Cezary Podkul: Bringing the fun to a summer at Penn

For anyone who has ever experienced a semester at Penn, taking summer classes here or even just living on campus while working or interning can be a strange experience. The campus looks the same.

Yet it feels oh so different.

Gone are the long lunchtime lines at ABP, reserving a study room in Huntsman is a piece of cake, and checking e-mail is a breeze -- the only new message is always "Disk quota warning: 0.0 days left."

Indeed, the Penn campus is nothing short of a ghost town during the dog days of summer.

But that does not necessarily mean that if you're staying on campus you are going to have a boring summer. Having spent two summers at Penn taking classes and interning, I know the pitfalls of staying on campus during the summer -- and here's what you can do to avoid them.

Pitfall #1: The social scene. By now you've probably realized that the summer campus party scene is more or less a choice between staying in and watching a movie or going to bed early. Sure, there's the occasional house party here or there, but they tend to be low-key and filled with people you don't know. In short, there's nothing to do on a Friday night.

Solution: Party off campus. Center City is alive and happening during the summer. There are weekly Thursday night concerts at Love Park, plenty of 18+ night clubs open past 2 AM, such as Emerald City, and -- as always -- tons of restaurants that you and your friends could go to for weekly Friday night dinners. So if you've always complained that you've never had a chance to explore Philadelphia while at Penn, this is your golden opportunity.

Pitfall # 2: Quality of teaching. The overall teaching quality over the summer is remarkably worse than during the regular semester. For many large-lecture introductory-level courses taught over the summer -- the courses most in need of talented, qualified teaching staff -- Penn simply substitutes graduate students or hired hands for regular teaching staff.

Indeed, my worst learning experience at Penn, Accounting 101, occurred during a summer session in 2004. Instead of a qualified instructor, Penn hired a tax accountant to teach the class. He was so busy with his other job that he was absent for four sessions, never bothered to create his own teaching notes, and didn't even come to the final exam, which had such massive printing errors that many students were clueless as to what was even being asked. I probably could have had a better teaching experience at a community college.

Solution: Be picky. Place a greater emphasis on the quality of the professor than you would during the regular school year. If you feel that the quality of the teaching is going to be terrible, then take the course during a regular semester and substitute another one in its place.

In this regard, though, the university could help us all out by requiring that course evaluations be issued at the end of every summer class -- which is currently not the status quo. It is about time that Penn started to give a damn about the quality of the teaching during the summer.

Pitfall #3: Campus safety. Decreased human traffic over the summer creates a greater opportunity for crime around Penn's campus. I experienced this first-hand two summers ago when I was mugged just a few feet away from my house. It's simply not as safe on campus during the summer as it is during the regular school year.

Solution: Don't risk it. Even if you are walking only a short distance alone at night, find a group of people to walk with or call 898-WALK. Don't make my mistake of walking home alone at 3 AM on a Saturday morning.

So don't let the dog days of summer get to you. If summer at Penn just doesn't feel like Penn, think creatively and you'll find that every one of these pitfalls is an opportunity to make your Penn summer experience safer and more exciting.

Guest columnist Cezary Podkul is a Wharton and College senior from Franklin Park, Ill. His e-mail address is cezary4@sas.upenn.edu.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.