First Year Blues

Are first years still stuck in their last year of high school?
I can’t help but notice that a whole lot of first years, primarily girls have not yet fully embraced the fact that they are in university! I always seem to pass by a little group of girls talking about how things were in high school or the various characters that were found at their respective high schools!
Sadly these same sentiments echo into the academic sphere. People seem to complain so much about how much they are getting. Well what did you expect? No one here is going to force you to do work, we are expected to mature enough to handle the work load and do what is expected of them academically. University generally means that one has progressed from the stringent regulated existence of high school into the adult sphere of university education. Possibly, students are not yet mature enough to understand the responsibility of being in entire control of their behaviour and academic life. This may be an issue that the ministry of education must look into or reassess. Maybe, adding one extra year before Metric before they are allowed to get into university.
Ok. Fair enough some people are well into the university system and are indeed thriving in the system. They are managing with all the work and balancing it with all the partying and still meeting deadlines. The efforts by others are almost futile. Case in point a certain individual who once lived in C.B. (Cullen Bowels), left at the end of second term simply because he just could not manage the workload. This is a classic case of someone who just could not handle the pressures of university. He lost all of his D.P.’s for all of his subjects. I personally think that he could not have been adequately prepared for all of the requirements that Rhodes demanded of him. It’s quite a complicated issue in the sense that how does the university assess the level of maturity or readiness of their students? What criteria can they establish from just an application form? How can Rhodes expect to assess the readiness of students purely on the basis of a piece of paper? Possibly Rhodes could try find some means of assessing students before they arrive at Rhodes. Possibly by channeling students and assessing them by age. This may seem a little radical however; it seems that this may improve the number of dropouts that they experience over the first year. It is rather strange that we are all expected to have a level of maturity when we enter university; however, this is not the case.
I expect that as the university is expanding, Rhodes must find ways to cater the varying ages and levels of maturity expected from first years. Although this may not seem as a major issue for most, for me it has struck a chord because I really do not expect people to be incapacitated by the workload as well as the social obligations expected from friendships. It is a stringent process of understanding and appreciating the individual needs of Rhodes students.

A profile on Crazy Dan

“Crazy Dan” is the name given to Daniel Charvat. I must say when I first saw him, I just thought he was this alternate punk with a hectic Mohawk, but there is more to this guy than meets the eye.

So why Crazy Dan you ask, well “There are three of us in Matthews House!” A young guy from Johannesburg who travelled on a bus for fifteen hours alone to Rhodes University. Interestingly enough his parents have still not seen his Residence or Rhodes. He has come to study Journalism hoping to get into Journalism two next year. He is not too sure what he wants to do exactly but he ultimately wants to pursue something in the journalism field. “I’m keeping my options open, journalism I think has an important place in society and I want see where it will take me. He can be said to be on his own mission, he sees himself as independent and reckons that University has not changed him as a person. “Obviously I’ve had to grow up with waking up by myself and doing my own washing and changing my sheets weekly, did you know we had to do that, cos I didn’t.” He laughs to himself whilst sprawled out on his unmade bed. He genuinely has fitted in well here, it is obvious that he would, he loves people and making friends so he has adapted to that aspect of University.

He is going to pass Rhodes and get his degree but what the future has in store for this guy, he does not know and is quite content with that. He is here doing English, Politics, Journalism and Sociology. Us students here are well aware of the different kinds of people here at Rhodes yet Dan almost seems to embrace and be open to it all. He wouldn’t say that he goes out of his way to be different. “I don’t think that I conform to the absolute norm but I wont go out of my way to make everyone know it. I am who I am.”

He is an active member of ROAR- every Saturday morning he gets up to go and feed and nurture the donkeys that are there at the shelter. “In the beginning I just thought that I would join the society and donate the money to the poor animals…” but then he actually started going with the members and it became clear to him that there is more to reaching out to the community than donating money.

He also joined the Surfing Society, now I would think that it is a bit random interest for a big city kinda guy, but he had a bit of a fascination with a young surfer girl from East London and decided that he would want to try something new, which he did. He signed up with that very East London fascination…

Up on Dan’s wall are drawings and pieces of artwork, the normal timetable, along with a sheet of paper that shows the number of hours he has done regarding community service. Unwilling. Forced. One night in Matthews House Dan and a mate “accidentally” let slip of a fire extinguisher… “I have forty hours still to do, quite stupid but an experience.” Dan is just like any other guy out there, playing pranks, doing crazy things before or after a good night. He likes to keep within the boundaries, under cover, careful not to get caught, it almost becomes a game. The thrill and adrenalin is pumping, as if he is one of his characters in his favourite computer game- ‘Splinter Cell’. Everyone has a bit of rebellion in them and what is to be expected at Varsity?

He is just like most of us who don’t know exactly where we want to be in a few years but he’s here. Dan is just a guy studying at Rhodes, learning and making mistakes, just like the rest of us. He is out there joining society’s, making new friends and having a good time. After all that is what Varsity is, without a few slips of a fire extinguisher…

Take a look at his blog...
http://www.firstyeardummies.blogspot.com/