From major to minor discomforts, here are five quintessential University of Chicago experiences you don’t need to learn the hard way:
1.) Losing Your UCID
You may grow ashamed of the goofy, fresh faced photo on your UChicago ID card or “UCID,” but there is a reason why the card they issue you during Orientation is meant to follow you throughout your four years. The UCID is your skeleton key to everything on campus, so losing track of it can be a severe handicap on daily productivity. Having limited access to the library, the dining hall, the printing system, and even your residence hall is enough to drive a busy student insane. UCIDs can be replaced for a small fee at the library, but the shame of having to ask a friend to let you into your house is indelible.
2.) Last Minute Print Jobs
A large number of students rely on the campus printing system, which is accessible through all libraries and residence halls. Campus printers are reliable and high quality, and a good alternative to investing in expensive ink cartridges only to load them into chronically dysfunctional home printers. However, campus printing’s popularity creates an invisible drawback in the form of unpredictable traffic around the limited number of machines in your vicinity.
Putting off print jobs until the last minute, only to find one’s self at the end of a long line of others who did the same, is a leading cause of being late to class. Watching the person ahead of you print their seventy page history reading with only five minutes left to get to class is an agony that I would not wish on my worst enemy, so make a habit of printing well ahead of time. As an added bonus, this rule also promotes completing one’s work in a stress-free and timely fashion.
3.) MAC Property Management
More than half of students choose to move out of campus housing into outside apartments at some point during their time at University of Chicago. Numerous sizable and affordable apartments in the neighborhood are available every year, many even closer to the center of campus than some of the residence halls. Unfortunately, the biggest renter of these units is MAC, whose friendly service representatives and complimentary monogrammed chocolate bars are not enough to quell their reputation as a terrible landlord.
Students who rent from MAC consistently bemoan poor building maintenance, financial transactions botched in MAC’s favor, and a lackluster response to problems reported. University of Chicago apartment hunters are well advised not to tour MAC apartments for any other reason than the complimentary monogrammed chocolate bars.
If you’re interested in University of Chicago, check out our article on 5 Things You Must Do at UChicago.
4.) Being Afraid of the Neighborhood
Orientation Week is an exercise in absorbing new information at a near constant rate. By the end of it, students will have already picked up a few typical University of Chicago refrains. A common piece of advice students will start repeating without much thought is “Don’t go north of 52nd street or south of 61st street.” Those two streets are thought of as the upper and lower bounds of campus, beyond which are lower income communities that do not identify with the university.
The implication is that students are at higher risk of being mugged or assaulted in these areas. This is not only false, but deleterious to the relationship between the university community and the Hyde Park community at large. The majority of student mugging soccur within the boundaries of “campus,” not without the university administration only says otherwise to placate worried parents (the real customers in the higher education business). Students should feel free to move about the area and develop positive relations with their neighbors.
5.) Cholie’s Pizza
A friend of mine once ordered a slice from this 53rd street pizza joint and bit into a staple. That’s really all I have to say about this one. If you’re having a beer at the next door Falcon Inn Pub and need a snack, you might have a fine experience. That said, there is an abundance of spectacular food immediately in any direction, and if you do have a bad experience at Cholie’s, it may be one you won’t soon forget.
Alessio Franko graduated from the University of Chicago in 2014 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Cinema and Media Studies with a Minor in German Language and Literature. He is currently based in New York City, where he works in television and video.