The IT Student Blog

After a long summer and a long break from this blog… school is about to begin again.

SO it’s time to fill up your cup with hot coffee, plug in your machine and start absorbing new information. A fresh start! Now you’ve got the chance to do all your assignments on time, pre-order the new course literature, be the first to borrow what you need in the library and avoid the snooze button in the mornings (as the mornings are still quite sunny, and it’s nice to get up).

As to all the new students…

My absolute best advice for you guys (including everyone else) is to start up with things early. Even though you might get a soft start… do pick up your books. Google the things you don’t understand. Ask questions. Be curious. And never underestimate the power of Wikipedia. Keeping yourself up to date is invaluable.

Time flies and the exams always come faster than you think… so start up your work right away and you will increase your chances of surviving itu.

Act NOW, tomorrow might be too late. You don’t want to catch up with re-exams, trust me.

I wish all new students good luck with their studies and don’t run away if the more experienced guys talk about stuff you haven’t heard of when you’re having your first lunch breaks. Eventually you’ll undestand just as much… or even more. Just hang in there. Be cool. Keep on reading.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. -Winston Churchill

I believe this quote illustrates 2nd year SEM student Justin’s thoughts when he first heard about the coffee withdrawal. In my eyes he’s a faithful coffee drinker, but more importantly, he’s vary of the students well being and the university’s reputation. Over a lunch session on the 4th floor, the following scenario takes place:

If the mess in the kitchens is the real reason for the coffee removal, what if we remove all the cups in the kitchen? Another student excitingly and eager to assist in the situation consolidates with Justin. Soon, a wild lunch idea transcends into a plan of action.

The action plan roughly outlines like this:

• Inform others
• Move all cups
• Display a note

In the midst of the heat, not every student is informed (probably due to the eagerness of saving the coffee), but on the contrary every single cup, clean and dirty, is removed from the SEM kitchen. On Friday morning just before lecture time roughly 40 3rd year SEM students are somewhat upset when realising there are no more cups. Words are frown here and there, the faculty/administration mistakingly have to take a bunch of them, but all in all everyone quickly seems to adhere to the drastic change. Ironically, few students believes the chaos is caused by other students.

Revolutionary? A little. Best of all though, the SEM kitchen still shines! There is certainly a will from the students side to keep the free-coffee marketing advantage/luxury/right and this is a perfect demonstration of will. If the change persists, then I for one want to hear the bad excuses for not keeping the coffee.

A few weeks back I had the following conversation with an old classmate on Facebook about our free fuel, coffee:

E: Ursäkta?!?! Free?? Vilket uni går du på?? (Excuse me?!?! Free?? Which uni are you attending?)

Me: E, Yupp – free selecta-machine coffee! Det är nice, men som sagt… inget slår färskbryggt. (That’s nice, but ofc, nothing beats newly brewed)

E: Okej, jag sadla till IT uppenbarligen. I Örebro har de uttrycket “Ocker som i tolv spänn koppen”. (Okey, I should change to IT apparently. In Örebro we use the expression “Usury as in 12 kr per cup”)

Me: Å andra sidan kanske det inte smakar svart gift? (On the other hand, maybe it doesn’t taste like poison?)

E: Bekant med uttrycket “gratis är gott”? (Familiar with the expression “Free is good”?)

And then I realised I had just finished another conversation about how extraordinary it is to have free coffee available!

Over my two years at uni I have still to find one other university in Sweden which offers their students free coffee. Admittedly I often use it for bragging about ITU and it often feels like I’m pointing a finger in my opponents eye. While continuing to describe the luxury available to us they not too rarely end up convinced they should have gone into IT instead.

Now all this is going to go away. By 2010 there will be no more coffee advantage.

While I understand that universities should not be compared solely on their ability to provide their students with free coffee, it is one of those things that makes ITU special and somewhat geeky. By removing the coffee machines the university will loose one (out of several I hope) competitive advantages.

So what is the reason for this sudden change? Watch this:

Not a clean kitchen (by mett)

Evidently the administration/teachers/other staff, who also uses the coffee machines, are tired of finding the kitchen in this state. I admit, so am I, and many with me. So what’s stopping students (and staff?!?) to bring their own coffee machines? According to insurance (or safety) rules these are not permitted on the premises. Eventually, we’ll all have to pay for our coffee like at any other Swedish university. How boring.

Students, get your act together:

• put your cup in the washing machine after you’ve used it
• help empty a washing machine once in a while
• remind your friends to do the same

and together we can show the administration once again that ITU actually is a kind of cool place to study at.

Ps. I forgot to say thanks to those I regularly see cleaning up in the kitchen (they refers to both students and staff)

The coffee machines at ITU are always running warm. People seem to be drinking coffee all the time. Breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, evening meal, fika, night-coffee… 24/7, coffee, coffee, more coffee.

I belong to the smaller category of tea drinkers, who don’t understand why someone would choose coffee over a cup of nice-smelling tea. Actually, there are quite nice flavours at the uni, and of course I’ve tried all of them.

However, in recent times I’ve been quite tired and thought about the solution of having a cup of coffee.

Can coffee make wonders?

Well, to be sure I made lots of it.

The first sips were lovely. It felt like magic! The energy slowly came to me as the coffee spread throughout my body and brought every cell back to life.

Just because it felt so good, I ran to make another cup of coffee.

And another one.

But, when the black gold was all absorbed in my body I started to feel weird.

What the hell! When I thought I discovered the cure to fatigue, my hands started shaking. My face became white and I felt like I had fever. Warm, yet cold and very soon really sick.

The dark side of coffee! Obviously it’s a stronger drug than I thought it was. No wonder people get addicted to it when taking smaller doses. You guys who are standing in front of the coffee machine: BE AWARE!