I woke up one morning and rolled over in bed. I slammed my hand down on my alarm clock, activating the snooze for yet another time. I then woke up two hours later. I had quite definitely missed my 8:00 class, and if I didn’t come up with a plausible family emergency within a couple of hours, I would fail.

No big deal, though. I just need a little breakfast to get the creative “fib-juices” going. I stumble down to food service at 9:16. The roll bar drops down just as I am turning the corner. Food service closed at 9:15.

Luckily, I’m a reasonable guy. I’ll just skip breakfast this morning and will still be my usual chipper self. While I contemplate whether to tell my professor from my 8:00 class that my grandmother went into the hospital or my dog is having epileptic seizures again, I realize that I am missing something important. It is now 9:55 and I have a 10:00 all the way across campus.

Being an involved guy, I have a parking permit right outside the building. I rush down to my car to find a ticket. This is odd since I have a permit.

I investigate the inside of my car to find my rear-view mirror melted off and the permit on the floor next to it. Simple enough, I’ll straighten that out later. Right now I have class to get to.

I go to class, get raped on a test that covered virtually none of the material that the professor told us to study, and come back out. Of course, my car has another ticket on it. As I drive home, I curse myself for attempting to fool the parking nazis when I look down and see that the ticket lists the time as 10:05 p.m. when it should have read 10:05 a.m. Ah-ha! A loophole that could prompt an appeal!

Anyway, I go back up to my room. I call my professor to tell him about my poor dog. He’s not in and the secretary says he’s gone home for the day — he only works half days. I look up his home number and try to dial long distance. Unfortunately, I forgot that I was late paying my phone bill and now I have to pay an extra $10 in Beardshear to get my service re-activated.

I walk over to the administrative monolith and climb the steps. Suddenly, I remember that I also have to pay my U-bill. Wouldn’t you know it, it’s September 16. That’ll be $15 for administrative charges and $15 for not being able to pay my bill in full. Well isn’t that fun?

With my checkbook burning a hole in my pocket, I walk home. I get in my car and drive down to the Armory to try to appeal my two parking tickets. My appeal for the ticket I got in my lot was denied, even though I am legal to park there. However, the ticket I got in the teacher’s lot I parked in was overturned on a technicality. Somehow, I was not surprised.

When I walked out of the building, I went outside to get back in my car and found myself staring at yet another ticket. When I went back inside to complain about the unfairness of getting a ticket while I am paying off tickets, the cheery folks of the parking division just laughed.

This was most certainly a bad day.

The point of this little story was just to point out one thing. Although the university is a place to learn and to grow as a person, there are other issues afoot.

In case you haven’t noticed, everywhere you turn on this campus, somebody is looking to squeeze an extra buck out of you or screw you over in general. I mean everywhere. From the dryers that cost an extra 25 cents to the tuition increases that are almost double the inflation rate. From the professor who collects daily homework and keeps attendance to the only security guard in the stadium who won’t let you on the field.

So as an intelligent, frugal college student who has no money to burn on anything but food and booze with no patience for idiots, what do you do?

There’s no avoiding getting stung by the bureaucracy. You could withdraw, go live in a cave and poke animals with pointy sticks until they die for sustenance. But you would still owe somebody a ten spot for operating a sharp stick without a permit.

All you can really do is play it cool. Try not to put yourself in a position where you can be violated (that’s an interesting sentence). Pay your U-bill on time and in full. Find out where the nazis don’t ticket (then come tell me). If your professor acts like the type of guy that has an infatuation with the letter “F” — change sections.

As the saying goes: “don’t let the man get you down.” No matter how bad you get hosed, you’re still you. You’re still the same brilliant person with unique talents. Nobody can take that away from you. But you can still be really pissed about parking tickets. That’s just human.

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David Roepke is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Aurora.