We can't beat them off with a stick, here, sir...

Foo! Blarg! I have undergraduates coming out of my ears! Like those old movies where crowds pour in like grains of sand! Like the hordes of orcs in a chase scene from Lord of the Rings! (what? what's wrong with rewatching it as part of the holiday tradition?) I keep picking them out of my hair, my nose, my breakfast cereal, my backpack ... it's crazy!

Of course you must realize that having the UC thrown into a massive budget crisis and then having its president make obnoxious comments about the uselessness of such "fripperies" as, say, English and sociology majors, while not bothering to revise the GE requirements out of existence, means that we have a fuck-all of an enrollment crisis over here. Look, President Douchebag, you may not see the "value" of "majors" that aren't glorified vocational money-making programs, but every single damn one of your preferred majors needs X number of humanities classes to graduate, according to the current general catalog.

(You did see that article where Yudof is quoted as saying all majors and classes that don't bring in positive revenue for the university are useless pieces of shit, right? Because I got so mad at that Douchebag that I deleted the notice immediately and I'm too tired to link it up right now.)

Anyway, I have fifth and sixth year seniors petitioning me because they only have one class this quarter so far and they want to finish their GEs and graduate. And I know from watching the craziness in fall that none of this has anything to do with the slackerness or bad-student-ness of these kids, not this time around. I heard stories of students who have no units this quarter and can't get into anything. One of the grad students told me that there were 96 crashers for a full 200 person lecture over in the English department. At that rate, we could just open up a second lecture with more TAs, he said. Well we certainly have enough grad students who've been cut off their funding to run those sections, I replied.

And you know, we probably still have as many entitled spoiled little shits here as we always do. But man, I am not seeing them right now. Polite and desperate, that is what I'm seeing. None of this sending random and rude emails that never explain who they are crap that other profs keep complaining about. Nope, these students are there with twenty-seven million sheets of paper and schedules and whatnot, checking the time, showing up 15 minutes early to try and catch me beforehand, "Dr" ing and "Ma'm" ing me with nary a typo to be seen, asking me what are their odds and carrying a printout of their unofficial transcript so that I can instantly verify that they are in fact a graduating senior, kind of like how people will carry cash and a completed rental info form to a particularly in-demand apartment open house. These kids are super duper organized, walking the line between polite and pushy, all with this frantic little light in their eyes.

It reminds me of me and the other grad students navigating the job market. And this isn't even for something nearly as big. That just really sucks.