YOU WILL not get your first choice or your second choice class to take Tuesday/Thursday at ten. To be honest, you probably won't get your third or fourth either.
So dig in.
Your advisor will not teach in the department in which you plan to major. You'll be lucky if your advisor even took a course in said department during his or her undergraduate education.
So dig in.
There's a lot of rhetoric at Mr. Jefferson's University about the great Virginia statesman who founded the place. There's less about the current Virginia statesmen who have refused to fund it. For more than a decade, the Virginia legislature has left the University so grossly underfunded that we rank somewhere between 55th and 65th among major public universities measured in resources, making it nothing short of a miracle that we've retained our rank between one and two measured in academic caliber. It's become so bad that the University has had to severe many of its ties to the Commonwealth with the Higher Education Restructuring Act (formerly known as the charter), passed this spring in an effort to adequately fund itself.
What does this mean to you, Mr. or Ms. Incoming First Year? It means that there aren't enough professors, and when the professors we have are teaching courses you want to take, there aren't enough TAs teaching discussion sections to accommodate you. It means that many of your classes with be in airless rooms in the laughably named New Cabell Hall, erected circa early 1950.
Guess what else? There's zero you can do about it. You can't change the amount of resources available here. It's not for lack of effort, of course, but years of unsuccessful lobbying have discouraged souls even hardier than yourself. In fact, I'll bet you my spot in Politics prof. Freedman's Public Opinion and Political Participation (I've been on the wait list since last fall) -- go ahead and try.
So what do you do?
Put your heels in the ground, make up your mind, brace yourself against the knowledge that no one is responsible for your education here but you and dig in.
Just because there aren't enough professors, classes and experienced advisors doesn't mean there aren't any. But they're not going to come to those students who sit idly by.
You'll have friends at expensive private schools who have free computers and research funding greeting them from day one, or at least so it will sound when they come home for Christmas break. Not so at the University, but there are scholarships that will making paying for your computer easier, and research grants to pursue your academic passions if you're willing to push yourself and take the time and energy to apply for them.
It would be a lie to say that behind every office door lies a friendly professor eager to shepard your young mind through the great forests of academia; much of our faculty is brilliant and accomplished but also greatly overtaxed. If you're willing to knock anyway, though, you'll almost guaranteed come across at least a few who will invite you in, take an interest, and occasionally be willing to replace the randomly assigned advisor utterly out of touch with your intended discipline.
A lot of people will tell you that you can get into any class you want if you just try hard enough. That's categorically untrue. Unless you're an Echols scholar, there are going to be an awful lot of courses you'll just have to wait on a year or two on. Look at this as an opportunity. Seek out the lower profile courses taught by newer faculty. Some will be incredible and some will be just awful, but by the time you finally enroll in your dream schedule, you'll have stretched yourself into a student far better rounded than the one you are now.
At some schools they award diplomas. At the University, we earn ours. In a month you'll crowd the Lawn facing the Rotunda, and in four years you'll return to face Cabell and say proudly that you have worn the honor of honors.
And you did it, you'll realize, because you squared your shoulders, set your heels and dug in.
Katie Cristol is a Cavalier Daily columnist. She can be reached at kcristol@cavalierdaily.com.
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