Posts Tagged: College
12

Attention Recent Graduates: It Is Now Your Future

I know it's only April, but I wanted to get a jump on the Commencement Addresses for various Colleges, Junior Colleges, Trade Schools, and other institutions of Higher Learning, while reminding everyone I am available for such speaking engagements, to inform and inspire the Youth.

Here is the "Uncorrected Proof" of my current address to the Recent Graduate. It helps to imagine it being read in a shouting voice.

"See your future, be your future" is not just a line one may quote from the movie Caddyshack, starring Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, and Rodney Dangerfield, it is a Way to live one's life. Like millions of people, I bet, [...]

10

I Was A Teenaged Anchorman

It was a supply closet off the main classroom, six feet across, with the only wall decoration being a length of pine board with a row of nails sticking out. Because of the terrible noise inside, the door was always shut. The two machines, industrial-era things that clamored and shook, spewed out a steady stream of hurt and lies and death. On this San Diego afternoon I was in the little room with my coffee, going through the accumulated Associated Press and UPI news that had cranked out of the wire machines during lunch and whatever regular classes I might have attended that day. Local stories, national and international [...]

88

Ask Polly: Should I Drop Out Of College?

Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. "Because misery becomes you."

Dear Polly,

I’m a college junior abroad at a British university for the year. During the months I’ve been here, I’ve been getting increasingly anxious and depressed about my schoolwork and general life situation, to the point where I’ll just stay in bed for days on end watching "It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and compulsively eating bits of compressed bread. I’ve stopped doing work, which had before been something I would always complete, no matter what. Before, other life things—things like self-image, friendships, romantic relationships, creative outlets, family life—had not [...]

8

The Writer With The Pink Velvet Pants

Part of a two-week series on the pull of bad influences in our lives and in the culture.

I don’t remember all that much about my first year at university except that it was the year we converted from pounds, shillings and pence to "decimal currency." I shared ground-floor rooms, overlooking the Third Quad in college, with a bearded, bear-like chap I called (for reasons which need not detain us) Eighty Two. He was impossibly good: for all practical purposes a saint. His father ran a school for the blind. He had just spent part of his gap year (though the term wasn’t in use back then) in a 12th-century [...]

9

Go Ahead, Go To College

"By any financial measure, the investment in a college degree is the winning choice, with a rate of return of a whopping 15.2% a year on the $102,000 investment for those who earn the average salary for college graduates. This is more than double the average rate of return in the stock market during the last 60 years (6.8%), and more than five times the return to investments in corporate bonds (2.9%), gold (2.3%) long-term government bonds (2.2%) or housing (0.4%)." —You should totally go to college, say some guys from the Brookings Institution. I reluctantly agree! I mean, I used to think college was a total scam, [...]

41

A Guide To Richmond, VA, By a Guy Who Lived There from '93 to '97

Thanks to the college basketball championships, in which both Richmond, Virginia-based teams (Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Richmond) performed admirably, we had cause to ponder, "Not sure why people are so into Richmond, Virginia." That's a reasonable question! Richmond is a mostly busted-ass city on the banks of the James River that's played host to such luminaries as George Allen, and also George Allen's wife—what's her name, the one who married George Allen. It's best known as the capital of the Confederacy, and, as many of the old-school Richmondites—by which I mean the "racist" ones—will probably tell you, that's basically where the city peaked.

But [...]

10

You Can Pick Your President: Obama Takes Seattle

The guy from the White House advance team steps out of one of those crossover SUV things and at first I think he's the sort of awful D.C. jerkface who had to get his dad to call in a favor to stop him from getting fired from his summer internship for looking at porn during business hours, but once he leads us inside the gym (which is where the rally will be the next day) and I get a good look at him, I realize how wrong I was. This man is dreamy. He looks like he used to smoke pot very neatly out of a one-hitter and was [...]

17

More Millionaires Declare That College Just Isn't Worth It

Serial entrepreneur millionaire Jason Calacanis is joining the crowd of rich people in turning against college: "In my estimation college is worth it if you have a ton of money and don’t care about ROI, or if you can pay less than $50k-$75k and get a job with starting pay of $50k or more (generally technical, trade or finance work)." Don't go to school, kids!

But there's an answer. And the answer comes from brave disruptors in tech! That's where all good answers come from. "They’re blowing up education by making it a) free, b) on demand and c) engaging—and even fun!" Yessir. "Did you know you can [...]

3

Dear Sanj

I'm sorry for reporting you to campus security.

This was September 1989, at Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut. In the Marshall Dormitory at the north end of campus, where I shared a much-too-small space with two roommates, Sean and Jeremy. (Sean is now the communications director for the Republican National Committee—he had to shave his head on live television last fall after losing a bet he'd made that Mitt Romney would be president. Did you know that? Crazy, right?)

You and I didn't know each other at the time. I didn't know anybody, really. Classes had just started that week. I had come to recognize most of the [...]

15

Wurtzel, Crichton & Yoo: Inside The Delightful 'Harvard Crimson' Archives

A series on the stuff that delighted us on the Internet this year.

In my case, this year's Internet experience didn't suck, exactly, but it was—at least in the precincts I frequent—drearily focused on the predictive. Ninety percent of what I read, excluding pornography, maybe, was either authored by, a celebration of, or a brief against Nate Silver. And that's nice! On balance, that a smart, gay adopted son of Brooklyn is a big deal is a good thing. But oh, how I wish we purveyors and consumers of the written word would spend a bit less time quantifying the probability of future events and a bit more [...]

32

Fine, Kids, Call Your Mom Five Times a Day!

"I'm a 23-year old undergraduate at a small liberal arts college. In my view, there's nothing inherently wrong with having a very close relationship with your parents. Calling your parents five or six times a day–why not, especially if you consider them your friends? Just because the Boomers (and the Gen X-ers, to a certain extent) had bad relationships with their parents doesn't mean we need to repeat that experience." —This comment, in response to Terry Castle's essay on what it's like to teach the current crop of parent-attached young people, is pretty amazing! It's gonna be a long couple decades.

3

"Human Sexuality," The "Best Course" at Northwestern, is Canceled

"Prof. John Michael Bailey's popular Human Sexuality course, which came under national scrutiny following a controversial after-class, optional sex toy demonstration in February, will not be offered next academic year." —America's most infamous college class is dead. But according to one student's account of attending the class, it was the best course at Northwestern.

15

College Prof Walks After Ridiculous Parent Complains About Profanity

Meet Daniel Petersen, philosophy professor at Hawaii's Community College and the University of Hawaii at Hilo. He just quit his job, because of what ensued when the parent of a student wrote a letter to the school complaining because he said "shit" in class. Can you imagine? An adult saying "shit" to other adults? BURN DOWN THE COLLEGES.

31

Maine Collegians Doing Their Best To Have Fun Without Hard Alcohol

So how are students at Bowdoin, Bates and Colby surviving this semester with no hard alcohol allowed on their campuses? The outright bans-decided on over the summer, when the students were not able to riot and take over administration buildings-seem particularly cruel for these bright young things, cut off as they already are from the rest of society by virtue of their being in college. And Maine. I mean, where and when does an 18- or 19-year-old really need a glass of something strong if not snowed-in in some musty old dorm room during finals week? It's gonna be like The Shining up there this winter.

Judging from [...]

11

2013 March Madne$$: The School Tuitions Of The NCAA Bracket

It is once again time for the NCAA "March Madness" basketball tournament. The eventual champions will get to bask in the national spotlight until the next cruise-ship disaster/shark attack/episode of "Girls"/baseball season/ happens. And sure, winning a basketball title is worth bragging about; but we all know the real champion is the institution of higher education that can charge the most tuition and still have enough students to keep its rejection letter printer warm. It's The Awl's annual NCAA bracket by tuition, using the college information resource Peterson's.* (Where available, in-state tuition was used.)

81

Venture Capital's Massive, Terrible Idea For The Future Of College

Can you go to college on your computer? Some say yes, and others respond with a resounding no. But one thing is for sure: there is a boatload of public money to be vacuumed off an overcrowded, underfunded educational establishment desperate for at least the appearance of a quick fix.

Enter Udacity, the foremost provider of Massively Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. Does what's above look like college to you? Or rather, is this how college should look now?

They've been described as "a relentless force that will not be denied," revolutionary, "the single most important experiment in higher education." Also MOOCs are getting a drubbing from [...]

3

Meticulously Documenting Their Binge Drinking And Incessantly Checking Facebook Has Apparently Made College Students Smarter

Early during my freshman year of college, in 1989, I was sitting in the student center when a reporter from the school paper walked up and asked me whether I would be interested in talking to her for an article she was working on about the social life on campus. I made the mistake of agreeing, on record. Her story was about the dangers of underage drinking, and what might be done about the problem. One of my own roommates had spent a recent night in the hospital, having his stomach pumped to avoid alcohol poisoning. But I used the opportunity to mount an attack on the school's policy [...]

16

Das Racist And Other Friends I Never Made In College

Since I'm a graduate student and drunkenness on a Thursday night is practically required, last Thursday I was terrifically far from sober and, as a direct result, read an article about Das Racist. I read this article because whenever Das Racist pops up on my radar, I read about them, like I read about MGMT even though I've only ever listened to MGMT once, and that was their song “Kids,” and, when I listened to it, it was about two years after “Kids” was a hit. I try to avoid dwelling on Das Racist, but, like I said, last Thursday I was drunk. Even when I'm not drunk, [...]

61

Raw Video of College Campus "Osama Death Flash Mobs"

This is not quite what I expected to see in response to the death of Osama bin Laden. I guess it makes sense? It must have been weird for them to have tried to understand 9/11 in 5th grade. Good thing we don't have a draft. I guess.

14

Updates on Dorm Room Decoratin' Season!

"When Heloise McKee moved to the District after college, she packed her car with the essentials: five bags of clothes, an alarm clock and a folder filled with tear sheets from shelter magazines."