The University of South Florida

Date: Jun 24 2007
Major: Business - Management and Administration (This Major's Salary over time)
USF definetly is not what I expected. The biggest shock to me is that most people who live on and off campus leave tampa for the weekends to go to their hometowns (Sarasota, Orlando, etc) with their high school friends. I knew some would go home but the amount of people that do this is staggering. I would say at least 90% of those living on campus go home every weekend and at least 70% of those living off campus (these are extrememly conservative numbers).

The whole movement every thursday afternoon is quite remarkable in scope. The first day that we moved in and met our roomates, one of my roomates says to the other, "so when are you leaving?" I was there when they met and they had not talked about anything specific. It was just implied that he was referring to going home for the weekend. My roomate responded "in a few hours." They didnt even need any explanation, they both knew what exactly they were talking about even though they never had met each other before. All my roomates left within a few hours of moving in and came back very late the night before the first day of classes. This massive movement continued every weekend for the remainder of the year and has continued with my new roomates in the summer. Basically, most people are not here half the week.

Heres the general procedure at usf. Alot of students dont have class on fridays or they skip so they leave thursday afternoons. The parking lot is the best judge of this migration since the number of cars drastically decreases. Those who cant make it out of here on thurdsay leave no later then friday and thats when the campus and the surrounding area turns into a ghost town. My roomate is unlucky in his mind because he has to stay on fridays because of his late class. He lives in Miami but drives there every friday night and drives back sunday night. The fact that they will drive that long every weekend says something about usf.

Why do people go to usf when they are here only half the week? I really cant answer this question because if defies all logic. If you live half the time back in your hometown then why not go to college there? I think it stems from the fact that most usf students do not want to put in the time and effort to actually make new friends when they already have their circle of friends from high school. Im sure they am also proud of the fact that they can say they "go away for college" even though they really arent away for that long.

So if you cant go home every weekend then usf really is not going to be a good experience. In reference to the last post, you do need to try harder but I ultimately failed. I totally changed my personality and became very outgoing but in the end

sorry I cant hang out, I am going home this weekend.

I tried my best and gave it everything I had but unfortunately the massive migration to the suburbs is too strong.