Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Campus Survival Skills Part 1

Now that my class is about to graduate, a fact brought home by announcements for farewell parties all over campus, let us pretend that I am not going to rot to death in this hellhole and go over what I have learned from my almost three years here. (bitter, moi?)

Chronological order is pretty coherent, I hear. I could use some coherence in my posts, so let's start with the beginning, the initial few weeks of classes with fresh faces fellow students.

Ragging. This is Pakistan, of course you're going to get ragged! Can you avoid it? No. Just bring lots of cash to pay off your would-be tormenters. Remember, the fact that seniors are hungry is implicit. Just give them cash and they will leave you alone, for the most part.

Get connected! Get to know everyone and make a small clique of people with similar interests/personalities/hobbies/eating disorders and stick to them. The better your social skills and fake smiles, the faster you can go through the bunch and evaluate which ones are worth getting to know before they're grabbed by someone else.

Listen to everything, believe nothing. One a first day, the ratio of truth to BS is 1:100. Many will claim they know a lot more than they do, others will know a lot more than they claim. Case in question, a girl, let us call her A, claimed to be an expert in programming in C. Those that believed her and formed a group with her, ended up relying on her to bat her eyelashes at a senior to make them a suitable project for C.

Refuse to be a part of class politics. Inevitably, there will be the leaders and the followers. The leader will lead the followers on many a quest that makes no sense except to suit their own agendas. Refuse to follow, even at the expense of alienation. Accept a position of official leadership only if you don't mind putting your heart and energy into a thankless job that allows others to call upon you to wait on them hand and foot.

Do the work. There's a nasty epidemic going around where people refuse to do any work themselved. Beg, borrow, cheat or steal, it's all in a day's work when it comes to assignments/projects. If that's what gets you through, be smart enough to customize it a bit. I know a student who, despite being about to graduate, copied the enture FAQ off a website, including hyperlinks, onto a Microsoft Word document and mailed it as it is as an assignment.

Misha at Tuesday, February 15, 2005

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