Brian's World

Planning Ahead

I did a really poor job shaving this morning, my face has been extremely uncomfortable for the past hour or so. I look forward to doing a good job tomorrow morning!

Its that time again, time to figure out what I’m doing next fall. I have a conceptual problem with everything I need to do, because I haven’t figured out whats going on this summer and I try to take things one step at a time. Summer would be the next step after Spring, not Fall. What is this, some kind of funny dance?

I have to squat my room tomorrow so that I can live in it again next year. There is nothing particularly special about this room, but there is nothing super wrong with it either. I considered living off campus for about 4 minutes, after which I decided it was probably not in my best interests. I enjoy the ability to run away from people/problems/things and go somewhere that I can be alone (or with complete strangers who don’t associate with me.. so its like being alone) and I’ve found that living in a single in the basement of BARH here @ RPI does a provides an adequate space for that. Living off campus would likely place me in close proximity to other people who I knew, making it harder for me to escape from any potential situations that might arise. I also like being lonely in my room sometimes… other times I like to pretend the people in the study room across the hall care about my existence even thought that is never true.

Since I’m squatting a room, and since that room is in BARH, I am required to have a dining plan. The choices are not really super for me. I would like a meal plan that enables me to eat 3 meals a day on 3-5 days a week, and 2 meals a day on the other days. Then I wouldn’t feel bad eating something from the Union, which is not covered by any meal plan. My choices are to eat as much as I want from 7:30am – 3:00pm for ~$1650/semester or to eat as much as I want from 7:30am – 7:30pm for ~$2500/semester. Its a tough call, as I enjoy the convenience of having Commons available for a quick dinner before a Senate meeting or something at 5:00, but I also can’t say that I eat 21 meals there a week. I don’t know how many weeks there are in a semester, but I’ll use the number 17 for my math. Lets say I eat 3 meals a day in a dining hall 4 days each week, that means I miss around 51 meals each semester. Assume an average cost per meal of $7 (2500/(17*7*3)). By not eating 2 meals in the dining hall each week, I am loosing $357 a semester. Honestly I was expecting that number to come out higher, and I suspect I’m doing a very poor job estimating how many meals I consume per week in a dining hall. Too bad I couldn’t access the accounting of this sort of stuff. See I really wish I could do this per meal like some colleges, where you are allocated N meals per week.. or even a declining balance idea. Then I could only buy 15 meals/week or something and use them as I want. That would cover the days I choose to eat lunch elsewhere but eat dinner in the dining hall.

I am actually taking a different approach to some of the math right now. I need decide if dinner is worth 736.5/semester.

Thats only one of the issues to decide on. Technically I don’t have to decide for a long time, but if I say something tomorrow I get $50 free ‘Bonus Bucks’, which is incentive to make a decision. The other issue is the registering for classes next semester.

There is this requirement here at RPI that you meet with your academic advisor before registering for classes… they’ve implemented it in the registration software so you can’t get around it. I’m not opposed to having someone to review my academic and provide any advice they had… I think it could be a really useful experience. Of course the current implementation (at least for me) hasn’t been useful at all. I’ve gotten a new advisor each year I’ve been here and I’ve never met with any one advisor more than once. There is great continuity going on here you can tell.

So I emailed my new advisor to see if he was available for a meeting anytime this week, where I was told to come to his office hours today. I did, showing up 15 minutes after his hours started… someone was already in there with him and there was someone waiting outside so I figured I would be there for like 10 minutes max. I took a seat on the floor a small distance away when another kid showed up and stole my place in line. Big deal, my wait has been extended to 15 minutes. Ha! I wish. I waited there until for 50 minutes for him to get to me in line but it was still not my turn… I was next. The line had grown by 1 student, but I had to dash off to turn in a lab for web system @ 4. I got back to the queue area by 4:16 and the line now had 5 new students in it, just what I neglected to take into account. Everyone getting out of a 2-4 class would be showing up now. I figure the guy has got to notice the bulk of students waiting for advisement, so he should speed the process up or something… nope! I waited an additional 45 minutes, during which he got through 3 students, at which point the designated hours ending.. leaving me + 2 others to figure something else out. I emailed him, explaining how the queue was too long, but he’s unavailable tomorrow and Friday, so I’ve got to wait until Monday to meet with him.. the same day I can register for classes. Hopefully he tell me there is a bulk time for everyone again.. if he does I may camp out in the JEC early so I can get in there without having to wait so long.

Mainly I dislike how I wasted 1.5 hours waiting around today.