It was raining sideways, but my guide and I were walking normally to the panes of glass around the seventh floor of Geisel Library. So really, it was raining right side up, or upside down, for us, depending on what side of the building we were on.

My guide, a short peppy Asian girl with one lock of hair bleached to burnt sienna stereotype, blathered on to me about the library being in some ’80s B-movie, but I stared at the glass, which reflected the seven sins and virtues lit up in neon lights from the Structural Engineering building in Warren College.

The next step I took was not onto another pane of glass; I stepped into, right side up, the seventh floor of Geisel. Table after table after table filled the room, and in between racks of books, zig-zagging along walls, suspended from the ceilings, coming out of doors, stretching as far as the eye could see, were occupied with silently studying students.

We walked silently past them, and I glanced over their shoulders at what was written in their textbooks: The charge associated with depletion mode. It was the reason I majored in electrical engineering. It was also because it was one of the highest paid majors coming out of college.

The electrical engineering program would not have been instituted without federal intervention; at least it’s better than going out into the real world and working. Anyway, I’ll figure out what I want to do in a couple years.

The most widely used differential stain for bacteria is why do I want to become a doctor? Of course, I want to help people. Yeah, right — do you think my parents would let me do anything else?

My guide walked briskly between the tables and the students, managing not to miss a step as I tripped on backpacks and chair legs in a vain attempt to keep up. Maybe the guide caught a glance of my face contorted in disapproval. She stopped for a second, raised an eyebrow at me, and said pointedly, “”Do you think you’re any better?”” and then grinned.

We made it to the elevator, which deposited us in Tioga Hall, where we passed by a freshman couple cuddling up on a dorm couch, down some stairs into the middle of an A.S. Council meeting in the Price Center Ballroom.

One of the senators was earnestly speaking into the microphone, her face contorted with righteous rage at some slight by the administration over parking or diversity or lunch meat. We walked around the table behind her as she continued her honest tirade, and my guide pointed to her notes; a highlighted item on the agenda for the meeting read, “”solution on parking and housing.””

The subscript read “”Use this for my application for law school, because it demonstrates my leadership qualities.”” That part was underlined once, in red font and in perfect Microsoft Word annotation format.

As we left the chamber and walked down Library Walk past Greek organizations that were, of course, perfectly in line with the mission of education, research and service with their prettily painted little wooden booths that demonstrated exactly the control those already in the organization had over pledges. We walked past gory pictures of abortions, which, of course, was a perfect argument against abortion — just like gory pictures of open-heart surgery were a great argument that God was on your side that medical procedures were a bad thing.

We walked past a group of protestors protesting against offensive race-based humor, because, of course, anything that would actually mean something should not be said at all, even (or especially) in jest — just like God was not on the side of anything that produced gory pictures. Most certainly, however, He was on the side of Greek organizations.

It was still raining sideways when we got to Center Hall 105. The guide and I came in through the back of the building where a lower division math lecture was in full swing.

A rather hapless graduate student was giving the lecture despite the fact that in clusters of three or four, students throughout the lecture hall were chatting with each other.

The only thing that was audible was the chatter throughout the hall:

“”I don’t understand how he got that out of the integral. Of course what we’re talking about is more important than respect for our instructors or the learning of everybody else here.””

“”Are we going down to PB tonight, because I can’t stand the fact that he just doesn’t give us all A’s?””

My guide tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and I was outside on RIMAC field at a graduation ceremony, where it was still raining sideways but since the rain came from the east, straight above it was perfectly clear and sunny.

A dour professor in commencement robes was addressing the crowd, speaking in polysyllabic monotone:

“”You think that your graduation should be a celebration of some kind, that you have created something useful by the very act of your education. Let me tell you that in the course of four, or five, or perhaps even six years of exposure to learning material, you have done nothing but use the money of the taxpayers of the state of California.

“”You have done nothing whatsoever to enhance the material welfare of your society by the act of learning. Instead, you swallow resources and congratulate yourself for grades that the university assigns as a matter of pedagogical incentive, rather than as any real measure of achievement, grades that many of you have earned through small-time plagiarism, begging and loopholes rather than any real knowledge of the material.””

To the class of 2003, congratulations: After all this time, you have accomplished effectively nothing through your education. Now go out and do something real for this world.