I have been accused of disliking college students. Guilty as charged. I regard them the way I do the Diversity. I like certain individuals just fine, but as a whole, when it comes to interacting with them as a group, I’m Bartleby the Scrivener: “I would prefer not to.”
Which is an odd position for someone who spent as long as I did toiling in the groves of academe to take, I realize. So let me explain: As with the Vibrancy, I dislike their behavior – intensely. But I don’t blame them for acting that way. If you want to know what’s wrong with our entire Postmodern, homo economicus way of looking at the world, there you go. I don’t blame them, because they have every rational incentive to behave that way, and none not to (indeed, acting other than they do comes with a considerable cost).
College kids don’t read, don’t study, don’t do anything other than attempt, insofar as possible, to regurgitate lectures word-for-word on the “exam,” after which they promptly forget everything. Once more, with feeling: I do not blame them for this, since pretty much everything they “learn” is so worthless, it’s antimatter education. I’m not joking when I say it’s all just Social Justice Mad Libs: “The [group] was oppressed by Whitey through [adjective] [adjective] [noun], and that’s why Pale Penis People are evil.”
For example, I taught for a few semesters at a college that tried very hard to run “African-American” versions of core classes as a marketing stunt. There was “US History to 1865,” for example, and, in parallel, “African-American History to 1865.” Leaving aside the fact that you could cover the whole fucking course in about five minutes – “there sure was a lot of slavery back then!” – even the faculty, all of whom were of course raving SJWs, laughed at the sheer pointlessness of it. “US to 1865” was already nothing but “Negroes and Lesbians save the Republic!,” or vice versa, depending on whether or not the prof teaching the course this semester was the Angry Black Feminist Marxist, or the Angry Marxist Feminist Lesbian.
The kid who actually tried to learn something amid all that nonsense would be putting himself in for a world of hurt. Imagine what would happen to the poor dumb bastard who dared to ask the Angry Black Feminist Marxist, “Shouldn’t we, you know, learn something about Robert E. Lee?” I don’t have to imagine it, I was there, and let me tell you, kameraden, that poor kid got reamed, steamed, and dry cleaned. I bet his butthole still hurts, all these years later. He’s lucky they didn’t expel him for hate crimes (this was back around the turn of the century, in case you’re wondering; they really would expel him now, I’m sure).
So why not complain your way to an A? Why not hit up Student Health for a “learning disability” certificate, after which you professors have to let you have all their lectures, transcribed and annotated, complete with study guide? (I am not in any way joking). The whole system is bizarre and pointless, it costs a shitload, and you’re not going to get a job anyway after you graduate. Just make your five years as drunkenly painless as possible.
I’ll dislike you for it, but I sure as hell won’t blame you.
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