No university is perfect. Still, U of T has its fair share of problems. Take the following harrowing academic situation. You’ve put a lot of effort into a paper, but when you get it back, the mark isn’t nearly as good as you expected.
The trouble is, it’s not always your fault. TAs tend to mark papers with a heavy hand, nit-picking every detail — the word count, the punctuation, the footnote punctuation, and whether you spelled your name correctly.
As a political science student, one of the most absurd situations I’ve faced is being told by my TA or professor that I’m allowed to use a specific secondary source — only to have that same TA deduct grades because I used it. The same goes for primary sources.
With this level of harshness, it’s no wonder that an estimated 30 per cent of first-year undergrads are clinically depressed. After having their egos boosted in grade 12, they come to U of T three months later only to have their egos ruthlessly crushed.
If you thought grades and harsh TAs weren’t enough, take a look at college student politics. It’s like secondary school, except the gossip isn’t as exciting, and they try to put on an aura of responsibility and prestige. That is to say, colleges, or at least their administrative councils, try to involve (read: indoctrinate) their younger students to such a degree that those students feel alienated because it becomes unthinkable to disagree.
Often, this once-unified body of student politicians dissolves into various cliques due to whatever political views they hold or even for something as small as disagreements over which Glee character is their favourite. That kind of pettiness explains why there is so much apathy when it comes to student politics. The level of viciousness is unwarranted when the stakes are so low, and most of us would rather protect our precious GPAs.
So how can we forget about the problems in student life? It goes without saying that studying harder and attending those seldom-suggested writing centres is ideal, but it’s obvious that the best solution is alcohol. Apart from that, there doesn’t seem to be much more to do but to grin and bear it.
