You’ve completed a UBC rite of passage: ditch a class and swap into a new one right before the add/drop deadline. You flushed all the painstaking work of crafting the perfect schedule down the toilet, but that’s okay. Deep down, you knew this would happen.
We don’t judge for dropping a class. You had a career crisis. You didn’t check RateMyProf properly. You realized the 15-minute sprint from anthropology to forestry was not a viable 9 a.m. activity. After the academic devastation that was term 1 (seriously, what was that?), you deserve a kinder new year.
Unfortunately, it’s after January 17 and you’re the new kid on the block. This class might have a higher average, but you signed up for more than just a fun elective — you signed up for a jungle of alliances and foes, a society whose knowledge is advanced beyond your comprehension (by two weeks).
Your experience may look a little something like this.
“I’m so looonelyyyy.”
Whether you’re alone as the new kid in class or you were an unlucky victim of December 11, you need more friends. There’s strength in numbers. There’s also strength in having people whose notes you can steal when you skip class. “But I’m not going to skip class,” you say. “It’s my New Year’s resolution!” Yes! With that sense of humour, you’ll make friends in no time! So put yourself out there, which is definitely not something only hypocrites who don’t put themselves out there say.
Sure, it feels like the entire class has forged an unbreakable bond in the first two weeks that has no space for you, but know this: only seven words have collectively been exchanged and four of them were, “Is this seat taken?” You have a shot.
So you’ve made friends. But uh oh — the first quiz is tomorrow???
You haven’t even caught up on the first lecture yet! You were too busy chumming it up with your new pals!
Solution: Go to office hours. (Seriously, go. This is simply good advice.)
Don’t worry, your prof won’t bite. According to undisclosed UBC statistics that were buried underneath the Cairn, only 1.7 per cent of office hours end in the student being bitten by the prof. Is this in a vampire, sexual or how-the-fuck-are-you-this-birdbrained way? That’s classified.
Consider changing your major.
This elective class is so much more fascinating than the shit you decided to specialize in when you were a careless 17-year-old who didn’t even know what “undergraduate” really meant and maybe it’s absurd that society expects you to figure out your entire life when you’re basically a child and maybe universities are just big fat Ponzi schemes that leech money from naive young things —
Wait no — this prof kinda sucks. (Not in the vampire way)
That’s the only explanation why this elective is sinking your GPA like the Titanic, except everyone here refuses to draw you like one of their French girls. (You still haven’t recovered from December 11.)
You panic because the second quiz is coming up and you slept through lectures (shocker!) and turns out your friends were also depending on you for notes. How demanding. And after the last set of office hours, you don’t really wanna go back. But the add/drop date is long gone, so take the W on your transcript or just take the L.
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