This generation makes everything so dramatic. Along with your need to label everything with made-up words like “hazing,” you little twerps like to get so upset when things aren’t going your way, then demand the ones responsible for your perceived slights be ousted from their hard-earned positions of power. You want people who have decades more experience than you to be nice to you and treat you with respect even though you know nothing. Let me tell you something — the real world isn’t like that! No one is going to baby you. No one is gonna be there to hold your hand and tell you it’ll all be okay. So when we assign 8–10 p.m. midterms twice a quarter for your 8 a.m. organic chemistry lecture, we’re really just preparing you for the hardships of working outside your paid and scheduled hours, and doing it with a smile! You have to have some grit, or you’ll never get anywhere in life. So every time you want to bitch and moan about professors ignoring your emails and refusing to work with you until you’ve taken 12 upper-division CHEM courses,  take a minute to be grateful for all the opportunities you are afforded by being at this school. You should all be taking advantage of all of it — the forced long workdays, the exposure to the real life working conditions of a researcher, and the mountains of impossible paperwork to prepare you for the real world. And, for heaven’s sake — if you want to get into a lab, all you have to do is kiss a PI’s shoes and pledge your soul to the agency who gives them grants. It’s really not hard, just get down on your knees and beg to wash pipettes! There’s no reason for dignity to be part
of the equation.

I decided to come to UC San Diego for one reason and one reason only. It was not the stellar academics, or the lively school spirit, or even the fact that all the professors are really good at teaching and not just forced to give lectures in the middle of their research. I didn’t just come here because, as a native of Seattle, I wanted to see the sun. I came because I wanted to bask in the figurative sun of scholarship and research. My permanently vitamin D-deficient body and eternally pale skin thank me for paying out-of-state tuition so I can be in direct proximity of millions of photons per day, but it’s the proximity to professors at the top of their fields that I was really after. So, I accepted my housing contract in Eighth College and was told my dorm would be just a stone’s throw from the beach. Now imagine how I felt when I woke up to a completely white window! At first I thought it was dust from all the construction, but it still hadn’t cleared by the time I had to trek to York. So, here’s what I want to know: how is it that when I have to wake up at the crack of dawn for my 8 a.m. ochem lecture, I can’t see two feet in front of my face? Not only is my future cloudy because my professors won’t answer their emails, but I can’t see anything either! What Hath God Wrought looks so ominous, just a blinking light in the clouds, like an angel sending a message from the heavens about my poor life choices. I just wanted to get a bit of sunshine and a reasonable education, and instead I’m getting hazed in both senses of the word.