American University - Talon / Aucola Yearbook (Washington, DC)

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The bookstore. Located beneath Anderson Hall, these catacombs of literary storage have a price tag attached to every book. It ' s not cheap, but it is convenient. At the beginning of the semester in fall »00 and spring the back room is mobbed with bookhunters looking for that Crucial text from which 6 chapters have already been assigned. More than likely it ' s there somewhere, but on which flat?

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ffi iii iHi or, How 1 Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My MIRF by Robert Sugar and Fran Atlas We wouldn ' t say that the following story is true, and that . . . the names were changed to protect the Registrar, but the events in the following story have all happened at one time or another; if s just that it didn ' t happen to one poor soul. Consider our hero a creation of the sense of frustration we all feel at one time or another when it ' s that time of the semester. Its a bright summer day in September, 1973 as Sandy Scfiwartz, lately from Stoneybrook, Long Island, but now of McDowell Hall, American University, walks up unfamiliar steps to the Ward Circle Building. The front door is locked, but inside Sandy can see a throng of people milling about large tables in the lobby. After a sign-language and lip-read discussion with someone on the other side of the door, Sandy realizes that the real entrance to Registration is one floor below. Now all she has to do is figure out how to get there. Clutched in her tanned hand is her class confirmation, it is, as is not unusual, completely screwed up. While battle-scarred veteran upperclassmen understand this trauma and accept it as part of the technological society, for Sandy it is her first, and surely not last. Insurmountable Task. While wandering aimlessly on the stone porch in front of Ward, Sandy spies a group of kindred souls waiting in a line that descends down steps on the side of the building. Putting all the resources of her superior New York State secondary education to work, she figures that line is just where she wants to be. So she goes and waits. And waits. I don ' t understand this at all, Sandy thinks, as she lights up a Winston, There are 200 people in front of me and it ' s not even nine in the morning. They ' re just started and it ' s already mobbed. Sandy relaxes and looks around the line. Now there are a good dozen people behind her, and of course the interminable line just up front. Hey, don ' t I know you? Sandy suddenly asks the person in front of her. He is a bit stunned, having mulled over the incomprehensible A.U. Course guide for the last half hour. Huh? Oh, right. I saw you in the Meal Ticket line, right? Yeah, and in the I.D. photo line, too? • Right. Sharon, isn ' t it? the sleepy-eyed person asks. Sandy. And you ' re Fred. Sandy smiles, feeling good about knowing someone among the long line of anonymous faces. I guess you ' re going to change your schedule, huh? Fred asks.