From the Past: Top 10 Phrases Never Heard on the Concordia University Wisconsin Campus

By Brian Fibiger and Michael Pape

(c) 1994, 2005

10) "This letter only took three days to get to me!"
The mail system, meaning the US mail, never seemed to work properly when it carried packages that belonged to us. We would check the postmark, and mail sent first class from 2 states away would get there in like 8 days. We complained, but nobody cared enough to fix it. I blame Clinton.

9) "Can I hand my assignment in early?"
You have to understand, we had one foot out the door mentally when we wrote this. We were so tired of the whole college scene...including the rampant immaturity and lack of basic time-management skills displayed by (us and) our classmates. It always seemed like everybody was waiting until the last possible second to get things done, and on top of that bragging about it.

8) "Sure you can use our shovel. Sorry we plowed you in."
The school was in Wisconsin, so we saw a number of significant snowstorms each year. Every time it would snow, the maintenance people would plow right down the middle of the campus roads, piling the snow up three times as high on each side. Unfortunately for us, "each side" was where our cars were located. If we got more than a few inches, digging oneself out became a half-hour project of snow-kicking, hacking with an ice scraper, and rolling the car to a place you could get traction..

7) "Are you going to the swim team's meet?"
Yeah, we didn't have a pool. Most high schools have pools. Around the time I was there, they built a bunch of brand-new buildings including a field house and a new library, but couldn't find room for a pool. It was a bit of a sore spot among the students.

6) "How about a little sand volleyball?"
Unlike the pool thing, we did have a sand volleyball court, but the sand had hardened into a starfish-like shell after one winter, and it was never used. But they still would promote it to incoming students, like, "Look, young man...did you notice our sand volleyball court?" It was our little joke, but at least it wasn't as bad as our stinky and possibly nuclearly-contaminated pond, which it sat near.

5) "Study off last year's test? Why, I can't do that -- it would be cheating!"
It always struck us as a little ridiculous that professors would leave copies of previous years' mid-term and final exams in the library for perusal. We just wanted to be away from the questionable ethics of the college student, where you took every advantage to get a better grade, sometimes at the expense of learning. Plus, this helped the dumb students, which in turn hurt us smart people who relied on their bad grades to finish at the top of the curve.

4) "I'd drink, but it's a dry campus."
Not surprisingly, there was a "problem" with alcohol on campus. Many didn't see this "problem" as a problem, though. Underage drinking was everywhere, and totally cool, man, yeah. Yo
u see why we just wanted to be out of there, don't you? We later got a big surprise -- nobody's a grown-up in the real world, either!

3) "Hey, my financial aid is what they said it should be!"
I didn't have this problem, but everyone else did. It seems there was a lot of overestimation of financial aid going on to get people in the door. But when school costs 14 grand a year, you gotta give the people some sort of hope that they're not going to be in debt for the rest of their lives. Again, I blame Clinton and his culture of lies.

2) "I think I'll be courteous and turn my stereo down because my neighbor is studying."
In college I discovered white noise. It was one of the three of four most important things I learned in school, and I needed it every day. Like I said, it was definitely time to leave.

1) "Coach ________, you've just won the national championship! What are you going to do next?
Every year at least one of our sports teams were touted as a "national championship contender," but they always crashed and burned. When I got there, the football team was good. Then the basketball team became good, and finally the girls' basketball team got a giant from Latvia and became a national power. Except they didn't, really. Everybody always lost tragically in the playoffs. This is probably an unfair criticism, but when you hype and hype and hype and never bang, your bang-to-hype ratio is going to end up ticking people off. CUW athletics became the boy who cried "national championship," and in the end it got them eaten -- by us, in this list.