11 (College-Related) Words… as Defined by a 7-year-old

It is said that life is easy, but we make it complicated…“we” as in college students. I asked a second-grader, Joclyn Fortmann**, from Sageville Elementary School to define some college-related words. We need to relax, enjoy, live and imagine … like a 7-year-old!

1. Tuition: It’s like a wishing well. Pop a penny in it and go wishing. You can use any coins, but not a dollar bill. I make wishes ­— I just pop it in and then God makes the wishes come true.

2. Textbooks: It’s a book where you can type. You type the book like a text. It’s like texting a book on a computer and stuff.

3. Dorm: Where you get to stay in. Like there is 15 dorms where you can sleep in. There is like 100 rooms in one dorm, or maybe 50. You sleep in it and live and you can have pets in there. Like my aunt, she had two fish. They died.

4. Library: It’s where tons of books are at. Like 5,000. In Dubuque, there are 6,070 books. In here (Sageville School), there is only 1,000. There are computers in there ­— the computer lab changed here. It was in rows, and then it was in squares, and then they were in circles. I would cheat in the circles — I would look at someone else’s computer.

5. Work-study: When you study and work at the same time on the same thing. But you’re trying to do two different things of the same thing. But you do it at school.

6. Major: Like a major big mess in the lunch room. That’s very bad for the people, like the janitors that clean it up. We do that in the lunchroom when we throw our food under the table. Major is like big!

7. Degree: Like a weather. A degree is like the temperature you have outside. You might have a temperature stick, and then you stick it outside and hold it, and then you bring it in to see the degree. Like warm or cold.

8. Internship: Like when you’re entering. It rhymes with enter. It’s when you go into a building.

9. Transcript: Like you transcript the homework. You send it to the teacher and then she sends it back, and she transcripts it to all the teachers and people. It’s on the computer.

10. Credit Hour: Like credit card. You credit somebody in a really really long credit hour, and it’s really long, and then they send it back and forth — in the night and then in the morning until your phone dies. You have to let it charge. When it’s all done, then you can do it back and forth again.

11. Commencement: When you compliment someone in an hour that you need to — that you’re supposed to.

** The Lorian was granted permission by both Joclyn’s guardian and her school to have her definitions printed here.

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