The Undergrads Are Back

Well, Wednesday was the first day of classes (quarter system, hence, oddness, but that's another post). The most noticeable change between this week and last week is that the undergrads are back. The only upside of this I can see is that now the restaurants near campus will once again have reasonable operating hours; on the other hand, now there will be hordes of people at them as well ...

The astronomy department here is situated on the top floor of one of the chemistry buildings. One the first floor is a little coffee stand that also serves cold sandwiches and pastries. There are 40,000 goddamn undergrads at this school, and I swear, at certain times of day (like noon) they are all on the first floor, milling around the elevator. And then they look confused when the elevator doors open and people want to, you know, get out?

Most of them manage being lost and confused without actually moving, but some of them need a little nudge. These are the ones you find on the stairwell between the second and third floors looking for the basement (it's completely irrelevant that there are no classrooms above the 2nd floor, by the way). Or they wander into an office on the fourth floor (that no one can find if they are looking for it) trying to find a room in a different building.

Then there's the girl who visited our theoretical spectroscopy class this week. It's about one minute before the bell rings (yes, we have bells; yes, this is a "real college"; yes, it's demeaning; yes, I jump about ten feet every time it goes off and I'm standing near it; apparently a past president was a former high school principal and the university has never quite recovered). The professor is standing there at the front of the room, you know, in front of the chalkboard, talking about the densities and temperatures of tokamaks and the broad line regions of active galactic nuclei. And this girl, the type with the long hair that she probably spent an hour that morning trying to make look "natural," with the jeans that ride just a little too low and the shirt that's just a little too tight, walks in, completely oblivious to the fact that there's this man talking. "Hi guys," she says, smacking her gum. And she sits down on the far side of the room ... and right around then, the professor is done speaking (he had successfully completely ignored her entrance), and so we all get up and leave. She looks flabbergasted, like she can't figure out why we're all getting up and leaving ...

Then there are the ones who want me to join their clubs or sign their petitions or whatever the hell else it is they're trying to do. And I can't help but laugh when I'm just walking along, minding my own business, and someone comes up to me and asks if I want to enter to win $25,000 for grad school...