My Weekly Rant !!

October 31st '98

Well, I figured that seeing as I have been back in the saddle as it were for a while now, I should get off of my saddle sore derriere and write another rant. Once again I thought I had no material, but just being around the University gives me so much material that I have it coming out of every pore !! Nice image eh ??
Anyway, I figured that for my new Rant, I would let you into the life of a student, the problems, and such. It’s been done before, and probably by more skilled people, but it never stopped anyone else, so why should I let it stop me ?? Exactly !!
My first whinge is about the general set up of the University. Now we have been back a few weeks and yet not everyone on my law course has the necessary books in order to do our studies adequately. Now we all know how much books cost, but this is not the problem, now the problem is the book shop. Somehow, it seems that the law bookshop, as that is what it is, never seems to have the law books we need. How can this be ?? They are told which books we will be needing to study this year, yet they always seem to have every other book on the subject. This calls for the thinking student to cunningly place an order for a necessary book, fooling aforementioned student into a complete false sense of security. How can it be that I ordered a book, a shipment of books came in, my friend walked into the shop and plucked one book off of the shelf, yet I do not have a reserved book ?? Major screwup anyone ?? In the immortal words of Homer J. Simpson, *DOH*!!
This not being enough to upset the finely balanced typical student, then comes the buses. The buses are university buses, run, it would seem, by the university. Therefore it would seem like a simple assumption to believe that they would benefit the students would it not ?? Perhaps. After the debacle of last year, it seemed like it could not get worse. My campus is about 8 miles from the main campus of the University, forcing us to either provide our own transportation or place our trust and devotion in the supreme being known as the University bus. Some *genius* last year managed to timetable buses running at 59 minutes past every hour, which would be fine except our lessons were timetabled in hourly blocks, so you could rest assured, safe in the knowledge that on getting out of a lecture or seminar, the bus would have departed and you have to wait for the next bus, should it come. Even I, being a lowly student can see the minor flaw in this scheduling.
Things were looking up, this year the buses run at about 5 past the hour, making it more of a sport to be out of the building before the bus arrives. However this is still difficult as the buses are reliably unreliable. They can come whenever they want, at any interval, and no one knows when this will be. Just the other day, the bus I was waiting for to take me into my lectures was cancelled. No one was informed, and the group of students stood like lemmings at the stop loyally waiting for the bus just looked stupid. *DOH* anyone ??
This would all be fine except that there are no parking spaces around the law campus unless you are rich or own a police car, taxis are too expensive, and hitch hiking just doesn’t bear thinking about !
However there are the good points. The house that I live in is nice, although everyone has reached a breaking point and the dreaded *cleaning roster* has come into effect, just how much luck that enjoys we’ll just have to wait and see !!
Then there is the students union. Every Wednesday and Friday we have arranged nights. As you can imagine, Saturday is Halloween, lots of ghouls will be there, as well as people dressed up !! ;0) However we have had our share of incidents, including the legendary double fire alarm which sparked off rumours of too many tickets being sold, so the fire alarm was started to get the undevoted to leave and thus make the safety of everyone else little bit more likely. Like I said, just a rumour !!
However University life is fun, and cannot be knocked, well not much. The beer is cheap, and the nights are fun. There is even a rumour that B*witched (another girl band for all of you that have yet to hear of them!!) are coming to our Ball, might make that worth a visit !! ;0)
Anyway, that’s enough of me, stay tuned for a more cheerful and upbeat Rant as soon as I can think of something, keep checking back and stay well !!

Darren ;0)