Four Crossed Logs: College oddities turn commonalities

Those of us who have been in college long enough (roughly a year or so) have grown accustomed to many incidences or commonalities, whether they’re pretty normal, like seeing students cram for exams at the last minute, or they’re just way off in left field bizarre, like having a student create a class bingo game that dictates to what the professor says or does.

Here is a list of some pretty common incidents I have become accustomed to while in college.

Everyone starts off the year with a pack of pencils, at least two black and two blue ink pens, and a giant eraser for those Scantron days. The funny thing is, we get a month into the semester and we’re down to just one pencil and the rest of the supplies are just gone, off into some dark hole only found in our vehicles. And by the end of semester we’re needing to borrow a pencil every day.
There is almost always seems to be a professor or two who either rides their bike to class (no not the cool Harley-Davidson kind) or roles in on skates to class every day.
Every class has that one person who responds to everything on every subject during class. The discussion could be about hangnails and this person will already have a dissertation ready to go all about hangnails. These people need to be gagged. Seriously, shut up!
There always seems to be this annoying little group of people who find it necessary to start a game of Humans v Zombies. Okay, the idea of this game going campus wide sounds reasonable for an extended amount of time and it can be quite entertaining watching a bunch of 18- to 25-year-olds (with the occasional math teacher who lives with his 12 cats) running around playing this game as if they’re on Survivor. When the game runs on for weeks and months, it’s time to seek help.
And to that one guy who plays that loud, obnoxious ‘thump-thump’ rap music, please role up your windows and turn it off. No one cares, bro. (I’m talking to myself here.)
You might have that one professor who always shows up 20 minutes late, out of breath, with some amazing story how his dog ran out in the middle the highway and a pterodactyl swooped down and claimed the dog for its lunch and how he had to run bare foot in his pajamas, climbed the Empire State building and jumped onto the pterodactyl’s back, snapped its neck and managed to grab the dog, slide down the side of the building and land on his feet with no scratches and just managed to make it to class only to let us leave right away. Slight exaggeration.
The way people dress in college is kind of ridiculous. There are the girls who wear their pajamas every day — it’s not naptime sweetheart. The girls who dress like they’re an escort for a pro ball player — seriously, Russell Wilson and Tom Brady don’t go here. There are always the guys who look as if they’re coming straight from the farm; I guess that’s fine, they literally might be coming from the farm. Then you have the coolest kids you’ll ever meet that are still rocking their favorite superhero attire; Batman for life! There’s the avid sports fans who only wear the same five shirts with some sports teams logo plastered all of over it; guilty as charged. There’s the guys who dress like some preppy snob (slick polo’s with popped collars and short khaki shorts) who claim their father is a lawyer, God bless the girls who manage to wear booty shorts everyday… and then there’s the gym nuts who dress as if they just came from the gym and are so pumped for more lifting they stay dressed that way so they can go back to the gym and pump some more iron, hoo-ah!
I still can’t believe, there are still people who play the Pokémon and Yu-gi-oh card games just like they’re still in Middle School; might be time to grow up a little. I mean no harsh judgments coming from me, I was that nerdy kid in sixth and seventh grade who wasted all my money and my parents money on that crap, but I eventually grew out of it, but hey if you still play those games and you don’t care what other think, then by all means go nuts my friends.
Isn’t there always that one professor who takes the attendance way too seriously? I understand it being part of your job to take attendance and to make it imperative that your students attend regularly, but when we’re out sick, the last thing we want to do is get a doctor’s note to excuse us for being out. Or if we’re in a family crisis situation and we need to make plans for a funeral and the only way to excuse us from missing class is to bring proof (obituary or a funeral bulletin) that we actually missed class because we had a death in the family, that’s extreme. I’m no faculty member, but I think a simple email or text will suffice. If you’re concerned with us missing class too many times on account of being sick or having a family emergency, that really should be important if we’re using that excuse on a regular basis. Most professors are pretty chill though and the simple email or text works just fine. For those professors, I salute you.