Prestige. Tradition. UVa?

So in preparation for the beginning of finals week next week, I have been studying in periods of 3 hours in the Rotunda Dome Room. The Dome Room is open 9am-4:45pm, and contrary to general belief is open to students who are studying. It originally was and still is, to a lesser extent, a library and why can't students study in a library? It's usually empty except for the occasional UGuide group and the independent tourist.

After a while, I can't help but memorize tidbits of the stories that the UGuides give. Did you know that the Rotunda standing today isn't the original, because the original burned down? When it happened, lots of students and professors risked their lives trying to save the books in the library. Out of the 60,000, I believe they managed to salvage at least 12,000. A group of particularly Jeffersonian-dedicated students tried to save the two-ton statue of Thomas Jefferson that used to be in the Dome Room but now stands on the second floor of the Rotunda. When dragging the statue down the stairs, they lost control and it slid down the flights of stairs to the bottom. The scratches on the cape of Jefferson is proof of that wild escapade.

I'm obviously studying very hard, but let me digress a bit. Also to put out a disclaimer, the following information is a very real stigma, definitely controversial, and not true for all Lawnies. It is said, and I have been told this personally, to become a prestigious Lawnie, there are certain organizations that you should join. UGuides is stereotypically considered one of those organizations on Grounds. One of my friends struggle with this stigma and he has plainly said that he hesitates to apply for a Lawn room because of it. To me, this tells me that there is a hierarchy at UVa, and that if you do the right things, join the right organizations, and know the right people you are guaranteed a prestigious Lawn room. This has been both subtly conveyed to me and blatantly articulated.

What is this Lawn room that is so coveted? Honestly, besides the prestige and location, it is a pretty crappy deal. It is the most expensive room you can ask for on Grounds. It has the worst bathrooms on Grounds. If you like your showers, the Lawn rooms would not be my first recommendation. There are no kitchens or AC. You get tourists in your room all the time as if your room was historic Williamsburg and that LCD TV monitor over there was just part of the authentic colonial decor. It's small. You have to pay for the firewood that is stacked by your door. You have to pay for the fluffy bathrobe that has become so synonymous with the Lawnies because they have external bathrooms. In fact, back in the day, the Lawn rooms were actually considered the worst housing deal you could have. It became so unwanted that the administration put an application, told the student population that the application pool was "extremely competitive" (they were lying), and in a year, the Lawn rooms became the most prestigious and competitive housing rooms on Grounds. Typical UVa behavior?

Therefore, the Lawn rooms are now extremely prestigious to the point where students on a "fast track," such as Echols scholars and Jefferson scholars, believe that the Lawn room is the ultimate destination. This sort of mentality has led to cutthroat behavior, such as the aforementioned one of joining organizations just to get into the Lawn. To continue the idea of a hierarchy at UVa, only certain organizations on Grounds have their special Lawn rooms. With the prestige associated with Lawn rooms, what does that say about these organizations? It says if you join these organizations, you can get a Lawn room.

The purpose of the Lawn rooms is to "recognize students for unselfish service to the University and achievement in their respective fields of activity and academics" (Housing website). Are all the Lawnies representative of this? In response to this, a secret society last year sent a letter to the Lawnies. The letter criticized students who "desire[d] to be on executive boards, to participate in community service, to be in CIOs, to live on the Lawn even, only because they [felt] obliged to look better on paper than their peers." Instead, the letter advised "[gaining] tools needed to make the most of the mountainous horizons beyond where the Lawn ends." It is important to remember to take a step back, look beyond UVa, and do things because you enjoy them.

Mentally Stimulating Diversions

In another one of my infamous dinner parties that involve raucous laughter, fusion food, mismatched plates, and usually youtube escapades, we introduced my friend to a great time-waster. Now as a college student, typing that six page essay, you are guaranteed to be spending at least a third of your time not writing your essay. This time could be unevenly distributed among Facebook (the clear winner), Youtube, New York Times, Apple Store, or in my case, Blogger. However, a site with growing popularity is the Sporcle.Com.

Described as "mentally stimulating diversions," Sporcle is chock full of addictive trivia games. Let's break down the phrase. Is it mentally stimulating? Yes. My personal favorite is "Can you name the Countries of the World?" because that's how I get to know my geography and win raffle prizes at Southeast Asian Festival for labeling all the Southeast Asian countries properly. Yes, I am addicted, but YES I know my geography. There are funky ones like "World Turkey Population," which are a waste of time and I doubt are mentally stimulating. However, there are also throwbacks like "Can you name all the Pokémon Characters (Generation 1)?" and the "Can you complete The Fresh Prince of Bel Air?" that are definitely mentally stimulating. I think. Is it a diversion? Sporcle just sucked three hours of my life last night. You can make the judgment call.

All in all though, it was hilarious to complete these quizzes with friends and those three hours flew. While typing in Bizarro and finding out the spelling of "Liechtenstein," we laughed like no other. The cereal mascot on the left is called "Frankenberry" and I do not know if I would feed my child cereal with such a mascot. There are 7 countries that end with "-stan" and the party includes Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan (with TWO Y's), and Tajikistan.

I invite you to beat our record for the Countries of the World: 133/195.

Turkey Run and Google Wave

Thanksgiving has come and gone. In anticipation for the event, people have sent me texts with the generic "Happy Thanksgiving :)", an email with numerous pictures like this and a bumper sticker request on facebook. Would you laugh if I said I didn't see a single turkey this Thanksgiving? No, I am not vegetarian and I often had turkey in New York.

It must be something about Virginia and my luck, but in my two years here, I have not eaten turkey here. Last year on Thanksgiving, for some odd reason, our family decided to wake up at 8am to go hiking in Shenandoah Park. Ironically, the trail was called Turkey Run and it involved some serious paths with a huge incline that culminated in a peak and a waterfall. After trekking for four hours with large backpacks on, we were sore, breathless, and hungry. I don't want to say "typical Koreans," but yeah, we had a pot of ramen (instant noodles) on that summit. When we were driving away from the parking lot, we saw a herd (flock?) of turkeys. Irony to the max.

This year, we didn't have a ramen lunch on a mountain, but we did go hiking in another park. Ultimately, there was a dearth of turkeys in my life this year as well. Oh well.

On a totally different note, as an avant-garde blogger and a closet-techie, I want to spread the word about Google Wave. Essentially, email, social networking, documents, and IMs are merged together in this "personal communication and collaboration tool" (Google). Described as "what email would look like if it was invented today," Google Wave is in real-time and really focuses on collaborative features. A wave is a "collection of messages, ...where people can see each other typing live," (Google) and ultimately this will foster collaboration on event-planning, group projects and other cosponsored activities. Did I mention that it has automatic translating as you type? If the person you are collaborating with types in Arabic and you type in English, with the right tool, it will come out on your wave as English. There are a lot more features and they're working on improving the preview version, but I haven't fully explored it.

What does this mean for college kids? I smell potential for group projects, cosponsorship between CIOs, and BBQ events with friends. As one friend put it, Google Wave could encourage laziness in all of us, because it doesn't innovate but simply combines tools that we already have, but another way to think about it is an innovation in the way of approaching these tools. I'm not a fan yet, but I am eagerly waiting for Google's improvements on this preview version.

Want it? At the moment, it's only open by invitation, but you can place yourself on the guest list.

As Future CEO of the Sushi+Cupcakes Company...

On an entirely new note, I had an RA meeting last night and it was loads of fun. I think this meeting was different from previous ones, because a lot of us were very relaxed. I think everyone has gotten used to each other and different styles of humor. A lot of jokes went around, the pizza was hot, and business was short and sweet.

Yes, RAs are students too and we love to chill. For those of you who don't know, RAs meet once a week as a staff to discuss dorm-wide issues and events. Around this time of year, RAs are usually planning around Thanksgiving break and towards winter. We're very far-sighted people. Overall, we are excited for break to come and not-so-excited for the finals to come afterwards.

Earlier this year, these meetings have been business for the most part, with a little socializing before and after. Yesterday was the first time we decided to incorporate a dinner with our meeting and that definitely eased the mood of the meeting. If there is nothing else college has taught me, it has taught me that food brings people together and the casualness of it facilitates an easiness found only between friends. If I ever become a big time CEO or manager, I will make sure to always have snacks in my office and conduct my meetings with sushi and cupcakes. Welcome to my cubicle.

SIS, oh SIS...

No, I am not talking about my female sibling or anything like that but our one and only, terribly user-repellent SIS! For those of you not familiar with this bane in my life, it is the new Student Information System, or the site where students

• Drop and add classes
• Find the name of your advisor
• Determine whether you have holds on your enrollment
• View financial information
• View a list of your classes, an unofficial transcript, an Academic Requirements report, and a list of your transfer of credit
• Browse the Schedule of Classes using the Class Search

Do I know a lot of people whose financial aid has been messed up because of SIS? Yes. Is it user-friendly? No. Does it make your life really hard when trying to drop and add classes? Yes.

Financial aid has been extremely backed up, because of transferring files to SIS and that means a lot of financial packages were given late or mishandled. I experienced this over the summer, and some people still experience it today. While I do appreciate the work that the people at Financial Aid do, I do not appreciate the confusing labels of SIS. In my financial aid package, what does it mean to have charges listed under the title of "item"? Why is the money charged for the 2008 fall term paid by "Summer 09 Financial Aid'? What is a "Do Not Place Financial Hold"?

Perhaps the underlying point is that SIS combines so many features that it is slowed down by them and altogether it is a confusing hodgepodge. Dan Heubert of UVa Today blog lauds the fact that "SIS does offer many of the same features as Collab" and then lists eight features that SIS can do, as if this was some baby contest and SIS was coming in second to some gorgeous half Turkish, half Chinese baby. Does faculty really need to view weekly teaching and exam schedules, build a course waitlist, search the course catalog and schedule of classes, create student e-mail lists, AND release advising holds? From what I hear, professors are so baffled by SIS that they barely use a lot of offered features, and the ones that they need to use are being "difficult." Another example of the pointlessness of so many features is the fact that we need to pick out of the three terms ('09 Fall, J-Term, '10 Spring) each time we want to look or edit classes. Therefore, each time I want to add, swap or drop a class, I must select which term I want to look at. Instead of adding, swapping or dropping classes within a term, I must reselect the term every time I click add, swap, or drop. This gets annoying really quickly.

I think the fact that I am on 8 waitlists attests to SIS's inefficiency. What Dan Heubert of UVa Today blog calls "the star of the March rollout [of SIS]" is the course enrollment feature, but that is exactly what I hear most students complain about. It is a pain to enroll, because SIS is so slow in processing requests. Also, because of the way the system is designed, a lot more students are on waitlists, because we do not have paper course action papers anymore. What students need are flexibility and a quick turnover rate. Instead, with SIS, we are all on as many waitlists as possible to hold onto as many classes, because we are uncertain whether or not we're going to get into a class.

On the right column, why are there links under the title of "U.Va." and what is the difference between those and the links under the title of "Other U.Va."? There's another UVA?

Even a physics professor understood this sad situation and felt enough pity to create his own version of SIS. This professor, Lou Bloomfield, says that "the goal of this website is to help student and faculty realize the best educational experience possible," and ends with "I hope that you will find this website useful." Oh yes, Mr. Bloomfield, sir, I do. Extremely user-friendly, it clearly lists all classes in a easy-to-read format. You can check out his version of SIS here: [http://rabi.phys.virginia.edu/mySIS/CS/index.php]. From what I heard, it cost him nothing to make this. Did I mention that we bought SIS for millions of dollars that racked up tuition and we need to shell out a couple hundreds of thousand a year to maintain it? Oh my.