I should submit my own credit card commercial to Visa. It would go something like this: 15 unit load and part time job: Helpless. Finishing GE requirements in two years: Hopeless. The idea of graduating in four years: Pointless.

It would be great if it were “priceless,” but this is college–not a commercial.

Students deal with general education, changing majors, and class after class. Where does it end? Where’s the cap and gown with the graduation speech? It’s hard to see from here.

We’re like mice, scurrying around campus, trying to navigate the maze of higher education, without the block of cheese at the end.

Watching from above the maze is the Sacramento State bureaucracy. It’s getting harder and harder to navigate all the time, and students are frustrated. But is it the system’s fault for sticking “dead end” signs at each turn, or are students responsible for their education?

It’s a little of both. Of the 1560 First Time Freshmen who registered in 1998, only 120 graduated last year. In good years, only 15 percent of students earn their degree in four years.

And get this: Less than half of all students graduate EVER. Only 48 percent of students registered in 1992 actually graduated by 2000. Only 44 percent of the 1993 class had a degree by 2001. The showing was last year, when 42 percent of 1994 frosh earned their diplomas. Statistics show that most students need 5-6 years to graduate.

Sure, some students just lazy or partying too much. Most have to work to get through school, squeezing valuable time and draining energy. But the bureaucracy of Academic Advising, major advisors, and all of the endless GE is discouraging.

How many students know who their major advisor is? Some Departments assign them, some don’t. Anthropology students must seek out professors during their office hours for advising. The advisor-student ratios differ for each department. There are 30 English advisors and 400 English majors, about 13 students per professor. The Mathematics/Statistics Department is around 12-1. However, criminal justice majors have it rough with only 29 advisors for 1300 students, an almost 45-1 ratio.

I tried to have a sit-down with my advisor last year and it accomplished next to nothing. In fact, I left the meeting with more doubt concerning my future that I started with.

Do professors actually want to be major advisors, anyway? The proposition sounds like more time, work, and energy. But someone’s not doing their job when a student leaves a meeting with his advisor thinking, “So much for my dream of being a marine biologist. Maybe I should try communications.”

GE advising isn’t much better. Stop by the “Mouse Trap,” Academic Advising, in the back corner of Lassen Hall. You gain access to advisers by walking in and keying your name into a computer, which tells people in the back that you’ve arrived and want help. I’ve always thought the computer was a nice personal touch.

You sit down in silence. There’s no music playing (even the dentist’s office plays music), and you’re alone with your thoughts. Someone hands you a thick green piece of paper with blank after blank. Fill in your A2, A3, B4 and so on. Bad news though. You need a prerequisite class for the prerequisite class to get into that Spanish class that fulfills your foreign language requirement.

Then there’s the WPE, English 20, the advanced study requirement, the GWAR (isn’t that the same as the WPE? Or not?), the race and ethnic studies requirement…have I left out something? And talking to a GE adviser, usually some student who is only a little less confused than you, is like a parole hearing. There’s always a catch. Always one more class.

GE should stand for “Get Everyone” because no one can escape the mouse trap.

Sometime during the semester you’ve changed your major–again–and find yourself right back where you started. Sign up. Sit down. And take a number. Feel lost? Right now, you’re thinking how great it would be to just quit life and become a rock star.

It’s a hassle. Running circles around this campus for almost six years. At the end of the maze is a Degree in Something.

As for me, I’m due back in the corner of Lassen Hall to speak with a parole officer, academic advisor. I’ll sit down and wait for more bad news. In the silence I’ll think of that old song by U2, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”… a way out of here.

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