I suddenly realize that living in the US is like living as a lawyer, although I am not in any pre-law programs.

When you enter college, you have tons of forms to fill out, and you have tons of general education requirements to finish. There is a booklet from each university, explaining how each class fulfills the general education requirement, how many credits are needed to graduate, how CR/NCR is used, what the requirements of the "US Diversity" general education flag are, etc. These are like thick law dictionaries, and there is some stuff that can trap people, such as a gateway writing course not counted toward the general education requirement, a "Global Diversity" requirement that must belong to a CONTEMPORARY society (so Ancient Rome is not included), no two general education attributes can be gained from the same department, and so on.

Whenever you need to waive the prerequisites, you need to fill out a form and gain the signature from the department chair; when you need to waive the restriction of a class that is only open to a certain major, you need to fill out a form and gain the department chair's signature; when you need to change your catalog year, you need to write "2027," sign your name, and submit that to the registrar's office... That is like tons of contracts.

When you have filled out a college dorm application, it showed you a long acknowledgment and notification. Then, with a single click, you submitted it, and later found you had signed the "housing contract" and cannot live in fraternities or sororities but only college dorm buildings. Then you realize you should behave like a lawyer with contracts.

However, sometimes when you read carefully through the thick dictionary, you may find some policies you can use, and people have used them before. For instance, it mentions you can apply for general education category credit to a course by academic petition, or design a contract major or minor, or transfer credit from community colleges, or use the internship CR/NCR credit to fulfill the high-level credit requirement because there is no specific wording emphasizing that all high-level classes must receive a grade.

Sometimes policies are against intuition, and there are some "hidden costs." When you decide whether to buy meal plans or not, you may find a "commuter meal plan" which is only half the price of the original one but with fewer meals. You bought it and found the price is more expensive per meal than the full meal plan, but it is acceptable. Later, you find there is a QR code you can scan to buy 10 meals at a time at a cheaper price, or just use your credit card, and they only cost half as much as the meal plan. There are also some older but cheaper dorms that require meal plans, versus some new, expensive apartments where you don't need to purchase those food contracts. Once you calculate, you may find they have similar prices.

You can't make up evidence, and you have to cite ChatGPT and trace the origin. And when you are holding a student visa, you are a student and cannot work more than 20 hours a week.

Yeah, just behave like a lawyer, and you can live well. I both hate and sometimes like the thick dictionaries.