 15 minutes early. Gradually, the hallway collected a large number of fellow students also waiting on this class. A scientist friend of mine told me, weeks ago, that when she (as a grad student) taught the lab they did not start until the second week. I received no notice or advisement of any kind in regard to that notion, nor, apparently, did the other students. And so, 30 minutes later, we disbanded until next week. Back into the heat I went.

With 4 hours to kill, it was back to the house, back to the calculus review, and back across the river.

At 2:45 I was, again, parked in front of a locked door. So were some other students. Again, a 30 minute loiter, until, in disgust, I departed the building. 0 for 2.

After a walk from literally one end of the campus to the other, I arrived at the Spanish department. The department secretary haughtily informed this (stupid, old) man that the conversation class never meets in the first week of class. Again, in my scouring of ALL pre-class communications, schedules, et cetera, NO WHERE was this information disseminated.

These two classes apparently operate on long established customs that pre-date even my decades long, storied academic life.

Back into the heat of a now unbearable afternoon, facing yet another trudge across campus to a parking spot carefully selected so as to reduce the possibility of a neighborhood parking violation ($25, no appeal if you are a student, PERIOD!), thinking about all the time wasted by my attempt to be a good student wanting just to get the semester started on the right foot.

Instead, I got a bellyfull of frustration, a near attack of heat stroke, and wasted about 4 hours that I could have spent on calculus. Outraged, I tell ya, outraged!!!!!!