As temperatures plummet and the trees on Sproul grow as barren as my social calendar, I know that the seasons have changed. In fact, I just got another email from the Office of Undergraduate Advising telling me “it’s midterm season”. But…wait. I thought last month was midterm season. Hold on, I could’ve sworn it was also midterm season the month before, too.
Call me Olivia Rodrigo, because I’m getting major deja vu.
Merriam-Webster defines the term “season” as “a period of the year characterized by or associated with a particular activity or phenomenon”, which is about as vague and unhelpful as a horoscope. But the word “period” at least implies an ending. A midterm offseason, if you will.
UC Berkeley has a well-documented history of working alongside the feds and this is just another big-business, corrupt-government scam. What most students don’t realize is that midterms are farmed, bred, and mined by mega-corporations that sell them to Berkeley at exorbitant prices. We don’t see it, but the administration receives kickbacks under-the-table for every extra midterm they shove into our curriculum.
Not all of these transactions are even under-the-table. What’s up with having to buy our own scantrons, blue books, and pencils? You thought Big Pharma paying doctors to prescribe drugs is bad? Try “Big Academia” ensuring that you have five “midterms” for a four-month class— it’s a scam and we’re being played like fiddles!
Wake up! Big Academia isn’t even the worst offender here. They’re just another pawn in the corporate game of Monopoly, waiting till they can try to shout “king me!” The Paper Lobby’s sticking its bleached-white fingers everywhere, giving profs kickbacks to add extra pages for “scratch work” at the end of each test. The Classroom Industry has been quietly funneling more and more classrooms into Berkeley for years for discussion sections to take exams in. Corporate Academia’s got its hands around the University’s throat — and I’m starting to think the University likes it.