The last couple days here in San Francisco have been the most trying on my patience yet. And so, I think I’ll soothe myself by making a list of the annoying things.
Lame #1: Flagrantly incompetent and uncaring IT department.
The internet has been down for a week now and all the IT guys have done about it is send somebody to stand in our lobby and explain how “Your wifi is down because too many of you are watching videos and stuff online.” Well, duh. It’s an art school with film majors and animation majors, and it’s not like we shouldn’t be allowed to watch “videos and stuff” anyway. The internet at the dorm is not for work only. Needless to say, this supposedly happens a lot at my dorm, which is why so many people here got Comcast for broadband. I’m not fan of Comcast, but they just happen to be the only internet service provider in the area, and I do need internet.
This is especially infuriating since AAU does 100% of its communications with its students online. This made the next thing on my list of list even more fun.
Lame #2: Switching majors means effectively having double classes the week you do it.
After my first couple of classes, I realized that I needed to switch majors. Turns out that what the Coronado New Media Academy calls “Graphic Design” isn’t anything like the rest of the universe thinks it is. I’ve switched to “Digital Art and Communication” because it actually deals with designing for usability and user interface development and that kind of thing. Ya know. Like I’ve always talked about. Thanks for the academic guidance, Coronado High School.
So after waking up early to make a class and then hammering this out with my advisor and the people at the registration desk for two hours, I figure I’ve taken care of business for the day. Then I get a call that says one of the classes I didn’t have to switch had to go poof since there weren’t enough people in it, and that I was switched into a class that was in less than an hour. After that, I ate and died.
Because of this, I have even more makeup work to do than I normally would. I’d just done a week’s worth of classes, but because half my classes were switched (plus the third class because of just not having enough people in it), I had to do as many of my new classes as possible this week, too.
At least it’s only as if I missed a single week, because if I’d waited, the workload would’ve been absolutely miserable.
Another side effect is that I’ve got to get supplies and books for the new classes. Most college sutdents just need to get books and computers, but us artsy kids have equipment coming out of our armpits, and it’s all expensive. Because of the class shifting, I can at least put off getting an expensive camera until next semestar, but now I’m not so sure that I’ll be able to delay getting a Mac until the new MacBook Pro are released in either October or January. I was hoping I’d be able to wait because, well, it’s just nice to have the latest and greatest. We’ll see though. Regardless, I’m basically paying twice as much for supplies and books, and it was painful enough already.
Lame #3: MySpace kiddies are self-centered alchoholic asshats.
The next day though, I didn’t have any classes. Since I’ve been making friends up here, finally getting to the weekend and being able to just relax and hang out with other people was certainly a welcome pause in the chaos. One of the girls in my dorm had mentioned wanting to see an animated movie called Tekkon Kinkreet, and since it sounded interesting and she seemed nice, I got it and invited her to watch it with me. She was excited about it, and said she’d head over after she took a shower.
Two hours later, I call her. Oh, she forgot to tell me that she was waiting for a friend. Gee, whoops.
An hour later, and still no word. I text her, and she says that her friend had run out to the store real quick. Oops again.
Another hour. I text her again and say that we should just plan on watching it at 7:30, and she responds by saying she’d have to ask her friend.
I watch a movie called Miracle Mile by myself (about an hour and a half long), and there’s no word from her. I text her again to see if the plan was okay since it was getting close to 7:30 by that point. She responds by saying that she and two of her friends were almost done watching a movie in her room, and would head down whenever it ended. Ooof.
Finally, she and her little group of friends come down to my room to watch Tekkon Kinkreet. They bring “water” bottles with them, and giggle and talk throughout the whole movie about how much they love MySpace and gay boys and stuff, and a couple other people just drop by to yap and “get a swig of water.” I pretty much miss the whole movie.
By the end of the movie, one of her friends is so drunk that she’s rolling around on my bed grabbing me and mumbling about how warm and soft I am and insisting she’s not drunk even though she can’t even stand up. After she’s eaten all but five of my new little box of orange tic-tacs, I end up having to carry her back to her dormitory across the street and help her go up four flights of stairs while she’s holding me uncomfortably close.
All the while, the first girl (the one who I’d originally wanted to watch the movie with) was winking at me, shaking her head at me, and telling me how “You like it, even though she’s drunk. Ever had a girl in your bed before? Yeah, you like it alright. Even with her drunk, you’re liking this.”
Super cool.
Lame #4: No amount of designer clothing can make idiots interesting.
Like I said above, I’ve been making friends. There are a lot of cool people here. But they don’t make the hordes of shallow losers less annoying. I’m drowning in designer jackets, designer jeans, designer purses, designer shoelaces, and designer personality. Those of you that know me in real life may have heard me make fun of the plastic personalities back home by saying, “They’re different just like everybody else.” Nowhere is this more true than my dorm. This is not a San Francisco thing, but rather, I think this is just an art school thing. The sport here seems to be either competitive vanity or competitive vacuousness.
It’s not actually the designer clothing that I don’t like. Some of it’s cool, and I won’t deny it. I’m kind of drowning in it, but yeah, some of it’s cool. But so many of these people are just so boring and dumb, sitting around smoking and talking about how cool they are for sitting around smoking and talking… taking up space, using the common room’s television, blocking stairs, and so forth. They’re unavoidable!
Alright, the coffee shop has turned the lights out, and I think I’m done here. Stay classy.
