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FactsSlang
- ACR - Short for Alachua County Resident. A less-than-complimentary term referring to non-students, usually ones unkind people might call hicks.
- Barbie House - The Pi Beta Phi sorority house off Frat Row. It’s big, bright, and pink and looks just like Barbie’s mansion.
- Bat House - Just across the street from Lake Alice is this structure that looks like a roof and four poles. It houses an enormous population of bats. People gather at dusk and dawn to watch the bats leaving for dinner and coming home after a good night out.
- Belt Buckle - The big silver sculpture/fountain thing outside the Fine Arts building across SW 13th Street from Alpha Tau Omega.
- Big Potato - A gigantic rock in Turlington Plaza which looks so much like a potato that a group of art students once covered it in tin foil, shined red lamps on it, and had people dressed up like cooks standing around it. Its real name is the GPA Rock not grade point average, but General Purpose A, which is what they called Turlington Hall before it got its name.
- Discussion Section - Called recitation at other schools, this is the part of those huge lecture courses where you meet more personally with an instructor, generally a TA, and only about 30 students. It’s usually where you take quizzes, turn in homework, and ask questions.
- French Fries - The common name for the gigantic yellow sculpture behind the Computer Sciences and Engineering building and Marston Science Library. It’s really called “Alachua.”
- Gator 1 - The technical name for your student ID, and, in fact, the only thing you’ll hear it called—nobody says “student ID.”
- Growl - Short for Gator Growl, the world’s largest student-run pep rally. It has a laser show, crazy cool fireworks, dance teams, skits, the homecoming pageant, and comedians like Bill Cosby, Ray Romano, Jerry Seinfeld, Carrot Top, and the late Bob Hope.
- ISIS - Short for Integrated Student Information System, use it at www.isis.ufl.edu to register for courses, find your grades, check on financial aid, pay University fees, look at your transcript, and do all kinds of other useful stuff.
- O’Dome - The more common name for the Stephen C. O’Connell Center, where basketball games, volleyball games, swim meets, guest speeches, concerts, graduation, and other events take place.
- Plaza - Short for Plaza of the Americas, a big grassy lawn—the closest we have to the traditional “quad”—bordered by Griffin-Floyd Hall, Leigh Hall, Library West, Criser Hall, and Peabody Hall. The Hare Krishnas serve lunch here.
- Preview - UF’s version of summer orientation.
- Racquet Club - A dining area near the Student Rec. The Gator Dining Services office is in the building, too.
- SNAP - Short for Student Nighttime Auxiliary Patrol. It’s the police department service where student employees carrying police radios escort students on campus at night. At the moment, they drive a van, but there’s a possibility that all future escorts will be conducted on foot. Call (352) 392-SNAP (7627).
- Student Ghetto - The area just west of SW 13th Street and north of University Avenue—famous for inexpensive housing and loud parties. Don’t walk around this area at night by yourself.
- Swamp - Depending on the context, the Swamp is either the nickname for Ben Hill Griffin Stadium at Florida Field (“where only Gators get out alive . . . ”) or a popular restaurant across the street from campus on University Avenue.
- The Alligator - Well, this can mean a lot of things, but if it’s preceded by “read,” it’s referring to the Independent Florida Alligator, the University newspaper.
- The Wall - Common name for a long wall on the east side of SW 34th Street just south of University Avenue. It’s covered with enormous graffiti messages that change every day. By all means, paint the wall sometime before you leave, but have a little respect for the black, white, and red section that pays tribute to the students murdered in 1990—it’s really inconsiderate to paint over that when there’s so much other space to use.
Things I Wish I Knew Before Coming To School
- “Oh, I’ll just transfer to UF if I don’t like it at [insert other school name here].” It’s a lot easier said than done. UF is not a big fan of underclass transfers, which basically means if you started at another school and have less than two years’ worth of work done there, you need a 3.9 overall high-school GPA and 1350 on the SAT before UF will even consider letting you in. Of course, after you’ve made it past those first two years, it’s a whole lot easier to become a Gator—if you haven’t already gotten used to your own school by then . . .
- During the few days at the beginning of each semester as “drop/add period,” people change their schedules a lot. It’s very possible that the course you were dying to get into but which was already full will open up a little at this point. Use ISIS to put yourself on a wait list for the class, and don’t forget to put yourself back on every morning until the end of drop/add—the system empties the lists every night.
- It’s okay to change your major, and there’s a good chance you will. Fortunately, you can study just about anything at UF, so it’s not like you’ll have to change schools or anything.
- Most of the kids at this school are from Florida, which means not much more than a six-hour drive home, tops. Some people make that drive every weekend, but the problem is that leaving town every few days is a good way to prevent yourself from learning what’s cool about G’ville or getting used to life on your own. Don't go home for at least a month after you first get here, and even after that, don’t ditch this place for the weekend more than once every several weeks or so.
- The campus is positively enormous. Get a map—you can pick them up in the Hub.
- There are two main “money” offices at UF—Student Financial Affairs and University Financial Services. Though it seems like their names may as well be interchangeable, they are definitely not: SFA is the office that likes to give you money (financial aid), and UFS is the office that likes to take it away (they send you the bills.) Fortunately, they’re right next to each other, so if you head to the wrong one, the other is only a few steps away.
Tips to Succeed
- Be friendly
- Do your homework
- Go to class!
- Go to professors’ office hours—even if it’s just to introduce yourself
- If you know that you can’t handle a 7:30 a.m. class, don’t sign up for one
- Join an organization or team
- Keep an open mind
- Stay very organized
- Study abroad
- Take a break from work now and then
- Volunteer in the community
Urban Legends
- Everyone’s favorite: bricks will fall from the top section of Century Tower if a virgin graduates from UF.
- FSU’s athletics director once said that former UF football coach Steve Spurrier deserved a spanking.
- There used to be an alligator in a pit around Century Tower.
- Tom Petty’s song "American Girl" is said to be written about a girl who committed suicide by jumping from her Beaty Towers’ window.
- Two lovers were sitting on the bank of the then-unnamed Lake Alice until an alligator came up and dragged the guy into the lake. The University named the lake after the traumatized girl who barely escaped with her life.
Traditions
- Century Tower Bells - Century Tower has one of the largest carillons in the country, and music students make good use of it. It chimes on the quarter-hour, of course, but on weekday afternoons, carillon students play regular songs, which sounds pretty cool on those enormous bells. If it’s wet weather, they might play “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head,” and near Halloween they’ve been known to bust out with the Dracula music.
- F-Book - Consult your "F-Book," a list of traditions at the University of Florida, which you’ll receive at Preview. If you complete 40 or more of the traditions in the F-Book before graduation, you’ll receive a snazzy medal.
- Fight Song - Very few people actually seem to know the words, but the band plays it a lot, so you may as well become familiar with the lyrics: “So give a cheer for the Orange and Blue, Waving forever! Forever pride of old Florida, May she droop never. We’ll sing a song for our flag today, Cheer for the team at play! On to the goal, We’ll fight our way for Florida!”
- Four Square - Students line Turlington Plaza every Friday to play four-square. Just watch out for cherry bombs if you decide to play.
- Gator Chomp - When the band plays music that sounds like “Jaws,” or you want to show that the opposing team in any sport does not have a chance, you stick one arm straight out in front of you and clap the other down on top of it, like a big alligator mouth (well, vaguely). We say that the chomp is only further proof that we’re the smartest kids in the south, because our fiercest rival, Florida State, only knows how to use one arm at a time for their chopping signal. Plus you need rhythm to chomp appropriately to the Jaws music—you’ll figure out what it is as soon as you hear it —which ‘Noles just don’t have.
- Go Gators! - The band has a distinct five-note flourish that is meant to elicit a supportive yell from the crowd. They play it in sets of three; the first two times you yell “go Gators!” and the last time you shout “go Gators, come on Gators, get up and go!” You will get so used to this that if you hear the flourish when you’re 90 years old in a rocking chair, you’ll jump up and cheer appropriately before resuming your daily catnap.
- Orange and Blue Cheer - Before a football game starts, this announcer runs down to the field and says something like, “Okay, give me the big orange!” And the west side of the stadium (where students sit) yells “Orange! Orange! Orange orange orange!” So of course the east side comes back with “Blue! Blue! Blue blue blue!” And then it’s “Orange!” “Blue!” back and forth for awhile. It’s pretty cool—because it’s so loud, it sounds more like a tornado coming in than actual words.
- Scrimmage Line Noise - When the other team has the football and is getting ready to snap it, everybody in the stadium cups their hands around their mouths and bellows an indistinct but (we hope) disruptive sound as loud as possible. You wouldn’t think this would work, but it’s definitely part of what makes the Swamp one of the toughest places to play in college football (to go along with this, of course, we’re as quiet as possible when the Gators are about to snap).
- The Hey Song - Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part 2 (The Hey Song)” is popular with most university bands. Here, however, you don’t just listen—you participate. You say “hey” when Gary would, and in the longer interlude (you’ll know it’s time because other people in the stadium will sing it) you say “orange and blue let’s go Gators!” The timing is not exactly what you’d expect, but I promise you’ll figure it out.
- Yelling parts of the Alma Mater - It’s not normally considered good form to yell the words of a formal song such as the Alma Mater, but before and after a football game, everybody stands up to sing it, while positively bellowing a few important words: “Florida, our alma mater, Thy glorious name we praise. All thy loyal sons and daughters A joyous song shall raise. There palm and pine are blowing, Where southern seas are flowing. Shine forth thy noble gothic walls, Thy lovely vine-clad halls. ‘Neath the orange and blue victorious, Our love shall never fail. There’s no other name so glorious, All hail, Florida, hail!” You get to shout as loud as you can for “victorious,” “glorious,” and “hail, Florida, hail!”
School Spirit
On the whole, UF students could not be more excited about their alma maters. The University of Tennessee football game in September, Homecoming in early November, and the Florida State University football game in late November are especially fun (and quite insane) times for showing our devotion, but any day is a good day for a Gator shirt or ball cap, both of which can be seen all over campus. In fact, just about everybody around here seems rather invested in the Gators—have you ever heard of an entire county closing the schools one day each year so the students can march in a university homecoming parade? Alachua County does, and when you see our gigantic parade, you know they could never leave those orange-and-blue-bleeding kids out of it.
Most Recent Contributing Author
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Hometown: Clearwater, FL
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