I chose to come to this school for a variety of reasons. Primarily, I love Halifax. It's a great city, and I wanted a school here. In Halifax, there's three schools that I looked at, which are Dal, Mount Saint Vincent, and Saint Mary's. Dal gave me the most money, and had the nicer residences, so it was an easy choice. Dal also has a certain prestige to the name that I liked. I applied some other places, but it really seemed like the right choice.

First year was great. No problems at all. I loved my classes, and although the learning curve socially is pretty steep, it was manageable. Second year, however has been pretty ridiculous. Due to some terrible academic advising, I ended up in a chemistry program that I didn't have the prerequisites for. After a few months of that, and after seeing a good academic adviser, who told me to only come to him from now on, things academically seemed on track. For the record, my good academic adviser told me that the school hires undergrads to do the advising at peak times when trained advisers aren't available, and that would explain the mistake. Good show.

Then the staff decided to call a strike. Our profs nervously shuffled around deadlines, going through material as fast as they could, pushing class tests and papers forward so that if we missed weeks of class it wouldn't matter. It was one of the most stressful times I've ever had. Then the strike never happened. It was a great relief, followed by a great fury. They had strung us along for months, only to call it off literally the night before. 

Then the bad news with the residence started coming. They started a new construction project right across the street, and have been breaking rock for the foundation for the past two weeks, and are expected to continue another three weeks. They go from 7am-9pm every day, and it's so loud that I can't study in my room, much less sleep. The vibrations themselves from the tearing apart of the earth were enough to jiggle my poor little house plant off of my desk. In all fairness, we were told about this project, and that it might involve 'light construction noise' but that is not what this is. As it is, it's seriously effecting my life. I've tried going elsewhere to study, but at some point, I have to go home and sleep, especially when I've paid out the nose to have the privilege of living here. The food at the residence has also been really tanking. It's just made things here one more bit worse.

I understand that things happen, and that sometimes, inconveniences happen and mistakes are made. That's fine. I don't mind that. What I do mind is that the university administration has been very uncommunicative with the students about how they feel and how their interests are best being served. As much as the university is run like a business, they seem to forget that if the customers are unhappy, your business will do poorly. the students are angry, and our protests should probably be heeded. If not, the future can't really be secured.

When the strike was called, I started making arrangements to attend a different university, just in case the strike stretched into September. Obviously it didn't, but today, I caught myself looking longingly at my acceptance letter, and thinking that maybe, i should think about that other school just a little harder.

As much as they portray university as an academic utopia, it's become a terrible, bitter place, for me. At this point, I'm just so pleased to leave that it's nearly sad. This summer, I'll be moving into a brand new apartment, and hopefully, by September, this school will have gotten it's act together.