#72: Talking About How Awesome London Was

One of the great experiences that many students have while attending Notre Dame is studying abroad.  During their junior year students can spend a semester or even a year studying in many far-reaching corners of the globe at locations such as Shanghai, China; Toledo, Spain; Santiago, Chile; Dublin, Ireland; and Fremantle, Australia.  These (and other) locations are interesting because of how their programs are set up.  Many feature students living with host families and taking classes with students from around the world.

Of all the abroad programs, however, the most unique and important is The London Program.

The London Program is unique because it is operated entirely by the University.  Students live in flats filled with other Notre Dame Students (in a building dominated by Notre Dame Students), they take all of their classes with only Notre Dame Students (classes that are taught by Notre Dame professors, in a building owned by the University), and they spend much of the semester travelling around Europe with other Notre Dame Students.

While other abroad programs grant students the opportunity to live and learn with students of different cultures, the London Program gives students the opportunity to create a miniature version of Notre Dame in a city that is decidedly more interesting than South Bend, Indiana.  These students embrace this opportunity by making new groups of Notre Dame friends and expanding their part of the Notre Dame network (see #85).

When these students return to campus from London, they continuously talk about how awesome London was.  They talk about going to clubs that aren’t named Fever.  They talk about going on weekend trips to Prague and Sweden and about drinking Ice Dragon in their flats.  These students talk incessantly about how awesome their booze cruise was on the River Thames, and they have seemingly added the word cheers to their everyday speech.

These students are able to talk about how awesome London was because they have other people to reminisce about it with.  While students in other abroad programs might have known a handful of other people from Notre Dame at their location, students in The London Program literally come back with new groups of friends who they can discuss their adventures with—and all of their old friends will have to sit through their stories again and again (especially the stories about the booze cruise).

However, students that didn’t study in London will eventually learn that the great thing about all of these stories is that it makes an entire class of students more tightly knit.  The 200 (or so) people that go to London each semester might come back with new friends, but these new friends will be linked with old friends and each class will seemingly become smaller. 

For this reason, the students that didn’t go to London tolerate all of the chatter about London because they will have made new friends because of how awesome London was.  

#71: Viewpoint Wars

The Observer is one of the most loved or hated things at Notre Dame.  Some students make sure to read it every day, always checking the Question of the Day (see #46), the Viewpoint section, the front page, and (of course) the comics.  Other students almost never pick up the paper, instead opting to read the complimentary national newspapers with their dining hall meals.

However, if there is one thing that can get every Notre Dame Student to pick up and read The Observer, it is raging Viewpoint war about a controversial issue.  While some of these issues come up for a short while (such as Barack Obama speaking at commencement) and will probably never appear in the Viewpoint section again, many issues that create Viewpoint wars appear in the section on an almost annual basis.

Issues such as the unique relationship between Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s (see #43.5), the disappointing nature of the football team, bookstore basketball team names, violence off-campus, single-sex dorms, and the acceptance of LGBT students at Notre Dame appear quite frequently in the pages of the viewpoint section.  Nearly every year an incident will happen that will again bring these issues to the forefront and cause even the most reluctant Notre Dame Student to pick up The Observer and read the next level of rhetorical sparring.

When The Observer is in the midst of a Viewpoint War, their e-mail inbox is flooded with letters and comments about the controversy.  Even the most passive Notre Dame Student wants to get their two cents in and takes to their laptop to pen the most passionate (and usually predictable) argument possible.  The section becomes dominated by the single topic for days and weeks (or, in the case of Obama, months), and columns or letters not pertaining to the war simply fall by the wayside.

Viewpoint Wars are important because they depict Notre Dame Students at their best (or, more often, at their worst).  While they are always overblown, they depict the issues that are important to the student body, and the ones that are most controversial amongst the student body.  They get the students actively talking about topics, and they throw the most troublesome issues into the limelight.  Because of this, Notre Dame Students love Viewpoint Wars.

#70: Switching from Engineering to Business

Notre Dame Students have high expectations.  They expect a lot out of their professors: hoping for slides to be put online and class notes to be printed out.  They expect a lot from their Thursday nights: hoping for plenty of drinking and time to see all of their friends.  They expect a lot from their football team: a national championship or bust.  Most of all, however, Notre Dame Students expect a lot out of themselves.

Expecting a lot from themselves, students enter the University of Notre Dame expecting to participate in difficult and promising majors.  They state their intention to major in Pre-Med or Architecture or Science or Engineering knowing that these majors are complicated, and knowing that their completion will be challenging. 

Soon enough, however, Notre Dame Students will switch their major from Engineering (or a similarly taxing major) to Business (or a similarly less complicated major).

There are many reasons for this traditional switch in major (which usually comes in the second or third semester).  Some of these students had been originally pressured by their parents to do something they don’t want to do (and then rebel, because they are in college).  Many students were led to believe that their strengths were in math and science simply because they were great at these subjects in high school.  Other students simply do not know what they want to do with their life when they are 18 years old.

The most important reason, however, that students change their majors from engineering to business is so that these students have plenty of time to do things that are SO college at night and on the weekends (see #11).  While engineering classes have labs on Friday afternoons (and pre-med classes have their own things to do then), most business classes allow students to have wide open schedules on these Friday afternoons (and for upperclassmen, all of Friday) so that they can start their weekend off right.

Furthermore, the amount of work that business students have (and the level of attentiveness these students need for their classes) allow these students to spend many weeknights doing nothing but watching television and playing drinking games.  Once students realize that these are the things they want to take away from their college experience, they realize that it is time to change majors.

This major switch is exemplified by the science-business and math-business majors that appear for many sophomores.  These majors are briefly declared by many students who believe they need a change, but want to keep up the appearance that they are more academic than their business counterparts.  Usually they hold this distinction over the heads of their business-only friends for a semester or two pretending that they might actually go to med school until they realize the easier work load of a business major is the right way to go, and they declare a business-only major.

Overall, changing from engineering to a business major is one of the most popular major switches at the University of Notre Dame, a switch that is always taken lightly.

#69: Love, Actually

Notre Dame Students love Christmas movies.  They love Elf for its contemporary nuttiness, oftentimes repeating quotes such as, “Bye Buddy, hope you find your Dad,” when somebody leaves a party or small circle (see #24).  They love It’s a Wonderful Life for its classic story and timeless Frank Capra themes, and they love Home Alone for its childhood memories of high jinks (as well as tiring debates about how many times Marv and Harry should have died over the course of the film).  While many people of different ages around the country love each of these movies (as well others) there is one movie that Notre Dame Students love so much more than it is typically loved.

That movie is the ‘Ultimate Romantic Comedy’: Love, Actually. 

Notre Dame Students love Love, Actually because it is a movie that brings together the joy of the Christmas season with the satisfaction of a good romantic comedy.  Not only do they love Christmastime (see #66), but Notre Dame Students also love romantic comedies because they love to love.  Notre Dame Students love their families, they love their roommates, they love their friends, they love their girlfriends/boyfriends, and they love their school; so it makes sense that they would love a movie that is ostensibly about love.

Love, Actually is that movie. 

What Notre Dame Students love about the film is the fact that everybody can relate to a different story in it (except the one with the guy who’s in love with his best friend’s wife; that’s just sleazy).  Some students love Sarah’s (Laura Linney) storyline because it shows a person that needs and loves her family over anything else.  Others love Jaime’s (Colin Firth) storyline because it shows how love can triumph over immense barriers like language.  Still others count Karen’s (Emma Thompson) and Harry’s (Alan Rickman) story as their favorite because it depicts a love for children.

While everybody loves Sam’s story (mainly because it ends with a rousing rendition of All I Want For Christmas Is You (see #39)), and few dislike the hilarious antics of Billy Mack (Bill Nighy); one of the more beloved storylines in Love, Actually is the story of the Prime Minister (Hugh Grant).  While the details of this tale are satisfactory, the climax of the story is when he gives the speech touting everything that is great about Britain.  Not only is this a great speech in the vein of Rockne and Holtz (see #15), but it also plays to the Anglophile sensibilities of most Notre Dame Students.

Overall, the storylines of Love, Actually make it a film that Notre Dame Students feel comfortable watching with their parents, with a group of friends in the dorm, with members of the opposite sex that they are just platonically friends with, and with members of the opposite sex that they are attempting to ‘Notre Dame Hook-Up’ with right before parietals (see #21 and #63).  Because of this, it has become an unlikely classic amongst Notre Dame Students and a film that they continue to treasure and love (of course) every holiday season.

#68: ‘Studying’ in LaFortune

When the end of the semester approaches, Notre Dame Students lock down into a study mode that is extraordinary to see.  Many students make their way to the library for the first time all year while some students fail to make it out to the bars for the first weekend all year.  Students that are usually hanging around their dorms watching football games throughout the day are nowhere to be found, and the library is the place to see and be seen.

Notre Dame Students each have their own favorite places to study.  Some go to the basement of the library, or the second floor of the library, or one of the many other floors of the library (the place where actual work gets done).  Some students go to Jordan Hall of Science, others go to study rooms in their dorms, and others go to CoMo.  However, the most inexplicable location where Notre Dame Students study for exams en masse is the LaFortune Student Center.

There are very few sensible reasons why studying in LaFortune is a good idea.  Sure there is the Huddle and other mediocre food options (see #14), there are some tables where people can study in groups, parietals are non-existent so couples can study together, and the obvious fact that Starbucks doesn’t have to be snuck into LaFortune (see #22); but can any real studying actually occur within the walls of this building?

LaFortune is a loud building where lots of things are happening.  In addition to the typical groups of people getting their sandwiches and coffee, Finals week features additional distractions from Zahm guys going on the Bun Run, drunk students that are too good for studying, and even rogue Christmas Carolers spreading holiday cheer.  All these things combine to make LaFortune the worst possible place on campus to study for exams.

That’s why nobody actually studies there.

People might go to LaFortune with all of their books, their class notes, and their laptops.  They might spread all of these things haphazardly across a table to give the appearance that they are doing a lot of work, but ultimately they won’t go 45 seconds without stopping to talk with somebody, or checking their Facebook page, or getting up for more coffee and snacks, or playing online games, or reading blogs like this one.  Going to LaFortune to ‘study’ is nothing more than an exercise in procrastination (see #18).

This is the way Notre Dame Students like it.  They go to LaFortune and put up a facade of studiousness so that they can go back to their dorms or apartments and tell all of their roommates and friends that they, “spent 12 hours studying” when they really accomplished nothing all day.  These students use this ‘studying’ to later justify doing things that are SO college (see #11) like going to bars and/or ugly sweater parties (see #66). 

Not only are these students misleading their friends about their long hours of ‘studying’, but usually they are lying to themselves and believing that they are being productive.  Eventually these students might move to a better location where they will actually get work done; but as long as they remain in LaFortune they are merely keeping up the appearance of hard work.

#67: New Football Coaches

Recent years have unfortunately seen the necessity for Notre Dame to endure five different searches for a new head football coach.  While the specific circumstances surrounding and the people conducting each search have changed over the years, they have all (quite obviously) followed a period of failure and disappointment on the football field.

Because of the various perspectives of these failures, different groups within the Notre Dame community have different opinions of the coaching searches and of the men that are subsequently hired from these searches.  Old Alums (especially the overly fanatical message board crowd) are oftentimes angry and upset with new hires because these men do not fall under their arbitrary and unreachable ‘Tier 1’ designation.  These people make outlandish and unsubstantiated claims based on their ‘inside information’ (see #8) and choose to continue their never-ending pessimism about the football program.

Young alums that personally witnessed all of the failures and disappointment that brought about the need for a coaching change are expectedly skeptical of the new coach.  While these former students are hopeful for a more successful future, they all remember how excited they were when the last coach was hired.  They remember the short lived ‘Return to Glory’ of Tyrone Willingham and the ‘Hard-working, intelligent, and nasty’ football teams of Charlie Weis. 

These young alums are skeptical because they can clearly remember a time before the last coach failed; a time when they were students and hanging Sports Illustrated covers on their dorm room walls.  They remember a time when the departed coach was the new coach, and they loved him.

This is because Notre Dame Students LOVE new football coaches.

When a new coach is hired, Notre Dame Students brim with excitement and unbridled optimism.  They dreamily look towards the upcoming season knowing that there will be better results on the field and certain that the coach will lead them to the Promised Land.  They update their Facebook statuses, listen to press conferences, and start thinking of sayings for custom T-Shirts they will sell the following fall (see #35).

Notre Dame Students love new football coaches because they represent the possibility to wake up the echoes and return Notre Dame Football to its previous years of glory.  New football coaches bring with them the chance to restore winning traditions (see #40) and the ability to give the current classes a chance to witness a long lost level of success.

Now, Brian Kelly represents that chance; and until he loses his first game every Notre Dame Student will love him.

#66.5: Things Fr. Jenkins* Likes

1)       “Going Green”

2)       Creating Controversies

3)       The Academic Forum

4)       Uganda (see #1)

5)       Killing the Vagina Monologues

6)       Running with ROTC Students

7)       Creating a family friendly atmosphere

8)       Groundbreaking Ceremonies for new buildings

9)       Killing the Gay Film Festival

10)   Bill Kirk

11)   Premature Contract Extensions

12)   Academic Freedom (sort of)

13)   Calling ND a ‘research institution’

14)   Sustaining  the city of South Bend

15)   Fr. Malloy (for being an easy act to follow)

*Fr. Jenkins AND the University Administration