The California State University System has very specific GE requirements, and I haven't met any of them. Okay, maybe two of them. As an upper division student (I have 66 semester credits so I can't be admitted as a sophomore) I must complete the following General Education requirements before being admitted. Follow along at home, readers, and reminisce fondly about your own merry university days.

1. Admission Subjects: Minimum 12 semester [16 - 20 quarter] units:

Oral Communication
Speech 120. I already know how to speak extemporaneously, but fine, whatever.
Written Communication
Completed, thank god. I could not, COULD NOT sit through one more Frosh Comp class.
Critical Thinking
Covered by English 300 Intro to English Studies, i.e. Lit. Crit., as far as I'm concerned. They better accept it.
Math/Quantitative Reasoning
This means Statistics. Unfortunately, I have to complete Intermediate Remedial Stupid Person Who Couldn't Finish It In High School Or Twice At MTSU Algebra before they'll let me into Statistics. Kill me now.

2. Other General Education: Minimum 18 semester [24 - 30 quarter] units

Physical Science
My choices in Physical Science are Chemistry (right, I find high school algebra excrutiating, I'm so going to whiz through Chem), Physics, and Oceanography. I'm doomed.
Biological Science (one science must include a lab)
I'm so fucking doomed it's not funny. I haven't had Biology in 25 years, for Christ's sake, how am I going to pass it now?
Arts & Humanities
Thank god this is entirely taken care of. In fact, I have nothing but Arts & Humanities credits, apparently.
Social Sciences
I got a C in Psychology in 1976. I really hope this counts.
Life Long Development
What the hell kind of California crap is this? Are they talking about Home Ec? Phys Ed? What?

3. California State and Local History
This is the only one that sounds interesting.

That's nine classes, including labs, as I count it. Nine classes before I qualify to enter the sacred halls of SFSU. It will take me years to get there doing it at night four or five credits at a time. I'm so mad I could spit flames.

And whose fault is all of this? Mine, because I am stupid. I am. I avoided the GE courses that were hard. No one noticed I hadn't finished the basics before they let me into the higher levels. I had no advisors the first time around. I went to the Advisory Hall twice, once upon arrival, and once to change majors from Music to English. As with the rest of my school experience I slipped through the cracks of the system. No one cared that I didn't take what I was supposed to take, and I wasn't disciplined enough to make myself do it. And now I'm screwed by my own stupidity. But it's partially the CSUS, too, which requires different GE courses from either the University of Washington or Middle Tennessee State University, both of which are far better schools than SFSU could ever hope to be. Life Long Development my ass.

Fine. Whatever. I'm getting my degree anyway. I'll go to community college with all the other losers and get my stupid fucking algebra class done and then I'll take all their lousy GE credits, and it'll be 2005 before SFSU admits me, and I'll be fifty goddamn years old before I graduate.

But I will. So fuck you, CSUS.

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