Time is of the Essence

One of the major differences I have noticed between my generation and the younger generation of the students that surround me not only at school but in jobs I’ve had in the past is a lack of respect for rules and/or authority. Accompanying this lack of respect is also a lack of personal accountability. There is a tendency among a portion of today’s youth to point fingers and deflect blame. It is similar to today’s athletes. They can’t wait to pound their chests and dance when they do the simplest of things but when they mess up, it’s because of a referee or a blown assignment by a teammate, etc..
I don’t need to continue to rehash my work experience but just to remind you, my previous college degree is in Marketing Management and my work experience lies primarily in various levels of retail, from a mere sales associate up to low level management. It is because of my experiences in retail that I have decided to drop everything and return to school. Because of the night and weekend hours, retail jobs are perfect for a college student needing extra cash flow and over the years I’ve worked with hundreds of them. Some of them have been hardworking and punctual. Most though, were lazy and unreliable.
I bring this topic up because my beloved Working Girls( http://www.work-girl.blogspot.com/ )had a post on their blog last week in which one of their bosses had decided to suddenly start enforcing attendance and punctuality policies and went about it by standing at the elevator with a stopwatch greeting employees. Although I applaud the decision to enforce punctuality, after all, if they can’t trust you to do something as simple as look at a clock and be on time, how can they trust you with difficult tasks, their methods leave a lot to be desired. You can’t be lax on policy day after day, week after week and month after month then suddenly crack the whip overnight. Especially by doing something as childish as waiting by the door with a watch.
Some of the responses that Working Girl received were shocking to me, especially considering that they were coming from adults in the professional world. A few people stated that, as long as you are doing your job, no one should care if you arrive late or leave early. To those people I offer this response, getting to work on time and completing your work day IS part of your job. If you are not doing so, guess what? You are not doing your job. Another responder asked why they should have to be on their boss’ schedule. Why? Because they are THE BOSS! That’s why. You do what they say, not the other way around.
There just seems to be this sense of entitlement with today’s youth. The same people that can’t be on time, leave early or call in sick are the same ones who threaten to quit when they are reviewed and don’t get a raise. I used to work with a kid working his way through college who would do a very minimal amount of work and when he was prodded to do more he would say something to the effect that he only got paid $8 per hour so he only did what he felt was $8 worth of work per hour. If the company wanted more work out of him, they should give him a raise. That was the mentality that many of his peers shared. They were waiting for the company to give them raises rather than earning them. I’m sure you are familiar with the saying, dress for the job you want, not the job you have. Well, that could easily be changed to, work for the wage you want, not the wage you have.
To that same effect, many of the working students that could never be on time or called in sick for every home football game or college night at the club were the same ones asking for more hours during school breaks. It just made me shake my head. A few more of my personal favorites were the people who were already late that would enter the building with breakfast, lunch or dinner, clock in and then proceed to the break room and eat while on the clock. I’m also rather fond of the women who arrive at work late and get to their desks and begin putting on their makeup. Makeup is as much a part of getting dressed as putting on socks and shoes: it should be done at home, on your time, not on our dime.
The biggest frustration was that, for many of these companies, the cost of hiring and training employees is too high to justify the termination of slackers like this. As easy as it is to find another student willing to work for low wages, consistently turning them over and training a new crop isn't cost effective so the companies put up with it and delegate the work to other, more reliable workers which, in a sense, punishes those people for being good workers. That is what drove me way. From the perspective of a sales associate, it was frustrating to have to pick up the slack of these people. I came to work on time and did my job well, why should I have had to do their jobs too? From the view of a manager it was an ongoing battle to try and have a reliable staff yet have to fight tooth and nail with Human Resources to terminate worthless individuals. Surely the negative impact they have on productivity offsets the cost of training replacements.
I don’t know where the blame lies. Whether it’s a parenting thing or because of the fact that everything is an excuse nowadays. There is a disorder and subsequent narcotic for every damn thing in the world today. If a kid daydreams he’s ADD and if he fidgets while he daydreams he’s ADHD and written a scrip for mind numbing drugs and given a free pass the rest of his life. In my day the kid was just a daydreamer who drank too much Kool-Aid and needed to come down from his sugar high.
What scares me the most about this trend is that I always thought that kids grew out of it once they entered the professional world. College kids are supposed to be flaky and uninterested, it’s part of the whole experience. But when I saw the responses over at Working Girl I realized that it may not just be a college thing, its quite possibly an epidemic.

The 8th Cirlce of Dante's Hell

Next week is the eighth week of the semester, midterm if you prefer. Undoubtedly, college students nationwide will be doing their part to keep Starbucks’ profits up. Those who prefer a cold, carbonated beverage will be keeping the Red Bull vendors busy as well. Midterm exams, presentations and papers are common this time of year: thanks to the evil professors that scheme to have them on the same days. Unbeknownst to those professors, there is a special circle of Hell reserved for them.
Literature professors like Dr. Joan Baker at FIU will teach that there were only seven circles to Dante’s Hell. But your friend, The Invisible Student, just happens to have a copy of the original text and there is an eighth, secret circle that is reserved for college professors that schedule their exams on the same day as their colleagues. Below the lustful and the gluttonous, the murderers and the suicides, the blasphemers, sodomites, hypocrites, thieves and traitors, are the devious educators.
At first glance, the eighth circle resembles a classroom. There are desks for the students and a podium for the professor. Spanning the wall behind the podium there is a white dry erase board. Above the dry erase board there is one of those generic, round Seth Thomas clocks with the white face and plain black numbers that match the plain black minute and second hands. The carpet is a boring, faded blue and is flat and lifeless after countless semesters of being trampled on by class after class of uncaring students wearing their cruel Nikes, Vans and Chuck Taylors.
In this classroom though, the students are always tardy, every one of them. Professors are helpless against the tardiness, too. Hell prohibits attendance policies. Once the students are all present and accounted for and the professors start to lecture, the students begin to open their sodas and snacks. Their sodas are all in cans and make that disruptive pfffffffffffk noise as the students crack them open and slurp down the foam that bubbles out of the top. Once they’ve wet their whistles, the students begin tearing open their loud plastic bags of Cheetos, Doritos, and Funyuns, which crunch loudly as they are shoveled by the handful into the students mouths.
Once snack time is over and the professor believes that he or she finally has the undivided attention of the students, they begin the lecture anew. After only a few minutes the professor can see the heads of the students begin to nod. As the students fight the weight of their eyelids and their chins fall closer to their chests, their heads spring back to attention, only to start nodding once again. Nap time only lasts a few minutes though and soon the students are at full attention. Only their attention isn’t directed towards the professor. No, after their brief naps, the students open their laptops and begin typing away, much to the professor’s chagrin.
As much as the students try to pretend that they are taking notes, and as much as the professor would like to believe that taking notes is what the pupils are doing, the educator knows better. This isn’t his or her first day in Hell, although today is exactly like the first day in Hell, as well as every day leading up to today. These students are undoubtedly surfing the web, checking their email or Facebook accounts, or checking the most recent posts on some message boards about hockey fights or college football recruiting.
Making matters worse, none of the students ever put their cell phones on vibrate. Slowly but surely each student’s phone rings. A few of them have polite, synthesized ringtones but most blare hip-hop, techno or heavy metal song snippets. In Hell there is no voicemail either. The calls don’t get redirected after only a couple of rings. The phones continue to ring until the students answer and then proceed to rudely conduct their conversations aloud.
Finally, the students seem to settle for a moment and the professor looks at the cookie cutter clock on the wall and sees that they still have ten minutes to get their point across to the students: ten minutes until this hellacious day is over. A moment of relief befalls the weary professor. That is when the students begin to pack up their stuff. They stuff their laptops back into their backpacks, crumple up their soda cans and snack wrappers and, in their best Kareem Abdul-Jabbar impersonation, skyhook them in the direction of the trash can. They all miss though, leaving a small pile of aluminum and cellophane encircling the trash can.
With one cheek still on the seat, the students impatiently await their release. They, like Dante, get to leave Hell. They get to go to this weekend’s football game, to college night at the local pub, to the Drink or Drown party at the Pike house on Friday night. The professor gets to stay here. In a matter of moments the bell will ring and release these students back into the world while at the same time signaling the start of the next class. Because much like the students who must suffer during midterms by going from one class to the next only to have the same fate awaiting them, professors who pile it on those students must spend eternity with the class from Hell.
Think about it.

Books? We Don't Need No Stinking Books!

This is my third semester at FIU and my first taking all upper division classes. One thing I have noticed is that those overpriced books we are often forced to buy are frequently unnecessary. In my three semesters here I have taken 10 classes total. Of those 10 classes, two were foreign language (Español uno y dos), two were writing, two are/were history, I’m doing one independent study and the remaining three are/were literature classes.
Now obviously you can’t really have a literature class without books. That would be like playing baseball without the bases (I was going to say without balls but then you would be playing softball—yuk yuk). Same goes for foreign language although you might learn just as much watching Univision. In writing classes books are kind of optional. Yes, you should have a good dictionary and thesaurus, as well as a style manual, but they don’t really count as texts. Some writing professors may want you to read different authors and styles, depending on what kind of writing you will be doing, but a good instructor doesn’t need such crutches.
That brings me to history. Can history be taught without books? I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t think so. But if you answered yes, you would be correct. Last spring I took a class in modern American history and the professor taught the entire class by supplementing his lectures with some internet links to relevant articles and materials. In his syllabus he even stated that he saw no need in asking students to pay ridiculous amounts of money for books when the information can be found with a simple Google search.
This semester I am taking a class on ancient Rome and, although there were two books required for the class as well as one recommended, the professor’s test questions are taken strictly from lectures. We had our first test of the semester last Thursday and there wasn’t a single question on it that I couldn’t find the answer to in my class notes. That is disheartening to think about seeing that this class is one of the few in my educational experience in which I have made it a point to stay current on the assigned reading. Granted, his lectures seem to come directly out of one of the books so doing the reading is very helpful since I take awful notes. But for someone who takes good notes, the books in this class would be entirely unnecessary.
In case anyone is wondering, I got a high B on the test. I’m pretty happy about that taking into account that it was the first test and I really didn’t know what to expect. When another student in the class asked the professor what format his tests were, his reply was, “You’ll find out Thursday.”
I guess my point is that, with a quality professor and the availability of adequate resources, books are unnecessary as an educational tool, depending on the topic of course. Coming into this semester my GPA is 3.955 thanks to an A- in a literature class. Only three of the six courses I have completed thus far have required textbooks. The others have had excellent teachers.

College and the George Lucas Casting Call

I won’t bother putting up a poll question asking college students to take a side, pro or con, on the issue of human cloning.  Just by being on campus twice a week and looking around,  I know that the majority would be in favor of it.  Not since the last time I watched Star Wars Episode II have I seen so many robotic look-a-likes.  It makes me wonder if the government hasn’t already perfected genetic cloning beyond that of sheep and I didn’t get the memo.

The most common clones seen on campus, in my opinion, are the “vintage” clones.  These students, excuse me, clones are identifiable by their jeans that seem to have been borrowed from dear old dad, who wore them when he was in school.  They are fraying at the seams, have uneven signs of wear, possibly even holes, and dangling, loose threads.  In all likelihood though, these jeans were recently purchased at Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle or, for the Economics majors, in the Mossimo section of Target.  Holding these jeans on is a rather wide belt, which is also showing signs of vintage distress, complete with an obnoxiously large and shiny belt buckle.  

Covering their torsos are well worn t-shirts, each with some form of eagle or dragon graphic swooping in from the shoulder or wrapping itself around the neck.  The clones may also be seen wearing the tour shirts of artists like Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix or AC/DC.  On their heads you will often find vintage trucker hats which are worn sideways in order to protect their ears from overexposure to sun, I’m not sure what that is all about.  Their eyewear consists of huge, and when I say huge I mean gigantic, sunglasses, which are sometimes white in color.  Don’t ask.  If I could, I would insert one of those smileys here; the one that is looking down and shaking it’s head at the embarrassment of another.  Just use your imagination. 

The vintage clones come in both male and female versions.  Though they appear identical in dress and demeanor, the female clones can be identified by the butterfly, fairy or tribal symbol tattooed on their lower back.  These tattoos, which can usually only be seen if the female is wearing the obligatory “low rider” jeans, are commonly referred to as tramp stamps.

I understand the want or need to fit in and I’m not completely innocent here.  This whole blog was started because of my insecurities about being my age and still in college.  That’s a whole other entry though.  My point is that, in order to ease my own insecurities and blend in, I too have engaged in pack behavior.  I’ve been known to wear the occasional pair of brand new vintage jeans (did you catch the oxymoron?). Hell, Lucky Brand Jeans are the only brand in my closet.  There may even be a few graphic tees tucked away in my drawers somewhere.

But I would’ve thought that the urge to look like everyone else was more of a grade school thing.  Notice that I said grade, not grad or even undergrad.  Isn’t college supposed to be where one comes to find out who they are and express their individuality?  Maybe I’ve already answered my own question.  Could it be that our own insecurities outweigh our need for individuality and instead of standing out, we choose to merely blend in?  There is safety in numbers, right?  

If I look just like the guy sitting next to me, maybe no one will notice that I’m 36.  If the girl in front of me looks just like the girl next to her, maybe nobody will see that her heart is broken or that her parents are divorced.  Yes, there is safety in numbers.

Looking back, what was supposed to be a rant on clichés has evolved into an argument against and a defense of clichés and pack behavior.  I guess I will need a poll.  That’s what you guys seem to respond to most anyways.  Those of you who read my blog can leave comments you know.  Don’t be shy.

ELI3

Where's the School Pride, People?

I was in class yesterday discussing the gym closure with a couple of classmates when I told them how happy I was that I checked my mail the day before and got the notice that the gym would be closed until Thursday, thanks to Hurricane Ike and the evacuees from Key West.  You see, in order to make it to the gym early enough to get a spot in the morning spin class, which fills up quickly, I get up at 4:30, leave the house by 5:30 and arrive on campus around 6:30.  So getting up that early yesterday only to find the gym closed and class cancelled would have been a crappy way to start my day.   When I made this proclamation you should have seen the heads turn in the class. 

“Why do you have to leave so early?” Everyone asked.

“Because I live in Boynton.”  

Even more heads turned at this.  No one could believe that I make the trek, twice a week, from Boynton to Miami to take classes at FIU.  And then it happened.  They asked me the same question that people have been asking me ever since I started school last January: the same question I get each time I tell someone that I commute 68 miles, one-way, from Boynton Beach.

“Why don’t you just go to FAU?”  

Why does everyone ask me that?  Shouldn’t I be proud to go to FIU?  Where’s the school pride, people?

I’ll explain it like this.  I grew up in Boynton Beach, went to two and a half years of high school in Lantana and finished my high school education in Delaware before moving back to Boynton Beach.  While I was going to high school down here, anyone and everyone who was going to college after high school was going to FAU, providing they didn’t get into UF or FSU.  So I always kind of saw FAU as more of a safety net than as a first choice kind of college.  It was a fallback school.  FAU in Palm Beach County is probably a lot like FIU in Miami-Dade, the school that local kids go to when they can’t go somewhere else.  I guess that when I started looking at schools a couple of years back, that thought was still there: I didn’t even apply to FAU.

A few things drew me to FIU, the first being that they were building that beautiful new facility for the Marine Biology program.  Remember, before I realized that science and math just weren‘t for me, I wanted to be Jacques Cousteau.  The new football stadium was also a big draw for me.  As a huge college football fan, being here for the early stages of what has the potential to grow into a great program meant something.  I started following FIU last year during that dismal season and will continue to support them, no matter how frustrating it may be, from now on.  

Lastly, this is my first experience at a four year school.  I didn’t do well enough in high school to get into a four year school directly and had to take the community college route.  Eventually, bad choices and the bills that resulted from them would cause me to put that on hold.  So this experience at FIU is my first true college experience and I would like to try and make it as much like the experience I missed in my early 20s as possible, only without the parties and club hopping.  I’ve been to the FAU campus and, in all honesty, it doesn’t have that college campus feel.  It feels like a commuter college campus.  If I wanted the commuter college experience I would have just gone to University of Phoenix, where the credits are unlikely to transfer to a four year school, making grad school a long shot. 

University Park has that college atmosphere that I was looking for.  Sure, the Greeks never ask me to rush their frat or give me one of their little flyers as I walk down the hall of the Graham Center, and my classmates call me sir, but  I don’t feel like such the outcast.  The insecurities that plagued me during my first semester are gone now.

I like FIU just fine, thank you very much.  That’s why I don’t go to FAU.   

I had an all-time high seven votes in last weeks poll.  Thank you to those of you who participated.  This week's poll will relate to this blog entry somehow, vote away!

Like That's Like, So Like, Totally Annoying!

Listen to this.  I was like, in class yesterday and I saw this girl and she was like, "Hey!" and I was like, "Hey back!" and then we were like talking and stuff and then our professor was like, "Excuse me," and then we had to like stop talking and all that but it was like so cool.

Does anyone else think that sounded absolutely ridiculous?  I am not joking when I say that I had a girl in one of my summer classes that talked like that.   Only she may have used "like" even more than I did in my example.  Listening to her talk was as painful as violently dragging my testicles across a dull, rusty cheese grater.  It might have been more painful since I've never actually tried to grate my testes, meaning I have no frame of reference on which to base my comparison.  Needless to say, I was very pleased to see her in one of my classes yesterday.  Not only was she in one of my classes, but she was trying to get the professor to let her into another.

The problem is that she isn't the only person I hear talk like that on campus.  Its everywhere.  I hear it while waiting in line at Starbucks, when I'm cruising the aisles at Target or at home watching so-called "reality" television. 

Now I know some of you readers might be saying, "They're just kids, just out of high school.  They'll grow out if it."  

I don't think so.  These are upper division literature classes, meaning this girl, based on the fact that she's been in at least two of them and I saw her trying to get into a third, must be majoring in ENGLISH!  Not only is she most likely majoring in English, but she's into her upper division course work which means she isn't some kid fresh out of high school deserving of the benefit of the doubt.

I don't just hear this from the kids either.  In another summer class I had a teacher that talked liked that.  Everything was "like this" and "like that,"  and it scares me.  It just proves my theory that the standards are being lowered.  I used to feel safe in knowing that, if someone were to escape college unprepared and enter the real world, they would be exposed during job interviews, providing they could even get them.  

I can see the interview now.

"So tell me why you would like to work for the advertising firm of Smith and Jones," the interviewer would ask.

"Well, its like, ever since I was like a little kid, I would like see beer commercials and stuff and think to myself, 'Hey, like I bet I could do that.'" Our rocket scientist would answer.

To which the interviewer would respond, "Well, we do make more than beer commercials."

"Yeah, but like the beer commercials are the coolest."

I used to feel safe knowing that an interview that went down like that would surely result in the applicant's resume being filed under N for Never, S for Stupid or B for Burn.  But now it appears that the clowns might be throwing a coup and taking over the circus.

I'm becoming Mr. Hand and the world is full of Spicolis.

    

Life Imitating Art

I'm sure at one point in our lives we've all seen some movie about time travel where the traveler is always warned not to change anything in the past for fear of some ripple effect that could change the world as we know it.  I sometimes find that to be true about the people we come across in our daily lives.  We have no idea how the impact one small conversation had with a stranger may change the course of our own lives.

Take school for instance.  Each semester I enroll in classes with countless other students, spend 16 weeks getting to know those students, listening to their experiences and possibly heeding their advice.  Then at the end of the semester we go our separate ways, most likely never to see each other again unless we cross each others paths on campus, at a football game or in a mall. But like one of those fantasy books that allows you to choose your path, my interactions with these people could be life altering.  

In Summer A I took Spanish II and became friends with a student named Alex who was raised in a Cuban speaking household.  Needless to say, he spoke spanish pretty well and was pretty much the lone reason I passed the class.  Now think about what could have happened if in a previous class another student had told me that I didn't want to take that professor for Spanish II.  I might have heeded their advice and not taken that class, not met Alex and then failed Spanish II.  Failing would in turn cause me to have to take it over again instead of taking another class where I may or may not have met the person that in the future would introduce me to an editor or publisher that would help me produce a bestseller. 

Over Summer B I've been taking a Creative Writing class and I've also met a couple of interesting people.  Now if there are actually students, especially the younger ones, in my class that think they can learn from my experiences, I'm happy to share them.  But not everything that I have done has turned out right, otherwise I wouldn't still be in college at the age of 36.  I hope that I would give advice that leads them to becoming Nobel Prize winners rather than strippers or cab drivers, but you never know. 

If the evening that I met my wife at the beach a friend had called me and asked me to go to a club or party instead of cruising the strip I might not be here today.  I was living a fairly self-destructive life until then. 

I guess the point of this is to point out how random life can be.  The smallest interactions and conversations could change the course of our lives for the better or maybe for the worse.

Choose wisely-ELI3

Back on Topic

I started this blog as kind of a school social experiment. It was going to be titled A Day in the Life of a 36-year old Married College Student but that was too wordy. But after a couple of days of posting I decided that I didn't want to only appeal to my fellow Golden Panthers. I mean, the best I could possibly hope for would be that 10% of the student body would read it, which would limit me to 3800-3900 readers. So I decided to spin off and just do more of a random, play it by ear style of blog. Granted, I am new to the blogging world and have yet to perfect the art of writing an interesting, grab the reader by the seat of the pants blog, if such a thing exists.
I spend plenty of time researching other blogs to find what works and what doesn't and as I've mentioned before, Working Girl (work-girl.blogspot.com) is the best thing going. She's topical, current, funny and interesting. The blogs that I absolutely hate are the photo blogs. Type something, PLEASE! Tell me what I am looking at. These people that just take pictures of their kids or vacation spots and post them on a blog without any narrative are just God awful boring, in my humble opinion (IMHO, the H could also stand for honest, honestly).
But Tuesdays and Thursdays are school days for me so I figure that those would be the best days to go back on topic. Once football season starts, Mondays will be reserved for my reviews of the weekend's action. Annoying People will continue to be a weekly feature and perhaps a beer review will pop up here and there. I've got a stat counter tracking the daily traffic and each day the number of people stopping by has increased a bit and so has the number of returning visitors so I guess a few of you might find my musings tolerable.
So without further adieu, today's school topic is......you just read it. See you tomorrow.

You're probably asking yourselves why, right?

I started at Florida International University in the spring of 2008 as a Marine Biology major.  That lasted less than a week once I realized that I hate science classes.  I changed my major to English Education and now, thanks to the budget cuts, it's English, just English.

My wife, Tina, and I decided about two years ago that it would be best if we just bit the bullet, I quit working, we move in with my parents--awkward, I know--in order to save expenses, and I went to school full-time so that I could finish and we could move on with our lives.  So in that two years we got our affairs in order, so to speak, and I finished the AA degree that I had been toiling on, part-time, for years.  Finishing even an Associates degree is difficult when you're taking one class per semester, hence the decision to drop everything and finish school.  At the rate I was going it was more likely that I would receive an AARP card before I earned a Bachelor's degree.

I'll save the awkward tales of being 36 years old, married and living with your parents for another day.  Right now I want to talk about being a full-time college student for the first time.  I also want to try and avoid lecturing anyone, giving you the "see what happens if you don't stay focused" or "don't make the same mistakes I made" speeches.  Personally, I think the best way to learn is to make mistakes and I'm glad my parents, my mother in particular, allowed me to find that out.  Would I like to be further along in life than I currently am?  Absolutely.  Do I think my wife deserves better than living with her in-laws while her late bloomer husband gets his shit together?  Without a doubt.  Do I realize that there are some of you reading this thinking, "What a LOSER!" Yes.  And believe me, I think the same thing about myself almost daily.  It's a blow to the ego every time I have to tell someone I meet on campus that I live with my parents.  But it is what it is.

Did I mention that I live in Boynton Beach and have a 136 mile round trip commute two or three days a week?

So why this blog?

Well, I realized after a few weeks on campus that I really am an invisible student.  Age wise, I fall in between the typical post high school student and the late in life, tired of my career and want to find something new while I still have time student.  It seems that the few students that I have encountered that are my age are working on a second or third degree, not their first. 

So why do I say invisible?  Well, I get ignored when walking down the GC halls.  When the Greeks are recruiting for rush I don't really expect anyone to hand me one of those little cards asking me to rush Pike or Sig Ep so I don't take offense when they don't.  This isn't the movies and I'm not Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell or Luke Wilson.  If someone does invite me to a party on frat row its like Christmas time to me (it happened once last spring, almost certainly by mistake)  I'm too old to be a frat guy, I know that.

But when student elections were going on at the end of spring, not one of those SGA hopefuls handed me one of their cards, buttons or t-shirts.  No one wanted my vote.  Is their some age cap unbeknownst to me?  Can the 30+ students not vote?  Well, I vote for Paige (sp?) and Adam, that much I remember.  

I went to the spring football game, too.  Over and over I was solicited for season tickets and when I told the solicitors that I was a student they looked at me as if I was joking.  To top that off, most of them called me sir.  SIR!  I'm 36 years old for Christ's sake, I'm not a sir.  Speaking of the spring football game, I will be getting to the obvious lack of support for our athletic programs by the student body in another post.  You guys do realize that you get to watch Division I college sports for FREE don't you?  My wife graduated from Florida and believe me, the students up there would kill for the opportunity to see the Gators for free.  Most of them have to pin their football ticket hopes on a lottery system.  We've got it made at FIU.

Well, this post was supposed to be a short introduction and I've rambled on.  I don't know how much I'll blog until fall semester starts.  After all, I won't start publicizing this blog on campus until then.  Right now no one even knows this blog exists.  

If anyone does stumble across this, please leave me comments.

Later,

ELI3