Welcome to UW-Oshkosh! You sure are lucky, as you are about to embark upon the fun and exciting adventure of learning that is college. You have finally tossed off the oppressive shackles of high school and the uncomfortable ball gag that is living at home, and are now being fitted for the oppressive shackles of college and the ball gag that is residence-hall life, which reeks of gin and the four cans per day of aerosol cologne that your roommate will be using.

By now you've most likely toured the campus, but how much of it have you really seen? You've seen what the school wants you to see during the precious tours you take before deciding to come here, and your perceptions of college life are based entirely on college party movies and commercials for personal electronics that depict the wacky lives of typical, demographically diverse college students that desperately need more personal electronics.

But what if you want to know what college life is really like? And what if you want to know about how Oshkosh is different from the typical institution of academia that you've seen featured in an infomercial for Girls Gone Wild? Since the school will probably just tell you about the inconsequential buildings where you'll never bother going (such as the dining hall, academic buildings, the residence-hall room that you'll be living in, whatever), we here at the A-T have compiled, as a public service to the students, the really important locations you'll need to know if you want to be the "big man on campus" (wow I just totally made that up, I swear).

AT Office

The Advance-Titan office is the only important thing that exists in Reeve Memorial Union, and it is the only thing in the entire Union that you will even consider going to throughout this academic year. Yeah, there are other places in the Union that you might be tricked into thinking are "interesting" or "useful," but in reality you'll be going to the Health Center to get medicine for your VD more often then you'll be going to the Union.

You definitely won't ever go to the OSA office, you'll never go to Copy This, you won't even be able to find the movie theater, and you MIGHT be going to the bookstore once this whole year, to buy books at the beginning of the fall semester, but only if you're a chump.

However, you will be wanting to visit the A-T office. Once you see how brilliant and innovative the writing in this majestic paper is, you'll all be clamoring to get our autographs. Our office is located in Reeve 19, which is in the basement of the union next to the scenic broom closet and just down the hall from some scary room that screams whenever the elevator moves.

Computer Lab

Are you looking for a good place to masturbate at 5 AM? Well then you're going to want to hit up the computer lab, where the internet, and thus an unlimited stream of hardcore pornography, flows freely! Then you're going to want to go to the basement of Radford hall, where there are enough computers to make sure that every student on campus secretes fluids on one (OK I know this is two consecutive campus hot spots that are in basements, but I swear that's just a coincidence. I don't have some sick basement fetish or anything).

Even if you have your own computer, you'll still be spending a lot of time in the computer lab. This is because it's hard to do hours of work in your dorm room, which is the same place that you keep your TV, your booze, your toys and your Cory Hart CDs that you like to play when nobody is in the room and do air guitar to (don't even lie I KNOW you!). Hell, it's hard enough to do work on your own computer, since every time you do you'll probably end up going to homestarrunner.com or something. But that won't happen in the computer lab, because one of the dorks who works there will yell at you if you try.

Thank god for the dorks.

Financial Aid Office

According to my sources (my parents) the cost of an education is somewhere in the range of a million-billion dollars, and the last time I checked, that is a lot. Thus, you will needing some financial aid. A LOT of financial aid. Unless you are the child of wealthy oil barons who control all of the petroleum reserves in the western hemisphere, you'll be needing some financial aid. And even if your parents' last name is Rockefeller, you'll still probably need some work-study money or something. Here's an indication of how expensive college is; if you knew exactly how much you'd be paying to not go to your classes and not learn anything, you'd have joined the army.

Ergo you'll be going to the financial aid office, located in room 104 of Dempsey, pretty much every other week. Just make sure that you dress up like Oliver Twist and tell a sad story about how you've had to live as a street urchin and you're only in college because you really applied yourself and you taught yourself to read from issues of "People" magazine that you found in the garbage; you'll get more money that way. And then if that doesn't work, just show up to the financial aid office wearing a monkey costume and your best dancing fez, and be prepared to work for your drinking money.

Protestor hot spots

There are often protestors on the campus of UW-O, protesting any wide range of issues, from "you should read the bible more!" to "you should have less abortions!" Some of these spots include the Algoma entrance to Blackhawk commons, the Polk library entrance to the union, the Algoma entrance to the union, that thing with the benches between Clow and Radford and that big grassy field between Polk and Harrington hall.

It is important to know where this popular protestor positions are so that, once you see somebody at one of these spots jamming a brochure or something into the palm of everybody who walks by, you know not to pass even remotely by any of the other spots. First, it's pretty annoying to have somebody as persistent as a panhandler bug you. But it's even more annoying when it's a reverse panhandler, somebody who, instead of wanting you to give them something, wants to give you something. What sucks about this is that you just know that whatever they want to give you is something you really don't want.

But what's even more annoying is the actual content of these brochures. For example, last semester an anti-abortion group came to campus to protest, and handed brochures with pictures of eviscerated babies to everybody who dared walk into Blackhawk to get something to eat. Regardless of what your stance on abortion is, I'm going to assume that you don't want to see a carved-up fetus while you're eating, and if you do then you don't have to punish the rest of us, you weirdo.

So in conclusion, that's pretty much what you can look forward to during your college experience; pictures of dead babies, crippling poverty and working on computers with splooge-covered keyboards. Have a wonderful year!