"That Smell Isn't Easy To Get Out Of Books": 23 Wild Secrets College And University Employees Learned On The Job

Recently, I asked the current and former college/university employees of the BuzzFeed Community to share the secrets that other people would find most shocking about their jobs.

Here are 23 of their top responses:

Some responses are from this anonymous form.

1."I work in admissions. We sometimes ask for essays about struggles people have experienced and how they grew from them. You won't believe how many white kids see this prompt and send us essays about 'reverse racism.'"

2."A state governor contacted the university president, who contacted our department to check on the admissions status of the child of someone who worked in their office."

3."I'm a college librarian. SO MANY students have sex in the library. It's disgusting!"

4."I had a friend who was a D1 athlete at a major university I also attended. His 'work-study' job was to go to the football stadium every morning and make sure the sprinklers came on."

5."I worked at [a university] for several years as an administrator in the bursar's office. The university had a firm rule that the students, no matter how egregious their behavior, could do no wrong. A student set up a 10 ft wide, 5 ft deep pool in her dorm room and connected it to the hot water. The dorm blew through four hot water systems before an investigation revealed the pool. And the fact that the student was charging other students to play in the pool. She was barely reprimanded and wasn't suspended or made to pay for damages (the pool leaked and destroyed dorm rooms on the floors below)."

6."Universities hire recruiters who go to high schools to speak with students and essentially sell them on their specific school. I was hired in the role about two years ago, and I love speaking with students about education after high school! ...But anyway, there is a crazy culture among recruiters, as we all meet each other at fairs on the road and visits. Many of my colleagues met their spouses [who were recruiters from other universities] during recruitment visits and high school fairs while working as a recruiter."

7."I've worked in college admissions for ten years at multiple universities. One universal thing is that your admission counselor is HORNY."

8."If your professor says the words, 'I'm sorry,' they're lying. We have research we must do, articles to write and get published, and committee work to complete."

9."Not me, but someone I know works security at the university and knows where all the hookup spots are."

10."Many college professors don't make as much money as public school teachers with similar education and experience. In addition, there is no extra pay for spending time beyond mandatory office hours — advising students, sponsoring clubs, participating in institutional committees, etc. In fact, this work is often performed by the newest educators, whose salaries are considerably lower than tenured professors who literally leave campus as soon as their classes are over."

11."I got a job in [an] office at a university right after I graduated. I was not prepared for the amount of politics, gossip, and cliques among the staff, faculty, and departments. It was like high school all over again."

12."The drama is off the charts. I once witnessed half the faculty gang up on one professor for getting a single bad review from a student (nothing terrible, just that they'd found the subject of his classes boring)."

13."The most 'shocking' thing is how the student workers are treated. At one point, I was making less than $40 a week, and I was far from the lowest-paid worker. The way that international student workers are treated is despicable."

14."I'm an admin assistant. I do all the catering orders for my department's events. I always have to order way more gluten-free or vegan items than we actually need because people will grab whatever they want."

15."The tensions between faculty and staff...faculty look to staff like they are less than or are only there for their sake while staff assume faculty to be unworthy [but idolized]..."

16."It does not pay well! In my state, adjunct instructors make about $1600 per three-credit hour class. When you factor in all the prep and grading, plus office hours and student meetings, I make less than the minimum hourly wage. And they don't have to provide any benefits to adjuncts, which is why the whole profession of higher ed is going through 'adjunct-ification.' I'd taught as many as seven classes in a semester and never made more than $15k a year. It is brutal."

17."I'm a professor at a major research university. I only get paid for nine months, but all the research and prep work I need to do to keep my job happens over the summer. Overall, my colleagues and I are severely underpaid, and we don't get cost-of-living raises or merit raises. All that money you spend on tuition? Yeah, it's not coming to the people actually teaching you. It all goes to the administrative positions (hello, Vice Associate Assistant Dean of Ass Kissing)."

18."The state and federal financial aid are not changeable, but if the school has scholarships, you more than likely can bitch and moan until you're given something. Unfortunately, it's not always fair..."

19."I was on a few medical school interview panels, and you have to trust me when I say we don't care that much about what you wear. Kids from private schools would show up in immaculate designer suits and not do as well as a passionate public school kid in their school uniform (only smart clothes they owned)."

20."I'm currently working on my PhD, and one major aspect of my work is teaching undergraduate classes. I think most people would be shocked to learn how little training people get for this huge aspect of their job and how little oversight there is for instructors. While I've taken plenty of courses in my subject, we only had one class dedicated to teaching, and it was a joke (and from what I've heard, we were lucky to get that, as most professors get no classes on teaching at all)."

21."A *lot* of your professors are basically temps. The first 11 years I taught at my university, I was an adjunct professor. This means my teaching contract was semester-to-semester, so I often wouldn't know if I'd be employed until a few months before the term started. There's no job security, just praying that your department will have money to fund you. When I taught large lecture classes, my graduate student TAs (teaching assistants) made almost twice as much as I did because graduate students are to be courted with funding, whereas adjuncts can be exploited."

22."I was an RA for three years (2008–2011). I have so many stories, but my favorite to tell is about four basketball players sharing a dorm room. My university didn't have a football team (unlike pretty much every other US school). Our big sport was basketball, so these guys were kind of treated like gods. My rounds partner and I were on our final rounds one night — so about 2 a.m. — and we heard high-pitched giggling coming from the room. We had a curfew (religious university), so no members of the opposite sex could be in a room after midnight during the week and 2 a.m. on the weekends. My rounds partner knocked on the door, and one of the guys opened the door. He's easily 6'7" with a very deep voice. We told him that the girl had to leave now, and he busted out laughing. He insisted there wasn't a girl in the room, that they had gotten into a tickle fight."

23.And finally: "I was an RA for several years, among several other jobs at the university. I think the biggest shock would be the stamina it takes to be an RA. I ended up dropping out of college after working for the university for three years."

If you've ever worked at a college or university, what shocking job secrets do you have to share? Let us know in the comments or this anonymous Google form!

Note: Some responses have been edited for length/clarity.