GPA mania sucks fun out of college

Each student at UCLA is connected through one common inescapable
bond: the manic need to study until our eyes bleed.

Have you ever caught yourself saying “I have to
study” when confronted by a social situation? Have you ever
said “Yeah, right, that place,” when your friends come
by to let you know what a great time they had at such-and-such
place with you know who. You end up replacing disappointment with
sarcasm.

My point is there has been a huge constraint placed upon all
students at UCLA.

The ever-important GPA has become the defining college
experience, replacing all the wackiness and mayhem you see in
movies like National Lampoon’s “Van Wilder.”

Why? For starters, we all know how difficult it was getting into
UCLA in the first place. Unless you’re an extremely gifted
athlete, you have all taken AP classes, SAT prep courses and packed
a load of extracurricular activities into your schedule just so the
admissions officer wouldn’t pass you over or, God forbid,
send you to UC Riverside.

Let’s be honest, how many of us placed UC Riverside on the
top of our list of colleges and universities? We all want to do
well at UCLA.

Translation: we all want high GPAs so we can get out of here
ASAP. Law school, medical school and graduate school programs at
elite universities are some people’s next step.

Others plan on careers in business and finance that depend on
expertise in all sorts of fields. Gotta keep that G-P-A if you want
to get P-A-I-D.

These are the constraints we live under. LSATs, GMATs, GREs,
etc. are all awaiting us. Studying is perhaps the greatest
impediment to partying, drinking, and watching football with
friends since the whiny girlfriend.

Take the Stanford game this season for example, scheduled right
before midterm exams.

No one I knew was going to the game; everyone was staying in
Westwood studying. I’m from Pasadena ““ I grew up with
UCLA in my backyard, and I haven’t been to one home game this
season.

So, do we like taking all those GE classes? No! Do we like
studying all the time to protect that coveted GPA? No! Do we like
spending an additional $1200 for TestMasters in the summer? No! Do
we like telling our friends we can’t go out with them because
we have to study? No!

UCLA can be fun as long as you have a good group of friends that
understand where you’re coming from.

Perhaps if we had a bar on campus as suggested in previous
articles the social atmosphere at UCLA would turn around. At least
we wouldn’t have to walk very far from the library to have a
good time.

The collective geniuses in the Graduate Student Association are
working hard at this moment to validate the academic and social
feasibility of such an endeavor. Hurrah! You go, grads! Until then,
I have to go study.