wok hard pay hard
― the MMMM cult (La Lechera), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 21:56 (twelve years ago) link
ive certainly noticed that the public university i work for does a much better job of treating students as adults and that, while support services are there, its up to students to seek help and make the initial effort, as opposed to having faculty/admin intervene and guide students the way they wld @ a top tier private school (ime). im sort of ambivalent abt this, there are obvious advantages to both but i think ambitious, dedicated students from public schools probably graduate stronger people w/ better overall knowledge and skills
my big problem is: there still seems to be a declining correlation btw the work that students do at a university and their job prospects after? i think im probably exaggerating this since most evidence says otherwise (haha) and that complicates things. the fundamental/systemic issues are still there no matter how diligent an undergrad you are i guess
ive had this argument w/friends irl too: when i was an undergrad (half a decade ago now!) i was p driven, i played sports and wrote for the newspaper and did charity work and worked at a job in my field and basically made sure i had the sort of resume that wld get me job afterwards, as much as i was able. and it worked, i had a job waiting for me @ graduation and when i left finance i got another well-paying job right away. and i think on an individual level these things matter. but if everyone does them then they sort of end up losing their value, like an A- at princeton or w/e. i also think its worth asking whether some amount of goofing around isnt useful/part of the point? idk...
― the green (Lamp), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:02 (twelve years ago) link
I wok hard every day
― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:15 (twelve years ago) link
another thing - outside of grad school what jobs ask for your transcript? almost none! even fairly official jobs usually believe you. as long as that's the case it really is more logical for someone at euler's school to just fuck around and then put a 3.9 on their resume.
― iatee, Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:18 (twelve years ago) link
like if someone is graduating from your college and not planning on grad school the difference between them getting an A and a C is pretty minimal. i mean my gf graduated from an ivy league school w/ like a 4.3 and the only field where that really would 'matter' is finance. nobody else really gave a shit. so I mean it's completely rational for a lot of people to not work that hard.
― iatee, Wednesday, November 9, 2011 4:54 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark
one thing you hear a lot is that your gpa only matters insofar as helping you get that first sweet job out of college, then everything else thereafter is gonna be based on work experience. which kinda sucks.
also sucks that 'time gaps' in your resume are so frowned upon - so what if I decided to take a few years off to 'find myself' or w/e? well fuck you, some other hotshot asshole spent those three years busting his balls at mckinsey or got an MBA or something
― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:18 (twelve years ago) link
smoke weed everyday
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:20 (twelve years ago) link
I'm not talking about a little bit of goofing, though; & anyway Lamp you clearly know what I'm talking about.
eh this is a topic I can get p right-wing tbh, at least wrt meritocracy. I'm inclined to think that "we're" going to get a lot out of students who are driven, & not much out of those who aren't. I favor a big safety net b/c I think it's bullshit for a culture as rich as ours for people to be hungry or lack shelter, & for us to have unequal educational opportunities at the elementary level; but for kids who fuck around...yeah, I oughta keep my trap shut here, b/c I'm pos it won't go over well.
or in other words: I taught Plato's Republic this term & I liked it
― Euler, Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:22 (twelve years ago) link
euler what do you believe the point of life is
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:23 (twelve years ago) link
obviously we should send all the poets out to the Great Wasteland beyond the republic's walls
― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:24 (twelve years ago) link
if someone "already" has the skills they'd need w/o college, then I dunno, lie about it, what's it matter to society? (besides Kantian objections against lying blah blah blah)
but o/w if someone can make it through a 4-year degree program with decent grades then they've shown they can handle some amount of grinding & that's a basic req & maybe the only basic req for the kinds of shitty office work that unfocused college grads end up (until now).
― Euler, Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:25 (twelve years ago) link
the point of life is to know the form of the good, duh
IMO Euler, a lot of what you are describing is related to the deliberate infantilization of western civilization and the blatant immaturity of ppl participating in post-secondary education. I know I was deeply unhappy during large parts of my academic career and that leaked hardcore into how much time I put into my classes. I would have benefited greatly from taking some time to live in "the real world" to acclimate myself to what my skills would be used for and to connect some type of tangible real-world goal to my academic studies, which were basically an extended prep course for grad school (of my college friends, I am literally THE ONLY ONE who didn't get a graduate degree).
Tie a system that better prepares students for what it actually means to be a college student to better, stronger support networks (and it really terrifies me to think that there are schools out there less supportive than Harvard when I was there, as the prevailing sense was that unless you were a professor's pet student or famous, you were thrown to the wolves) and I can't help but assume that graduation rates would increase sharply.
― sex-poodle Al Gore (DJP), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:29 (twelve years ago) link
failing that, turn drinking games into a major
― sex-poodle Al Gore (DJP), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:30 (twelve years ago) link
I majored in being the Asshole President
― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:32 (twelve years ago) link
a system that better prepares students for what it actually means to be a college student
This seems like a biggie to me xp
― whoop, up the butt it goes (silby), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:33 (twelve years ago) link
it is very hard for me to think about education in america in any serious way, a lot of my friends are teachers now, and it is just still so hard to think about
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:33 (twelve years ago) link
and I don't even like america, conceptually
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:34 (twelve years ago) link
here is a random facebook status on my feed:
Taught my kids about how unions work today by having them all say "FUCK YOU" to me at once.
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:35 (twelve years ago) link
xp how can you not like the concept of America? it's got the American revolution and presidents with sideburns and Intrepidity and Innovation and Railroads!
― whoop, up the butt it goes (silby), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:35 (twelve years ago) link
― iatee, Wednesday, November 9, 2011 2:18 PM (2 minutes ago) [IP: 64.61.128.66: New York, United States]
not true. every public school teaching job asks for a transcript.
― free banana man! free banana man! (remy bean), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:36 (twelve years ago) link
Yeah I mean, I basically went through most of high school doing my work either during class or on the bus ride to school the day it was due; what this translated to is a work ethic as an adult where I wait until just past the last possible moment to do a task, then cram mightily and kill myself to pull heroic measures to get it done. I never actually learned how to finish things early or plan out my workload!
― sex-poodle Al Gore (DJP), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:36 (twelve years ago) link
Me neither! I tried to make that a personal goal for myself in my last two years of college (which just ended heh, I act like it was forever ago) but I didn't make tons of progress on that front. (It is hard to learn how to do your best work when your halfhearted work gets good-to-excellent feedback. I finally hit a bit of a wall with that tactic during college but more importantly I realized that I did actually want to be proud of myself.)
― whoop, up the butt it goes (silby), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:39 (twelve years ago) link
yeah, I oughta keep my trap shut here, b/c I'm pos it won't go over well.
naw you can call us lazy :D
theres this weird thing were like, it seems p unfair that a le rosey alum who barely slumped her way through an creative writing degree at hampshire can land a sweet job in wealth mgmt after she graduates and plenty of other more qualified applicants are serving coffee but the le rosey girl is probably a better fit and if i was running pcs id hire her too. 'merit' is tricky thing i guess?
― the green (Lamp), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:39 (twelve years ago) link
that's well-put & wise. My non-trad students are def better prepared for college work compared with similar trad students of similar abilities & talents (though less well-prepared than the best trad students, of whom we get very few anyway since they all go off to fancy private colleges like the one I went to).
but I dunno about connecting to tangible real-world goals of academic studies. I'm with that if it means: most majors should assume the bulk of their students aren't going to grad school & structure the curriculum accordingly. my department's in the process of working on that.
so I mean yeah: some of this is the fault of bad organization at the university level. & some of it's the fault of bad students. & those are intermixed! but "blatant immaturity" isn't the fault of university faculty.
also I wish we had a way of funding public education that didn't depend on graduating anyone b/c obv some people who go to college don't deserve a college degree but we also need them as "consumers" & this affects dean-level pressure toward grade inflation. it really sucks.
― Euler, Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:40 (twelve years ago) link
er xp to DJP a while back
― sex-poodle Al Gore (DJP), Wednesday, November 9, 2011 5:36 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark
lol otm. people really should be forced to work at mcdonalds for a few years before going to college
― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:40 (twelve years ago) link
wait there are Hampshire alums working in finance? xp
― whoop, up the butt it goes (silby), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:41 (twelve years ago) link
i dont think its controversial to wish that kids who didnt work hard worked harder? or cared more? i think a lot of people in this thread might suggest that those kids would be better off not going to college, at least not at that point in their lives, given that theyre a) not really learning anything and b) probably putting themselves into debt. (this is all in a perfect world, where a college degree signified something more specific than "employable")
like in my plan the lazy kids would be working on farms. would get the laze right out of em
― max, Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:42 (twelve years ago) link
tho come to think of it my friend's evil ex girlfriend spent four years at Hampshire designing her own actuarial science major and is now an actuary no foolin
― whoop, up the butt it goes (silby), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:42 (twelve years ago) link
'actually an actuary' is the name of her forthcoming autobiography
― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:44 (twelve years ago) link
or the name of a lesser-known Tennessee Williams play
― whoop, up the butt it goes (silby), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:46 (twelve years ago) link
― max, Wednesday, November 9, 2011 5:42 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark
this is basically the premise of deep springs
― ASPIE Rocky (dayo), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:47 (twelve years ago) link
yeah that's awesome for the 26 dudes who get to go there. Also I keep wanting someone to do an expose of Deep Springs having like weekly mandatory orgies or something
― whoop, up the butt it goes (silby), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:48 (twelve years ago) link
because come on
i think a lot of people in this thread might suggest that those kids would be better off not going to college
yeah, basically
― the green (Lamp), Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:49 (twelve years ago) link
or only to college later in life maybe
― Euler, Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:52 (twelve years ago) link
college should start at age like 26 probably
― max, Wednesday, 9 November 2011 22:57 (twelve years ago) link
i would be so much better at college now than i was back then
yeah i appreciated the last two years of my undergrad way more than the first two and i'm actually excited to be in school now
― plax (ico), Thursday, 10 November 2011 02:08 (twelve years ago) link
euler's tirade against the lazy generation ignores what I said earlier- most of his students have absolutely nothing to gain from working very hard in his course! (other than personal betterment - but surprisesurprise that's not why most people are paying tuition)
if the top 20% of his class were guaranteed good jobs - similar to the situation at a lot of law schools - there'd be incentive to turn in the best goddamn paper you could write. (watched 'the paper chase' a few nights ago...good movie)
right now there are two groups who are gonna do well:a. do really really really care about platob. want to go to grad school or one of a handful of careers where yr gpa matters
the rest prob want white collar jobs and an A+ in your class is really not gonna directly affect their prospects at one. there's really no reason not for them to be out having fun. maybe they should care about plato cause plato is pretty interesting but that's not why they're there. they're not lazy, they're rational w/r/t the value of their time.
― iatee, Thursday, 10 November 2011 03:39 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/feature/college_dropout_factories.php?page=all
i basically had no idea there were tertiary institutions anywhere in the world with < 50% graduation rates until i read this.
― caek, Thursday, 10 November 2011 12:33 (twelve years ago) link
I wanna see the list of dropout factories that went with that article because based on the comments they accidentally put Concordia College in MN on it
― sex-poodle Al Gore (DJP), Thursday, 10 November 2011 14:34 (twelve years ago) link
iatee that's nonsense: they're not rational with their time, they're fucking around, playing video games, getting wasted, watching tv. that's rational? for fuck's sake they could learn how to write! or fucking scrub dishes, if they're not going to learn to use their minds.
I mean if your point is that most people don't want to be part of the ~knowledge economy~ then fine; but I gather you're prepared to see massive wage drops compared to now? if I'm a business owner I don't want to pay some know-nothing good coin to enter data into a computer; I want someone with ideas & energy to carry those out. & you don't develop those playing xbox or watching Jersey Shore while cased out on Schlitz.
― Euler, Thursday, 10 November 2011 14:50 (twelve years ago) link
Listen, when you work as an office drone, having ideas will kill ya.
― It means why you gotta be a montague? (Laurel), Thursday, 10 November 2011 15:01 (twelve years ago) link
getting wasted and interacting w/ modern technology is prob more related to the life of a modern office worker than reading about plato
― iatee, Thursday, 10 November 2011 15:10 (twelve years ago) link
I'm sorry but you expect everyone to be steve jobs or something, yes I am prepared for massive wage drops and your field is included in that btw
― iatee, Thursday, 10 November 2011 15:13 (twelve years ago) link
yeah that's just a failure of imagination, on your part & on the part of so-called college students today. no wonder everyone's depressed these days!
i.e. tl;dr; goodbye America
― Euler, Thursday, 10 November 2011 15:14 (twelve years ago) link
I'd like some evidence that hard-working philosophy majors have been something that contributed new *ideas and energy* to the american economy, iirc they just become lawyers
― iatee, Thursday, 10 November 2011 15:16 (twelve years ago) link
why are you hung up on philosophy majors
― sex-poodle Al Gore (DJP), Thursday, 10 November 2011 15:17 (twelve years ago) link
cause euler's a philosophy prof complaining about his lazy students
― iatee, Thursday, 10 November 2011 15:17 (twelve years ago) link