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Why I Hated Tech


The following essay is one that I wrote back in 1995 when I was a student at Georgia Tech. This rant is in its original form, unedited. Enjoy.

Things I Hate About Georgia Tech


1) Male to Female ratio of greater than 3 to 1. Enough said.

2) Professors who speak and understand English poorly. There is no excuse for this at a "fine" institution such as Ga. Tech. How in the world are we supposed to learn when our teacher is nothing but a grad student who took the class once and did well, especially when the teacher can't explain things to us because he or she doesn't grasp our language and can't comprehend the questions we ask. And even when the professors do speak good English, sometimes they are uncaring and unresponsive to the students. While this is probably true of some teachers at every school, there is no excuse for a calculus teacher who doesn't even care that his class is obviously learning nothing, especially at a technical school like Tech.

3) The school makes too few considerations for and is extremely uncaring toward co-op students. Examples: An average co-op student must either get off work early or rush home just to do simple things like: Now, it would be one thing if there were only a few co-ops at the school. Then, I would understand not doing more to help them out. But the student body at Tech is nearly 1/3 co-ops.

4) The parking situation on campus is absolutely horrendous, and instead of improving it, they just keep taking away parking and putting up new buildings, including more dormitories which will further aggravate the situation. On top of this, the price of permits keeps going up while the parking gets more scarce. When students try to compensate for the extreme lack of parking by utilizing space not lined off for parking, the police are quick to slap a ticket on the car. Leaving the dorm, even for a quick trip, is a hassle. Chances are that when you get back, you'll have to drive around for about five minutes trying to find that non-existent space before you end up parking at a forty-five degree angle on a mud bank by what used to the tennis courts (oh yeah, I forget to mention that. They took away half of our basketball/tennis courts to replace some of the parking that they got rid of build more dorms. Do you think they added some more basketball goals somewhere else? Yeah, right).

5) To get any personal, individual help regarding class scheduling, tuition, financial aid, housing, etc. a student's only real option is to seek the advice of a friend who has dealt with a similar problem before. Most of the administrative staff people are no help at all, if you can even get through to them. After being transferred 12 times on the phone, you'll eventually be told that you need to come in to the office, which of course closes at 4. While there are some friendly, helpful administrators at Tech, they are few and far between, and hard to get in touch with.

6) Tech waits until the last minute, or until it is too late, to inform students of new or changed procedures. Announcements and reminders, if we get them at all, come at the last minute. The way I find out about most deadlines is through the grapevine, when I overhear people talking. Even the deadlines for extremely important stuff, like renewing financial aid, verifying attendance, etc. are buried deep in the OSCAR or some other place where you would never think to look. Why can't they just send the students email? It's quick, reliable, and much cheaper than any other method. Why don't they? It's because Tech doesn't really care about the well-being of it's students.

7) Check this out: I went to the bookstore to buy a required Econ book, but they told me they were sold out already. I had to wait until the second week of class to get the book, which turned out to be a spiral bound photocopy of the book which was printed by the bookstore just to sell to the few students who they shafted by not ordering enough of the hardback. I still had to pay full price, by the way. But wait, it gets much better. During the quarter, it became evident that the book was not needed at all for the class, and the only reason we were required to buy it was because it was written by - guess who - the professor of the class! I made an A without cracking the cover at all. And here's the best part: when I tried to sell the book back to the bookstore at the end of the quarter, they wouldn't take it. Reason: it wasn't a hardback original. Try to figure that one out.

8) The campus. Everywhere you go, the smell of construction is in the air. The whole summer of '94, they were re-doing the roof of the Physics building and the smell of tar was almost enough to make us sick, every day for the whole quarter. Some students actually had to leave because it was so strong. The campus has little green space as it is, and hardly anything scenic, but still Tech seems to be getting to be about as beautiful and picturesque as Ga. State's. From all the construction, the air is so dirty that you can taste it and it looks brown and murky during most of the daylight hours.

9) We take 5 or 6 classes, a couple of labs and call it 16 or 18 hours. Ga. State and UGA take three classes and call that a full load. Plus their classes have girls in them.


Yes, I know there are only 9 points in the Top 10 list. But "Top 9 Things I Hate About Tech" just didn't sound right.

Copyright © 1999 Big Al Skinner - Company Information 1