Universital Truths

One of the reasons I chose Columbia for graduate school is because it's so different from Cal Poly. One is on the West Coast, the other's on the East. One is public, the other is private. One is incredibly diverse, the other has a higher concentration of white people than a Dave Matthews Band concert. But in spite of these differences and countless others I decided not to bore you with, I find more and more things that are exactly the same at both schools every day. Since the schools are about as different as two universities in the United States can be, I've decided that these things must be true at every university, everywhere, ever. "Universital Truths," if you will.

The first of these truths is that every university has to have sleazy salesmen peddling posters and credit cards. To me, this made far more sense at a school like Cal Poly, where the student population is almost all undergrads and therefore the freshman are plentiful. There's clearly a buck to be made off of the newbies who want to make their dorm rooms their own by buying any four of the same eleven posters that all of their peers are buying. But Columbia is primarily graduate students, and surely by the time a guy finishes his undergrad degree he already has a poster of Bob Marley, an Andy Warhol painting, "The Kiss," and either Fight Club or The Boondock Saints. And surely every graduating woman already has her hands on posters of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, Starry Night, and at least one shirtless firefighter. So where's the demand? And as far as the credit cards go, the same problem exists. Sure, there's a few freshies whose parents are footing the bill (no shame in that, I was fortunate enough to have my 'rents pay for my undergrad... thanks again!) and wouldn't mind running up some debt for kicks and giggles, but is the "you need to build your credit" sales pitch really going to work on grad students? I somehow think that most of us realize that with the tens of thousands in debt we're going to graduate with, lunches and some occasional Yankees tickets on plastic aren't going to be the difference between getting approved and denied for a mortgage.

The next truth I noticed was about elevators. The ones for lazy people, not the ones for short people. As you may have noticed that last time you were in one, they have inspection reports indicating that they have passed some sort of test and have been deemed safe until a certain expiration date shown. At Cal Poly the expiration dates were generally a year or two before the current date. At Columbia I've yet to see one that expired more recently than 2002. Enough said.

Finally, and most unfortunately, there is "that guy." Now, "that guy" could mean a number of people, but I'm referring to a specific one: question guy. You know the type, that guy who shows up in class and thinks he's smarter than everyone else (probably because nobody else bothers to speak up in class), so he decides to let everyone else know how smart he is. But he doesn't want to look like he's showing off, so puts it in the form of the question. In physics, it sounds like "But Dr. Vandelay, that doesn't account for the curvature of the earth." I'm getting irritated just thinking about it, so I'm going to stop.

There's more of course. Other ways students act, facilities things, and the like, but I've covered the most interesting. If you can't make it to a real college, buy a poster, get into debt, risk your life, and hang out with an egotistical jerk (send me an email if you can't find one), and you'll get most of the experience.