Saturday, July 30, 2005
was chewing cud on a conversation with a certain "scholar" from a certain university down south and i kept wondering why i was so pissed off:
She: "oh, so you're from wisconsin?" (accompanied with a subtlely dubious look. trust me. i've got an excellent radar)
Me: "Yep"
She: "Well, wisconsin is.. how should i put it... theres nothing to do there, and its so slack."
Me: "Huh? Slack? Why?"
She: "Oh, my friends (referring to the batch one year below mine) do nothing but study most the time and they still have time to have fun and do things. us, we do soo many breadth and core courses.. (the usual rants about not enough time for oneself, tests and papers and midterms in between. ie, the usual scholar rhapsody. check my blog entries. its all there)
Me: "I don't think its so slack. I'm in liberal arts and I'm a part time lab tech and I'm dying almost every semester......." (furrows eyebrows in perplexity)
She: "Oh, but you see, yours is voluntary. You can choose.We die die have to do these courses ... ( continues the tirade, but with a sprinkling of how life is perfect down south - the usual PR/Scholar spiel)......"
... well, whats wrong with it being voluntary then? Well granted there are pricks who do the bare minimum here (and yes, the minimum here is as bare as one can get, and the issue of pricks doing the scanty minimum and ending up on the Honor's List have been covered ad nauseum in other parts of this blog), what about the rest of us?
Are we to be judged on the basis of student-faculty ratios, percentage minority, percentage graduating after 4 years, party school rankings and other useless stats that we don't make good scientists?
naohia. i'd like to see you fail your first experiments again and again and again and you don't know the hell why, and find out first hand how life is so not a bed of roses (nor fun) in the laboratory whether or not you've got the stinkin' scholarship and you've got nothing to show for your commitment and dedication except some random bird droppings on the X ray film. Then I'd ask you again, you freaking undergraduate!
She: "oh, so you're from wisconsin?" (accompanied with a subtlely dubious look. trust me. i've got an excellent radar)
Me: "Yep"
She: "Well, wisconsin is.. how should i put it... theres nothing to do there, and its so slack."
Me: "Huh? Slack? Why?"
She: "Oh, my friends (referring to the batch one year below mine) do nothing but study most the time and they still have time to have fun and do things. us, we do soo many breadth and core courses.. (the usual rants about not enough time for oneself, tests and papers and midterms in between. ie, the usual scholar rhapsody. check my blog entries. its all there)
Me: "I don't think its so slack. I'm in liberal arts and I'm a part time lab tech and I'm dying almost every semester......." (furrows eyebrows in perplexity)
She: "Oh, but you see, yours is voluntary. You can choose.We die die have to do these courses ... ( continues the tirade, but with a sprinkling of how life is perfect down south - the usual PR/Scholar spiel)......"
... well, whats wrong with it being voluntary then? Well granted there are pricks who do the bare minimum here (and yes, the minimum here is as bare as one can get, and the issue of pricks doing the scanty minimum and ending up on the Honor's List have been covered ad nauseum in other parts of this blog), what about the rest of us?
Are we to be judged on the basis of student-faculty ratios, percentage minority, percentage graduating after 4 years, party school rankings and other useless stats that we don't make good scientists?
naohia. i'd like to see you fail your first experiments again and again and again and you don't know the hell why, and find out first hand how life is so not a bed of roses (nor fun) in the laboratory whether or not you've got the stinkin' scholarship and you've got nothing to show for your commitment and dedication except some random bird droppings on the X ray film. Then I'd ask you again, you freaking undergraduate!
