Lucas Schultz hesitated for just a second before sending his message, and he felt his heart flutter as he waited for the response. For a moment he felt optimistic and thought he might finally be able to meet with her, but then CalCentral alerted him that the advising appointments had been filled for the day and he wouldn’t be able to talk to his advisor for another week.
For a straight month, Schultz had woken up each morning determined to secure an L&S advising appointment that day. However, his naive optimism soon faded to a faint, flickering hope as he gradually turned to Reddit threads and even Magic 8 balls for academic guidance. “I began to wonder whether the L&S advisor really existed, you know? Maybe the whole thing is a myth, much like mermaids or free speech,” he reasoned, adjusting his red “Make America Great Again” hat. [su_pullquote align=”right” class=”“]“I began to wonder whether the L&S advisor really existed, you know? Maybe the whole thing is a myth, much like mermaids or free speech”[/su_pullquote]
He decided to go see his advisor in person, gathering the courage to enter the eternal labyrinth of Dwinelle Hall in search of the newly built advising office. After gathering several maps and packing enough food to last him a few days in case he got lost, Schultz entered Dwinelle only to find that the office was right by the entrance. However, the line to get an appointment was so long that he used up all his food rations on a 3 day journey to the end of the line somewhere on the third floor. By that time, Schultz had realized that he would most likely graduate before ever reaching the advising office.
On the upside, Schultz’s experiences in attempting to navigate the bureaucratic mess of Berkeley have now made him nearly immune to the possibility of rejection. Taking advantage of this newfound safeguard, Schultz plans to ask out a longtime crush just in time for Valentine’s Day. “Realistically,” he tells us, “it’s probably easier for me to get a date for Valentine’s Day than an appointment with my advisor.” In the end, even if Schultz bungles his entire college career from the lack of advising, at least he has a miniscule chance of entering a tentative relationship that might provide temporary purpose and fulfillment but ultimately proves to be based on lofty ideals instead of realistic expectations and would eventually leave him empty and heartbroken, just like the fact that he can’t get an advising appointment.
(This article was a collaboration between Tatiana Su and Casey Diene.)
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