Put the "Ug" back in "August"
I like reading the online journals of the Class of '09, those young spring chickens getting ready to go to school, especially the ones by Chicago kids who are ripe for complaints about "everyone is leaving except for me." All of them are worried about placement exams, which in hindsight seem absolutely inconsequential. But I remember being anxious about them too, probably because placement exams were the first chance you got to prove yourself in college. Either that, or they would provide the first indicator that you weren't cut out for higher education. When it came time for the tests, I found that my calculus skills were still fresh, but my French had way passed its expiration date. Conjugating French verbs was like re-animating dead corpses. I also finished the swim test without vomiting, successfully earning college credit for the ability to swim a distance of two swimming pools forward and back, which is probably the farthest any student will get in Lake Michigan before they freeze to death.
Yes, placement tests are familiar. However, I'm glad that I never mixed myself up in those weird AIM friendships with random UChicago students that seemed so common during the summer. The people having conversations about Nietzsche and truth are just fronting. And yes, I do too know what that word means. The only concern I shared with strangers was whether I should buy dryer sheets before or after I get to school.
All in all, however, these little gippers give me a good nostalgia buzz. However, I should never want to relive Move-In Day ever again.
Unfortunately, I sort of had to yesterday when I helped my little sister move into her dorm at UGA. First of all, if you're only briefly passing through Athens like I usually do, your impression of the campus is that the university is just a facade for Parking Services, which is the real means and ends of the school. My sister, who is bringing my old car to school, got a parking map which displays the entire campus cut up into all species of gerrymandered parking zones of all colors and textures. Apparently there are so many rules and restrictions on where to park your car, and restrictions that are regularly enforced, that even leaving a stalled car for more than five minutes in a non-designated lot will get you towed. The Athens parking police are like some Orwellian thought police, who will get you if you even CONSIDER parking in the S23 pink zone or the E05 striped zone. Now I recall that whenever I make plans for an Athens visit, I usually ask a friend, "So where should I park," and they would always fall quiet, cough into the phone, and whisper, "I can't talk about it now, this isn't a secure line."
All these parking rules become void, of course, on GAME DAY. On GAME DAY, students are required to push their cars into the nearby Oconee river so that out-of-town SEC fans can move into a tiny, tiny amount of prized Athens asphalt.
So there was a big to-do about getting my sister her parking permit and finding her appropriate zone, which is about 2 miles from her dorm anyway. The rest of move-in day, however, was eerily familiar to my own. There's not a word to describe the uncomfortable level of awkwardness and anxiety that move-in day brings, but it's easy to understand. Students are experiencing their biggest milestone since the first day of kindergarten. Parents are experiencing the milestone they've been dreading since the first day of kindergarten. Adrenalin is pumping, endorphins are stymied, and to top it off, heavy boxes and a few flights of stairs are thrown in. That's one angsty molotov cocktail.
I remember by the time my move-in day was finished, after the house meeting and my parents leaving and that damn class picture we took with the sun in our eyes, I just wanted to make my bed, crawl into it, and sleep til grad school. Which was probably the preferable idea considering what happened with my roommate Jeremy, who chose the "fun night in the city!" with one of the upperclassmen that quickly turned into a "how do we ditch the drunk upperclassmen and find our way back home? is a taxi too expensive? night."
Anyway, at UGA I tried to play the experienced upperclassmen, but the crippling awkwardness of move-in day undermined my confidence. I started to worry that people were mistaking me for a freshman. Whether or not they assumed this, I wanted to shake every person I passed and say to them, "Don't you judge me! I've been through this before! I'm stronger now, do you hear me? I'm stronger!"
So I really felt for my sister. But then, halfway into the day, she got a call from a high school friend who used to carpool with us to Milton, who wanted to meet up later that day. That's right. My sister, along with everyone else from Milton attending UGA, already knows like fifty gazillion people at Georgia. It's not High School II like the way some people say it is, but you (UGA) guys at least have a failsafe cache of acquaintances. In the pre-Facebook days, I had to start from scratch, already lagging behind the kids who had made friends online debating Nietzsche and truth.
And I'm stronger now, hear? Just don't make me go back there, man.
I like reading the online journals of the Class of '09, those young spring chickens getting ready to go to school, especially the ones by Chicago kids who are ripe for complaints about "everyone is leaving except for me." All of them are worried about placement exams, which in hindsight seem absolutely inconsequential. But I remember being anxious about them too, probably because placement exams were the first chance you got to prove yourself in college. Either that, or they would provide the first indicator that you weren't cut out for higher education. When it came time for the tests, I found that my calculus skills were still fresh, but my French had way passed its expiration date. Conjugating French verbs was like re-animating dead corpses. I also finished the swim test without vomiting, successfully earning college credit for the ability to swim a distance of two swimming pools forward and back, which is probably the farthest any student will get in Lake Michigan before they freeze to death.
Yes, placement tests are familiar. However, I'm glad that I never mixed myself up in those weird AIM friendships with random UChicago students that seemed so common during the summer. The people having conversations about Nietzsche and truth are just fronting. And yes, I do too know what that word means. The only concern I shared with strangers was whether I should buy dryer sheets before or after I get to school.
All in all, however, these little gippers give me a good nostalgia buzz. However, I should never want to relive Move-In Day ever again.
Unfortunately, I sort of had to yesterday when I helped my little sister move into her dorm at UGA. First of all, if you're only briefly passing through Athens like I usually do, your impression of the campus is that the university is just a facade for Parking Services, which is the real means and ends of the school. My sister, who is bringing my old car to school, got a parking map which displays the entire campus cut up into all species of gerrymandered parking zones of all colors and textures. Apparently there are so many rules and restrictions on where to park your car, and restrictions that are regularly enforced, that even leaving a stalled car for more than five minutes in a non-designated lot will get you towed. The Athens parking police are like some Orwellian thought police, who will get you if you even CONSIDER parking in the S23 pink zone or the E05 striped zone. Now I recall that whenever I make plans for an Athens visit, I usually ask a friend, "So where should I park," and they would always fall quiet, cough into the phone, and whisper, "I can't talk about it now, this isn't a secure line."
All these parking rules become void, of course, on GAME DAY. On GAME DAY, students are required to push their cars into the nearby Oconee river so that out-of-town SEC fans can move into a tiny, tiny amount of prized Athens asphalt.
So there was a big to-do about getting my sister her parking permit and finding her appropriate zone, which is about 2 miles from her dorm anyway. The rest of move-in day, however, was eerily familiar to my own. There's not a word to describe the uncomfortable level of awkwardness and anxiety that move-in day brings, but it's easy to understand. Students are experiencing their biggest milestone since the first day of kindergarten. Parents are experiencing the milestone they've been dreading since the first day of kindergarten. Adrenalin is pumping, endorphins are stymied, and to top it off, heavy boxes and a few flights of stairs are thrown in. That's one angsty molotov cocktail.
I remember by the time my move-in day was finished, after the house meeting and my parents leaving and that damn class picture we took with the sun in our eyes, I just wanted to make my bed, crawl into it, and sleep til grad school. Which was probably the preferable idea considering what happened with my roommate Jeremy, who chose the "fun night in the city!" with one of the upperclassmen that quickly turned into a "how do we ditch the drunk upperclassmen and find our way back home? is a taxi too expensive? night."
Anyway, at UGA I tried to play the experienced upperclassmen, but the crippling awkwardness of move-in day undermined my confidence. I started to worry that people were mistaking me for a freshman. Whether or not they assumed this, I wanted to shake every person I passed and say to them, "Don't you judge me! I've been through this before! I'm stronger now, do you hear me? I'm stronger!"
So I really felt for my sister. But then, halfway into the day, she got a call from a high school friend who used to carpool with us to Milton, who wanted to meet up later that day. That's right. My sister, along with everyone else from Milton attending UGA, already knows like fifty gazillion people at Georgia. It's not High School II like the way some people say it is, but you (UGA) guys at least have a failsafe cache of acquaintances. In the pre-Facebook days, I had to start from scratch, already lagging behind the kids who had made friends online debating Nietzsche and truth.
And I'm stronger now, hear? Just don't make me go back there, man.
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