Each time I begin a new semester here at Cerritos College, it’s with great anticipation and excitement. And then reality sets in: Ninety-degree heat even in the shade. Spilling coffee on your math book two days after buying it. Trying to navigate the stairs while in three-inch heels. (That one refers just to the girls. I hope.)

As every college student knows, school and stress are pretty much synonymous. I mean, it takes me five minutes just to psych myself up enough just to enter the bookstore the first week of classes. (And my doctor wonders why my blood pressure goes up ten points every year come August.)

That said, here’s a list of my top annoyances (the ones I haven’t repressed, at least):

1. People who come to school sick and spend the whole class period coughing and sneezing and hacking up all kinds of unattractive stuff (and pretty much infecting the general population). The old addage goes, “Feed a fever, starve a cold,” NOT “feed a fever, bring a cold to school.”

2. Any and all things related to the school parking lot, including, but not limited to: a) Having to arrive on campus at 8am in order to find parking for a 10am class. b) Cars that follow ten feet behind you while you’re walking to your parking space. c) Drviers who think the parking lot is the new site of the Indy 500. d) Drivers who don’t understand a “STOP” sign actually means “Stop.”

3. Textbooks that cost almost as much as your monthly rent.

4. Teachers who think they’re the only ones assigning you 100 pages of reading the first week of class.

5. Teachers who tell you to bring your ten-pound book to class every day, even though you never use it. Then, the one time you DON’T bring it, is the day your teacher decides to give an open-book test.

6. People’s beepers going off while you’re trying to take a test. (Anyone think this is a secret conspiracy instigated by certain students in order to undermine the confidence of others and raise the curve in their own favor?)

7. Getting yelled at for arrivng late to an 11am class becuase your previous teacher kept you until 10:58.

8. The restrooms in the Arts & Crafts building. (‘Nuff said.)

Don’t get me wrong; I love attending Cerritos College (it sure beats a full-time job at Taco-On-A-Stick), but there are some days I just don’t feel like braving the gauntlet of the school parking lot or standing in line fifteen minutes at the bookstore just to buy 50-cents worth of Scan-Trons. I always knew college would be difficult, but who knew it would turn out to be so much, well, WORK?

-Chimene Mata