Finals week is finally over, and faster than you can contract a demolition crew to turn the north side of campus into a fully functioning crater, summer has officially arrived.
And, of course, there are always a few tell-tale signs around campus to alert any marginally observant passers by that summer at Ball State University is in full swing. First of all, there's the mandatory addition of construction sites peppered across the university in a valiant attempt to begin new campus-improving projects rather than finishing old ones -- and if the road blocks on McKinley are going to be up as long as the Great Gates of Studebaker West, then half the student body will be walking to class in hard-hats this fall.
A second symptom of summer arrives in the form of parking tickets. You see, during the school year, your odds of getting away with illegal parking are much higher because there are roughly ten thousand cars within two square miles that are illegally parked, so the probability of the parking attendants making it to your car is much lower. Now that everybody has gone home for summer, however, there are still only four unrestricted spots that you can park in without getting a ticket, and the parking attendants have quotas to meet. This means they have to work twice as hard during the summer. They're dressing in camouflage, hiding in trees, jumping out of sewer grates, knocking people unconscious before they get in their cars so that the meters count out before they can drive away and basically doing whatever else they have to do to meet their regular ticket-giving standards.
But more than anything else, the biggest indicator of summer is simply the lack of students on campus. More specifically, it is the noticeable drop in the percentage of these students who are visibly hung-over.
At first, it is a bit shocking to realize that the number of students staggering to class babbling incoherently to drown out their headaches, which have been induced by intense sensitivity to sunlight, has dropped so dramatically -- from roughly one in fifty to, say, one hundred and fifty. The phenomenon can be quite jarring to witness without any explanation; it is almost paranormal, as if it were some strangely sophomoric episode of "The X-Files" in which an entire student body was invaded by aliens who replaced every third drunken student with a sober one.
Do not fear.
I have an explanation. Allow me to ease your mind.
You see, although summer break involves a feeling of relief for students because they find themselves on vacation from classes, tests and papers, it also marks the painful transition into a more consistent sobriety brought on by summer jobs. Summer is not like the regular school year, when students can stumble into classes ten minutes late, find seats in the back and put their heads down while the professors lulls them to sleep with and hour of monotonous lectures. No, keeping a job means having to live in the real world where there are people like bosses and customers who actually get angry when you show up late or when they find you passed out, standing up and drooling into the fry-u-lator.
So, now you know. Students are out there interviewing, starting new jobs and, for some, even balancing their new jobs with summer courses. And for those of you out there who actually find yourselves reading this column instead of using the Daily News as a make-shift pillow, welcome to summer at Ball State University ... but don't forget your hard-hats.
lmvaillancou@bsu.edu
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