College Vibes

Okay, so finally something is actually happening in my life... YAY!! I know, I know, you must try and curb your enthusiasm, my friends.

I started college for real this week. And by for real I mean I'm not counting the year of college that is a preparation for the real course of study. That year sucks. It's uneventful, boring, you still have subjects that have nothing to do with your choice of career (History, to my parent's dismay and my borther's amusement) and everyone treats you like you are in some kind of weird limbo between High School and College.

My College is an hour away from my home. It's ratty and pathetic-looking, with so many ripped posters of lefty propaganda over the walls you cannot tell the colour of them at all. The walls that are not covered up with the faces of "Che" Guevara, Mao and a horned version of Bush (with or without fake mustache and goatee, deppending on the frame of mind of some lazy, forty-year-old college student) are peeled and scratched and spray-painted all over. It's Public University and before anyone not belonging to South America starts frowning and whispering "Community College white trash" let me set the record straight: In Argentina as well as the rest of Latin America Public University is actually really good. and the UBA (my University) is counted as the best in Latin America. People put up with crappy salaries, horrible teaching conditions, cramped classrooms and bad cofee on the Teacher's Lounge just to teach a course there, 'cause of the prestige. Scholars salivate over the openings in classes, and every foreigner intellectual celebrity passing through wants to either attend a class or give it. If not, they'll settle for a seminar.

Public University here is a god among men. It is viewed most of the times as the best choice, and has particualr fame and prestige in History (the program is damn good, the teachers awesome and the library to die for). But the building is crappy. Inside it's full of tables selling either books or left-wing ideology (they try with me, but like I always say... the joke's on you, suckers!). One has to deal with having no seat in a class five minutes before it starts, bad heating (except in summer when it's overheat and everyone feels like a chicken spinning round and round)

And, most of it all, Public University doesn't like you. You are a thorn on its side since you don't pay for anything (except the reading material for each class) and therefore all you do is spend the money of the University's tight and diminishing budget. Therefore the system is designed to do everything in it's power to kick you out. Few ever graduate from the UBA. It makes your life a living hell. That well-oiled Bureocratic Killing Machine will find a thousand and one reasons to flunk you or leave you out. You have to pay attention to the signs on the walls to see if there is some new paperwork to present, or a thing to check, correct, redo, present, legalize and whatnot. It gets you jumping through so many hoops you cannot keep track. And suddenly you realize you missed the deadline for an inscritpion to a thing you didn't even know you had to go to or you passed an important internal election, which is illegal and therefore can get you kicked out.

I love it nevertheless. And I'm gonna keep fighting it till I graduate so I can say I did not only get a degree on History, I also survived Public University. And the prestige it gives you... It's a whole new story.