DELANEY WRIGHT

Being a university student is hard and can take a lot out of you. To top it off, sometimes it feels like the University of Saskatchewan is doing everything it can to make things even more difficult.

Although the bus system in Saskatoon is more the city’s problem than the university’s, it sure affects most students. Waiting for a bus is bad enough when it’s -30 C, but when your bus is too early, running late, breaking down, isn’t coming because of a lock-out or just doesn’t show up, it can really throw off your entire day.

Because of lock-outs or the buses seeming to run on their own sweet time, sometimes the only option left is to drive to campus.

If you can scrounge up enough change for a meter — goodbye, morning coffee — you can generally find somewhere to park, but chances are it will be at least a 10-minute walk to your class. If you don’t have change, a lot of the parking lots on campus accept credit cards. The parking stadium is a great last resort, but when you have to run to class to make it on time and it’s a chilly day, you will be red faced and out of breath by the time you arrive — not a flattering look.

For most students, chances are at some point you will have to go through the Arts Tunnel. And if you haven’t yet mastered your “do-not-talk-to-me” face — and even if you have — you will find yourself bombarded with people selling tickets, handing out pamphlets or yelling at you to be more aware of this or to donate to that.

What they don’t understand is that they are in between you and your morning coffee and donut. You can almost see the Tim Horton’s light at the end of the tunnel, but to get there you have to arm yourself with tunnel vision and your best “stay-away-from-me” strut.

After watching my student fees go up time and time again, my biggest pet peeve about our campus is the poor quality of toilet paper. I keep expecting one of the improvements to be some two-ply — I have enough going on in my day to stress me out and this should not be one of them. Come on U of S, give us what we really want — our bums already hurt from the chairs in lecture halls like Thorvaldson 271 and nothing would be as comfortable as some soft toilet paper to sooth our sorrows — and asses.

Speaking of sore bums, we sure do have some bad lecture halls. Thorvaldson 271 takes the winner of most uncomfortable classroom with the worst acoustics. Honourable mentions go to Physics 103 for the awkward swivel chairs — I still don’t know if they are supposed to do that — and the fact that it is always freezing cold. Arts 143 also gets a mention for being right by the traffic jam at the bottom of the ramp and for the awkward shuffle it takes to get through the masses struggling to get around.

For the most part, I really don’t mind how our exams are set up, apart from the odd lopsided desk meaning you have to deal with it wobbling around the entire time you are writing. But if I ever see that I have an exam in the Engineering building, I feel all the more stressed out. Because that building has such a fantastic layout I feel like I should be awarded marks on my exam just for finding the room.

And at the end of the day, semester or school year, one last challenge awaits — not getting hit by a bus at the Place Riel transit terminal. Although there are days where after finding that parking spot, running to class, missing out on my morning coffee, sitting in badly designed lecture halls, putting up with one-ply toilet paper and using a wobbly table in the depths of the Engineering Building — sometimes that feels like it is the least of my troubles.

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Image: Stephanie Mah/Graphics Editor