People often ask me how I feel about Tech. For some reason, sophomores in high school feel an undying need to find out what living on a college campus is like. The mothers and fathers trying to “learn my secrets” (there are none) or high school seniors trying to see where on their college list our beloved school should go. However, when these interrogations occur, only one word comes to mind: uncertain. The overarching theme of the Tech experience.
There is no feeling quite like drowning in the confusion that is Tech’s information pipeline.
How do I find my class registration time ticket? Log into an extremely inefficient and flaky online system and search until you come across a time that may or may not be the correct one.
How do you make an appointment with CARE, Tech’s mental health service? Call them, get put on hold, and pray they get back to you. Of course, there is always my personal favorite: the “Please allow us to inconvenience you with minimal notice” email.
Last November, Tech students were blessed with an email stating the following: “Due to an increase in Georgia Tech’s enrollment for first-year students, there will be fewer on-campus bed spaces available for upper-classmen students in the 2022-23 academic year.”
What does this mean? Can returning undergraduates expect to live on-campus next year? Will the time-tickets still be distributed based on credit hours? How hard should we be panicking?
There is no way to know for sure, aside from attending a town hall which was essentially conducted in secret.
On the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, students of North Avenue Apartments were kindly informed that there would be no water for the entirety of the day, specifically from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., squashing any sleep-in plans and forcing students to seek other modes of restroom usage.
Of course, this was taken wonderfully by the student population since exhausted students generally love to wake up early to brush their teeth on the only school holiday between now and Spring Break.
On Jan. 20, those same students’ hard work was honored with a second water reduction, with a restriction on showering, laundry and other water-related activities. However, this was a small inconvenience compared to the mold-like substance found in some sinks and fridges. After exhausting days of walking from class to class, I am certainly not alone in my love for sitting down with a glass of murky water.
This is the reality of on-campus housing here at Tech. It is a tumultuous, arduous adventure, filled with inconsistent information, surprise shutdowns, and a little mold.
Of course, when all those parents ask me all those questions, I can’t give them this information. It’s far too negative, at least according to my friends, especially since most of us will continue to live there. After all, on-campus housing is the simplest means of living here at Tech. Therefore, I only have one solution: lie.
More specifically, I omit information aggressively. I mention the convenience of living so close to my classes, the proximity to dining halls, and the ease of all my friends living so close by. I mention the effortless method of putting in a maintenance request and the speed at which it is fulfilled.
I mention the cost-effectiveness, avoidance of utilities bills, simplicity of payment and lack of lease. Most importantly though, I do not mention the rats.