(no subject)
So, um, I'm graduating...as a University Honors Scholar. I get to wear a gold tassel? Yay?
Apparently maintaining a 3.5 GPA or above through your academic career means you get a gold tassel. I remember JJ had one too.
I imagine most of Gallatin gets one. Seriously, how hard can it be within the Gallatin system?
But damn, this means I can't slack off the way I desperately want to. And my Romanticism class now takes attendance, apparently. She knows my name and seems to enjoy using it. >_<
Somewhat related to graduation: Joelle and I had a conversation yesterday about how the collegiate experience is yet another mind-washing contraption of society. Everyone knows that college is the time to participate in activism, and I seem to recall several studies stating that political activism is highest among the collegiate demographic.
Of course, I firmly believe that this results in complacency after graduation --as an adult worrying about bills and work, what time do you have to sacrifice to activism? Not a lot, and besides, you did your share during college. You had a voice and used it, even if it was just for the Republican/Democrat/Conservative/Liberal/Pro-Life/Pro-Choice/Gay Marriage/Sacred Marriage/beans/apples/oranges band wagons. This allows you to get your idealism and aggressiveness out of your system, without ever becoming a real threat to society's status quo. Very few students exhibit independent thinking, and even the most 'liberal' tend to just spout forth whatever liberal ideas their idolized renegade professors espouse. Challenge them with the idea that they too are spouting propaganda from the various parties, and they recoil in anger and indignation.
College isn't learning to think; it's learning to regurgitate.
But no, NYU isn't like that! Or so some idealist students claim. After all, we have faculty on staff that are highly controversial and often targeted for surveillance by the government!
Please. By retaining these social renegades, NYU can claim to be progressive without using any of its political influence, monetary weight, and sheer force of numbers to actually enact social change. A few key 'star' professors to be liberal/conservative media darlings is all that's needed to project the image of progressive social change. Paying out a higher salary costs less time and uses fewer resources than galvanizing the 50,000 students, the tens of thousands of tenured and adjunct professors and staff. It is a small city within a city, and as such has social momentum (unlike this mysterious 'momentum' Sexton continually mentions --what exactly is he talking about when he's justifying a 5.3% tuition hike in the wake of last year's 5.3% hike and the 5.6% hike the year before? Saddle up, kiddies, tuition and board's gonna total around 47 grand next year.) that could be a force to be reckoned with.
"A private university in the public service." What service? Environmental Day comprises summarily of cleaning up Washington Square Park, which is the tacit agreement the administration has with the city officials in exchange for being able to use the park for Commencement Exercises. Meanwhile our recycling facilities are swamped with backlogs of papers and cans and bottles, doing no one any good sitting in storage.
I do not have any suggestions for what NYU should be socially responsible for, nor what lines of activism to pursue. And it's not even about the administration, really. My concern is with the fact that college serves as general society's Rumspringa, churning out graduates who are largely satisfied with themselves as beings and 'moving on' to entrepreneurship and personal wealth.
I add the disclaimer that not everyone who graduates from college becomes a self-involved sheep of the masses; some people do pop out of the system fully aware and energized to take on their causes. But not enough do.
Because really, if the increasing numbers of college graduates should reflect a more socially conscious society, it's not apparent anywhere.
I should rewrite this rant to be better coherent; I think it'd make a nice essay or editorial. But I'm lazy. Not because of the system (though the system has proven to me that radical thought usually makes tiny blips and then is ignored, so the effort usually isn't worthwhile), but because I am lazy. This is personal complacence, not borne of my education. I've always been a slacker --I sped through penmanship exercises just to get them done, not to make my writing pretty. (And boy, does it show.) I laze about, daydreaming when I should be doing. While I imagine blaming fingers can be somehow pointed at my education as a member of modern society, I'm game enough to claim that laziness for myself.
Apparently maintaining a 3.5 GPA or above through your academic career means you get a gold tassel. I remember JJ had one too.
I imagine most of Gallatin gets one. Seriously, how hard can it be within the Gallatin system?
But damn, this means I can't slack off the way I desperately want to. And my Romanticism class now takes attendance, apparently. She knows my name and seems to enjoy using it. >_<
Somewhat related to graduation: Joelle and I had a conversation yesterday about how the collegiate experience is yet another mind-washing contraption of society. Everyone knows that college is the time to participate in activism, and I seem to recall several studies stating that political activism is highest among the collegiate demographic.
Of course, I firmly believe that this results in complacency after graduation --as an adult worrying about bills and work, what time do you have to sacrifice to activism? Not a lot, and besides, you did your share during college. You had a voice and used it, even if it was just for the Republican/Democrat/Conservative/Liberal/Pro-Life/Pro-Choice/Gay Marriage/Sacred Marriage/beans/apples/oranges band wagons. This allows you to get your idealism and aggressiveness out of your system, without ever becoming a real threat to society's status quo. Very few students exhibit independent thinking, and even the most 'liberal' tend to just spout forth whatever liberal ideas their idolized renegade professors espouse. Challenge them with the idea that they too are spouting propaganda from the various parties, and they recoil in anger and indignation.
College isn't learning to think; it's learning to regurgitate.
But no, NYU isn't like that! Or so some idealist students claim. After all, we have faculty on staff that are highly controversial and often targeted for surveillance by the government!
Please. By retaining these social renegades, NYU can claim to be progressive without using any of its political influence, monetary weight, and sheer force of numbers to actually enact social change. A few key 'star' professors to be liberal/conservative media darlings is all that's needed to project the image of progressive social change. Paying out a higher salary costs less time and uses fewer resources than galvanizing the 50,000 students, the tens of thousands of tenured and adjunct professors and staff. It is a small city within a city, and as such has social momentum (unlike this mysterious 'momentum' Sexton continually mentions --what exactly is he talking about when he's justifying a 5.3% tuition hike in the wake of last year's 5.3% hike and the 5.6% hike the year before? Saddle up, kiddies, tuition and board's gonna total around 47 grand next year.) that could be a force to be reckoned with.
"A private university in the public service." What service? Environmental Day comprises summarily of cleaning up Washington Square Park, which is the tacit agreement the administration has with the city officials in exchange for being able to use the park for Commencement Exercises. Meanwhile our recycling facilities are swamped with backlogs of papers and cans and bottles, doing no one any good sitting in storage.
I do not have any suggestions for what NYU should be socially responsible for, nor what lines of activism to pursue. And it's not even about the administration, really. My concern is with the fact that college serves as general society's Rumspringa, churning out graduates who are largely satisfied with themselves as beings and 'moving on' to entrepreneurship and personal wealth.
I add the disclaimer that not everyone who graduates from college becomes a self-involved sheep of the masses; some people do pop out of the system fully aware and energized to take on their causes. But not enough do.
Because really, if the increasing numbers of college graduates should reflect a more socially conscious society, it's not apparent anywhere.
I should rewrite this rant to be better coherent; I think it'd make a nice essay or editorial. But I'm lazy. Not because of the system (though the system has proven to me that radical thought usually makes tiny blips and then is ignored, so the effort usually isn't worthwhile), but because I am lazy. This is personal complacence, not borne of my education. I've always been a slacker --I sped through penmanship exercises just to get them done, not to make my writing pretty. (And boy, does it show.) I laze about, daydreaming when I should be doing. While I imagine blaming fingers can be somehow pointed at my education as a member of modern society, I'm game enough to claim that laziness for myself.