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Jimmy
BillimoriaPowerDVD.v5.Deluxe |
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Adam
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Michael
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Paula
Carter |
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Bill
Cleeland |
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Tony
Gallagher |
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Amanda
Grish |
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Michael
Gunderson |
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Matt
Hanley |
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Chip
Hosken |
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Dave
Obuchowski |
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Tara
Piskin |
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Michael
Piwoni |
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Mary
Raven |
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Beatrice
Tetteh |
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Crystal
Whiters |
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Sometimes
you lose
If you're reading this column, give yourself a
point. If you read a news article before turning to this page, give
yourself another point. Give yourself a point if you paid attention
in lecture today, two if you enjoyed it, five if you're taking that
class only because it interests you. Five points if you watched the
presidential debates. Fifteen if you participated in the campaign.
Ten if you've attended an art exhibit or concert (other than Mike
and Joe) on campus in the last month.
Not doing so hot? Hold on, it gets worse.
Subtract two points for every item you don't recognize: Slobodan Milosevic,
Nasdaq, Ehud Barak. Subtract five if you don't know their importance.
Subtract one point for every DI you've picked up but haven't read.
Subtract one for every dollar of tuition and textbook fees you've
spent on tedious, uninteresting classes.
Don't like losing, do you? Not surprising. Most of us came to college
already considering ourselves winners. After all, acceptance into
a top-tier school seemed to guarantee a brighter, wealthier, enriched
future. The implication of this game, however, seems to be that for
all the promise and privilege of higher education, going to college
sometimes means you lose.
 Confused?
Allow me to hop on my soap box and direct your attention to the ways
in which our beloved University wastes our valued (and expensive!)
years here.
For example, there's the puzzling paradox of a certain dull professor,
a specimen who simply does not live up to her full potential. She
obviously knows her stuff: Just take a gander at the credentials she's
listed on the course Web site in a pitiful attempt to prove her legitimacy
(and to scold you for napping during lecture).
Yet this professor remains unaware of the confused and dirty looks
her students shoot her. She's too busy admiring her precise, practiced
oration: "Demographic mixtures codified in the sistema de castas,
an artificial nomenclature for racial categories in the Americas,
served not only to delineate a class society based on the economic
criterion of wealth that emerged from a caste society based on the
ascribed categories of race and status, but also to provide the basic
means of economic functioning in colonial Latin America through mining
in Peru, agriculture in Mesoamerica, and of course in the trade system
characterized by imperial Spanish mercantilism."
Fifty grueling early-morning minutes of this pedantic nonsense leave
students wondering if she's a professor or a textbook. She can't be
a professor, because that would mean she's a person. And people who
devote years to intensive, hands-on study must have some passion for
their field. It can't be all about the glory and wealth of teaching
history to a lecture hall of listless, apathetic college delinquents.
Yet in an attempt to affirm authority, this professor excludes her
passion. Forget showing home movies or hand-picked artifacts. Forget
relating interesting anecdotes. Forget trying to ignite students'
interest in what could be a dynamic and exciting academic field. Among
such college educators, professionality insinuates monotony. Unless,
of course, this professor is really a textbook in disguise. Unfortunately,
textbooks are skimmed, at best. So much for education. Looks like
you lose.
Of course, not all professors are fossilized, self-important wastes
of our time. My geology professor does a great job of relating mid-ocean
ridges to troublesome global warming trends. He even plays authentic
music and recounts stories of scuba diving in Papua New Guinea. Even
as a non-science major, I'm convinced of oceanography's validity,
not only as a class but as a supplement to my personal life enrichment.
This is not true of all courses. When drama and relevance to modern
life slip through the cracks of a course that covers too much general
information, education becomes a chore. Class material has no meaning
outside of the classroom. Students who took economics don't understand
a thing about the stock market; even students who earned an 'A' in
political science don't know or care about the upcoming election.
And after years of cranking out Mallard exercises, foreign language
students can barely initiate a conversation with a native speaker.
You lose! Instead of learning anything of value, your college years
and dollars are frittered away memorizing trivial details about something
you'll never really connect with, care about or think about after
exams. You chew the material and spit it back out — you never
digest it. And you have little spare time to do anything but this.
Your general education has failed you. You lose.
Unfortunately, the University doesn't advocate taking a year off for
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