Caffeine now dammit! Monday of 10th week always brings a surge in sales of coffee, Cliff Notes and crystal meth. Two more weeks and it’s all over except for the crying and the academic petitions, but you’ve got to live through those 1,209,600 seconds before you can look back on them. To help you spend them (and the 6,652,800 seconds next quarter), here’s a review of the top 10 things you absolutely must do at UCSD, and add 10 more totally essential things you have to do by the end of the school year.
These are for frosh and transfers who still have that new-to-the-land-of-the-Sun-God smell, but many seasoned UCSD students need the remedial training, as well. So throw down your stimulant of choice (quadruple espresso and slices of horseradish root on the side for me) and make sure you:
1. Get sweaty — at RIMAC, a Tritons game, an intramural competition, and playing wall ball at night in the Mandeville box behind the gallery.
2. Get funky — at a party. And be sure to thank the host, whether it’s those BOARD kids, a Greekfreak, the nutty nympho Darkstar role-playing gamers, that resident adviser who got fired for being too friendly, or the stoner/boozer bucking the system/Matrix/resident security officers.
3. Get smart — at professors’ office hours, discussing something real, not grades or what’s going to be on the final.
4. Get off campus — not to TGI Fridays or AMC La Jolla. Ride the 34B bus all the way downtown and back.
5. Get to know your campus, and the Revellers, Rooseveltians, Warrenites, Marshallists and Muirons who live here.
6. Get introduced to the members of the A.S. Council who represent you when they meet, Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m. in one of the Price Center ballrooms, to parcel out more than a million of our dollars from student fees.
7. Get religious — sample the taster’s platter of religious events offered to you.
8. Get a job — it’s the only college-related experience that will actually prepare you for having a job.
9. Get involved — try everything from the Greekfreaks to the Darkstar Halloween Orgy planning committee, plus Amnesty International and other student organizations, KSDT (our own awesome workshop for radio skills) and Student Run Television (channel 18, baby).
10: Get that famous UCSD full-body, no-suit-lines tan on Black’s Beach. It’ll look great at the next Darkstar Easter/Pesach Genderbender Tryst.
Those who haven’t completed all of the above are lagging like the new George W. Bush economy. It’s easy to lose track of personal growth in the midterm/midterm/
finals/midterm rush. Don’t do that! My best college lessons came from cutting class to stay in bed … with someone.
This brings me to the new top 10 list of must do activities:
1. Get someone’s arms around you. Don’t have sex if you don’t want to, but do test the boundaries of what you’ve done so far. Kiss somebody. Buy ’em dinner, walk ’em home, kiss ’em. Fall in love, or lust, tell too many people and get your feelings hurt. That’s what feelings are there for!
2. Get help when you get hurt. Use Student Health Services, even for a check-up and suggestions of how to be nutritionally balanced while eating dorm food. Use Psychological Counseling Services, which is free and fun. It’s like getting a full tune-up, tire rotation and oil change for your head, only it’s free and the conversation is better. Get suggestions for how to stay mentally balanced while eating dorm food.
3. Get fed in a nutritionally and mentally balanced way by the Food Co-op and the Grove Caffe, both in the Student Center. Along with the yummiest and healthiest stomach fillers on campus, these eateries offer great opportunities for gainful employment. The Food Co-op has a great volunteer discount. The Grove will hire you if you can speak in complete sentences, don’t smoke crack, don’t molest the Geisel Library bunnies, and promise not to change the CDs in the office more than once an hour.
4. Get experienced. If you can’t meet those conditions, or if food handling ain’t your thang on a chicken strang, try the Career Services Center’s workshops on choosing a career, an internship and a job when your loans come due. Write an article for the Guardian; take a Teacher Education Program class; try anything that could open up or close down a career possibility.
5. Get first aid and CPR certified. RIMAC offers regular classes on how to do the one possible life-saving job everyone should be ready for.
6. Get a grip on the good things in your life while it doesn’t need saving. Lay barefoot on the grass, check out Club Ritmo and the sunset from Oceanview Terrace.
7. Get rid of the bad things in life. Yell at someone talking noisily into a cell phone in public. Talk to your friend who’s gotten hooked by this whole cocaine renaissance, and stare at your feet less.
8. Get informed about this campus’ resources. Take a ride-along with the cops; check out the Women’s Center, the Cross Cultural Center, that freaky, dressed-in-black, ex-CIA, white-haired umbrella-carrier,; join Chancellor Dynes’ posse; ask around about the guy that burned himself to death in Revelle Plaza.
9. Get in the game when we play dodgeball in front of Center Hall Friday from noon to 12:30 p.m.
10. Do go to class. You’re paying for it with my tax dollars, after all.
