Micro-torial: The tuition line

Chances are that right now, not too long ago, or very-very soon you will find yourself in the lineup to pay your tuition fees. Maybe that’s a little too patronizing: perhaps you’re an upper-year student who has learned your lesson and only has to deal with the line while attempting to make a last-minute parking payment, trying to use an ATM at noon or, say, buying textbooks.

In any event, the tuition lineup is an event so regular I can’t imagine beginning a school year without it. This sentiment is less nostalgia than, say, horrified contempt — as university students, we are charged with balancing essays and exams, navigating chronologically impossible degree requirements, and walking a budget line that features wholesale boxes of ramen noodles and dollar beer. So why can’t people manage to pay their tuition before the last possible second?

The university says its students have “many futures” — if we can’t learn to write a cheque or make a payment online, how many of these futures involve a line of a less glamorous sort? (use your imagination).

My advice to you: get on it. Your academic career will thank you.

By the way, have you bought your bus pass yet?