New advising measures too much - New system a burden for seniors and other random commentary

Picture this: A senior, starting the school year bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (or bleary-eyed and downcast) shows up to school looking forward to the last leg of his or her college career, only to be trapped in a Kafka-esque nightmare of bureaucratic madness and pointless red tape.

Then, imagine that it's true.

Well, maybe I'm being a bit melodramatic. After all, it's not like my life or my basic civil liberties are being threatened, at least not by the Hopkins administration. Nonetheless, as a senior, the new requirements for students to go over their progress towards meeting their graduation requirements seem somewhat onerous. In principle, I have no opposition to requiring faculty advisers to take a greater interest in how their students are doing. In too many cases, it seems to me that faculty advisers are merely a signature-acquisition way station in the path through the wilderness of course registration.

Not that this is true across the board: my adviser and I always have a productive discussion regarding my academic standing, and he keeps a running list of how far along I am with regard to completing the requirements for my major. This is good. My gripe, such as it is, is with the requirement that seniors complete the entire evaluation of their standing in September. Maybe I'm just lazy (an accusation that has been truly made many a time), but to tell the truth, between one thing and another, September is about the busiest month of the year, and it's damn near impossible to make time to do a complete evaluation of one's academic progress and then get it evaluated by everyone from one's advisor all the way up to Count West-West. It hardly seems an auspicious start to the beginning of the end of our halcyon days.

Well, to be honest, that's all there really is to say about that. I'm peeved about the bureaucracy and the short time we seniors have in which to go through it all, but I won't bore you with an exploration of the various metaphysical possibilities inherent in it. Instead:

And now for something completely different.

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Are they re-chiseling the name of the MSE Library above the door? They've had that scaffolding up for a while now, and that's about the only thing that I can think of that they might be doing up there. Oh, and by the way, a note to the staff at that fine, book-borrowing institution: I really will return that book. I just keep forgetting. Don't worry, you'll get it.

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Now, on to literature: Does anyone else think that Flannery O'Connor just can't write at all? The way I see it, her stuff's more or less trash. Either that, or it's incredibly patronizing, but I'm more inclined to think of it as cheap thrills bought with the use of absurd violence. Now, although violence isn't my favorite method for getting a story going, it certainly has it's place. Steinbeck can be violent, but his violence serves a purpose. Most of her stories come across more like snuff films.

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The new Starbucks opened Under the Dome in Levering, or so I read. New count for coffee-based business locations on campus: five. Add to that three locations immediately surrounding campus whose main business is coffee, plus the places which will give you just a plain cuppa without all the fancy stuff. Damn. Is the University really that tired?

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Plus, even with another coffee place, we still don't have a student union.

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You can get green tea in a can at the sushi bar in Levering. This should be commended, and the practice of offering it should be expanded. Wish it wasn't so pricey, though. I like my tea and all, but $1.25 is a bit steep. I guess it's imported or something, but is it too much to ask for the greatest country in the world to step up it's production of canned green tea and reduce the cost? I mean, we subsidize tobacco growers, and that kills people. Tea on the other hand, is good for you, more or less. We should subsidize that, if only to make me happy.

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One year later, and The Critic is still on at weird times. I know it was canceled by two networks, but it has Jon Lovitz, people! He's a personal hero of mine.

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If anyone else thinks Zamboni racing is a good idea, drop a line to the paper. I've always thought that would be fun to watch. Plus, it cleans the ice at the same time as it provides wholesome entertainment for the whole family. The only hitch I can see is getting rid of that slightly sketchy smell which seems to pervade all ice rinks on the planet Earth.

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Well, that's about it. Really, I promise coherence and complete trains of thought brought to an exquisitely-wrought finish that is truly a masterpiece of reasoning next week. Or soon.