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Back in my day, you couldn't check dogs out of the library.

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by audreymonroe, May 13, 2012.

  1. audreymonroe

    audreymonroe
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    The most powerful cervix... in the world...

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    I just readthis delightful article about how more and more colleges are creating some kind of "Therapy Dog" feature to help their students with stress, especially around finals time. My favorite quote:

    "Want to check out a pet? It's possible at Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School, which both have resident therapy dogs in their libraries that can be borrowed through the card catalog just like a book."

    After reveling in warm fuzzies, I immediately got so angry that my school didn't have anything like this. Then, since every school seems to be having their graduation ceremonies this weekend, I got to reminiscing about college in general.

    Focus: (Optional: Where did you go to school, and what for?)
    What did you like most about your school? What were the best parts about your college experience?

    Alt-focus: What did you like least about your school? What were the worst parts about your college experience?
     
  2. Juice

    Juice
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    Moderately Gender Fluid

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    Focus: I got degrees in Economics and Political Science, neither of which I've used. Economics can sometimes be used in lieu of a finance/accounting degree, but as far as being an economist, I'm far from it. If I had the option to do it again, I'd major in Finance and/or Mathematics.

    As far as the experience, joining a fraternity defined it. I was a transfer student and didnt know anyone after I got there, so joining definitely helped in that arena. Pledging sucked, but the rest was awesome and I wouldn't do anything differently.

    Alt. Focus: The worst part is that UConn is an average state school with an average ranking. Sometimes I wish I hadn't cheaped out and went somewhere better, but it doesn't matter now.
     
  3. rei

    rei
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    Focus: I went to the University of Toronto's Mississauga campus for Political Science and Philosophy, in my third year I decided I wanted a job, put my degree on hold, and went to Sheridan College and graduated with an Ontario College Diploma in Computer Programming. I am currently finishing my degree in Computing and Information Systems through Athabasca University but I am in no rush as I already have the job (if not the pay band) I want.

    UTM I met great people, got more involved in extracurricular shit than I ever did elsewhere, lost my virginity, and later met a girl I've been dating for three and a half years. I got to bike to class every day, I got to take some pretty interesting (to me anyway) courses, and it never felt too crowded

    Sheridan was easy and got my foot in the database administration world when I was 22 - not really an easy task.

    Athabasca is online thus I can maintain a fulltime job while getting an overpriced piece of paper.

    Alt-focus: UTM I hated class - let me elaborate, as I said I took Poli Sci and Philosophy, and everyone in those classes seemed to be the lowest form of internet trolling dumbass, everything from 9/11 Truthers to "Bush killed Kennedy" type bullshit. All yelling, all demanding they were right, their way of looking at an issue was correct, and the prof was not. Goddamn that was frustrating.

    Sheridan I hated the weird elitism. In Canada colleges are more focused on developing job skills and employability than universities, but are less prestigious and easier to get into. Yet there were countless dumbfucks acting so smug that "WE MADE IT TO COLLEGE FUCK EVERYONE ELSE" when they were taking some bullshit like pottery. I guess I forgot that there's a chunk of the population I never really saw, and they had to fight it out for college spots (In Ontario your courses are either "U", "M", "C", or "O" - U and M are used to qualify for university, all three can be used for college, and Open is either an elective style class like Gym, or is something like 'math for the home' when you're otherwise hopeless. There were plenty of dumbasses in U and M classes, so I guess it never occurred to me there would be a whole extra tier of morons flooding in from the C level stuff. And with those morons came the most condescending smugness for 'look at me I'm in college don't mess'.

    ... of course I acknowledge I'm being both condescending and smug, but at least I wasn't sporting some strange illusion that my 16 month diploma was my key to SHOWING EVERYONE WHO KEPT ME DOWN WHOS BOSS.

    That pales to how much I hated my partner in my last class - We started with a class of 40 and by the end were down to 12 - all my friends dropped so I was stuck with the antisocial moron who tried to seduce 16 year olds through his pokemon site. I did basically all the final project because the kid was a fucking moron and wouldn't do dick all, so I delegated one piece of shit to him and nothing else.... and he googled the code.
    We get rolled in for plagiarism, and the conclusion is he's getting tossed, and because they know I'm competent I get a make-up exam. Still a lot of unnecessary stress though. I took out some pretty good revenge on him later at least.


    Athabasca the coursework is too easy, and the some of the profs haven't worked in the industry for a decade and haven't realized technology has advanced
     
  4. Frank

    Frank
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    Focus: I switched majors quite a bit, shuffling from management to finance to accounting while I was at Bryant. Then transferred to UNH (New Hampshire, not New Haven) for nutrition. Once I realized how little jobs there were in the nutrition field I switched to math because it was the only degree I could finish at the same time and was even remotely interested in.

    I liked UNH WAY more than Bryant. More to do, more to see, way more and harder parties. If I could turn back time I would have done all four years there.

    As a funny aside one of the guys I knew at Bryant was an actuarial science major and told me I didn't have the chops to hang with people like him intellectually. Fast forward 8 years (fuck you, I'm a slow learner), he hasn't passed a single exam and I'm about to get letters after my name, owned.
     
  5. R_Flagg

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    Focus: I'm going to New River Community College; studying electrical engineering technology. What I like about it? It's cheaper than a four year school, and community colleges pretty much take anybody (I'm a shitty student, I won't lie), and you'd have to be brain dead to not graduate with a degree. I don't have any big pretensions about it, I want a piece of paper so I can land a job somewhere, and I need to learn enough to back it up.

    I love driving, so the 90 mile commute (45 miles one way) is a pretty decent bonus. If I take the right back roads, I can drag it out to a solid hour and ten minutes of bliss.
     
  6. Czechvodkabaron

    Czechvodkabaron
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    I went to FSU for my first two years and then UGA for my last 2 1/2. Academically I think that they are both good schools, but it is kind of hard to compare since I took a lot more of the upper level classes for my major (Geography, which I actually am using now, but I don't know for how much longer) at UGA. As far as meeting with your adviser and picking classes I think that both schools were equal in that regard. If I am going to compare other things I liked about each school:

    FSU
    -I liked that you could walk pretty much anywhere on campus and didn't need to take the bus, unless you were taking it from your apartment/house to campus. There were buses that went through campus but not nearly as many people had to use them. At UGA you had to take the bus almost anywhere you went on campus. The one drawback to this was that I couldn't smoke a cigarette anywhere on campus at FSU without someone trying to come up to me and bum one.
    -People who went to the school were generally nicer than the ones at UGA. In general UGA people were nice but I met more snobs there.

    UGA
    -The women at UGA were A LOT hotter than the ones at FSU. I honestly don't know how FSU earned its reputation for having beautiful women; the attractiveness of the female student body is average at best.
    -Athens is a much better college town in terms of the locals who live there and the bar scene. Clubs were popular at FSU but I don't even know of a single one in Athens. There were also certain parts of FSU where you couldn't walk on the outskirts of campus without having homeless people come up and beg you for money.
     
  7. Rush-O-Matic

    Rush-O-Matic
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    I went to a small liberal arts college in the South. I went because I was conditioned that it was the next logical step after highschool (not sure I disagree, but didn't really think much about it at the time, and I had the financial support of my parents); and, I went to party and increase the number of times I had sex with girls. Duh. Somehow, I ended up with a BS in Physics in 4 years. I graduated Thank The Laude, skated by with the minimum GPA, and remember fuck all about stuff physics majors should know. Which is why I then went to Auburn and got another BS in Engineering. (Yay, for actually still using my second degree today!)

    College, the first
    Making life-long friends, learning how to funnel beer, freedom, coed skinny dipping, access to as good an education as I wanted, beautiful campus setting. The last two, I didn't appreciate until later.

    College, the second
    SEC football, gorgeous women (Spring days, ftw!), useful degree, Mama Goldberg's Camel Rider, I lived by myself and actually studied on the second go 'round.

    Uptight people pushing their "cause," not being in the Rocky mountains, acting like a jackass to certain girls (sorry, Becky!), a couple professors sooooo full of themselves, and that dude that cheated off my lab project. Bastard.
     
  8. BeCoolBitch_BeCool

    BeCoolBitch_BeCool
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    Focus: I went to Ohio University to become a teacher. The best part is that there are 3 blocks just off campus that have any bar, restaurant, music store, clothing store, et cetera that you could ever need. And most people lived within a half mile of that little stretch of brick road. It was like living in a giant snowglobe town.

    Anti-Focus: People that attended or visited because it was the countries biggest party school, then proceeded to drink, pick fights, and just generally bro-out and ruin everyone's good time.
     
  9. Frebis

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    Of course people say this. After college they generally go on to:
    1. Work at some job they hate
    2. Marry someone because it is the right thing to do
    3. Have kids
    4. Purchase a house they can't afford.
    5. Or some other sort of mundane aspect of life.

    College is awesome for maybe 3 reasons:
    1. You get to see your friends everyday
    2. You have little responsibility compared to the real world
    3. You get long breaks several times a year
     
  10. JWags

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    This, to me, is only true if you're one of those idiots who ASSUME college is going to be the best years of your life and live as such, dreading the future. Those are the kids who are blubbering wrecks at graduation and act like complete drunken douchebags post college as they gain weight and become depressed cause they want to relive their college years. Otherwise I think college is an amazing time to find yourself with a new freedom, hopefully separated from BS that goes along with HS, meeting new people, experiencing shit. Thats where college is amazing and unparalleled. Cause its a crossroads of maturation and opportunity. You have plenty of chances for both post college, but usually not together in such great quantity.

    I went to Miami University in Ohio. I was Psychology with a minor in Finance. I originally came to school as pre-med, promptly bombed science courses my freshman year, realized I never actually wanted to be a psychiatrist, much less a doctor. I spent the first semester of sophomore year home, punished by my parents, got straight A's commuting to my Dad's alma mater in Milwaukee, then went back to Miami as a Psych major second semester. I wanted to go into finance, specifically trading or behavioral finance, but was really behind on pre-reqs to become a Finance major, so I went Psych cause I wanted to approach it all from a different perspective and actually had a great balance between business and social science coursework. Unfortunately, my detour home put me behind and I graduated in 2008 instead of 2007 like I would have. While my peers in 07 sorted through 4-5 different offers, in 08, we were lucky if you could find anything. And despite the fact that I could talk extensively about why I chose the coursework I did, and impressed everyone from my Dad's money manager to a few members of Miami's BOT at a luncheon, people at financial firms saw my Psych major on my resume and trashed it. Thats my regret there.

    The campus. Its still absolutely gorgeous to me whenever I see it in person or in pictures, takes my breath away. Only place that has ever compared, though very different, is CU in Boulder. My sister starts in the fall and I'm more than a little jealous.

    Best parts were leaving EVERYTHING about HS behind and kind of reinventing myself for the better. Diving into music, playing shows. Getting really involved in a student organization that gave me friends that I still spend most of my time with. And staring at stupid hot girls in every situation imaginable.

    The unfounded reputations that some people embraced and tried to further. The complete and utter lack of school spirit for most sports in favor of rooting for OSU or another front runner for most everything. Oh, and the frat scene.

    Don't get me wrong, I have NOTHING against the Greek system. One of my roommates was super fratty and I have alot of friends who were affiliated as well. But more the pervasive nature of the social dynamics. Gorgeous sorority girls who I was extremely friendly with from class and other organizations who wouldn't ever date, much less hook up with me, because I wasn't in a frat. And similarly, fucksticks who wouldn't be able to get laid if their life depended on it who dated consensus 9s and 10s cause they were in a particular frat. And not one that has a prestigious reputation or great connections that would invite gold diggers, but rather ones that just partied alot.

    None of that is enough for me to hate on my school or even the Greek system, and as the years go on, I forget about it more and more. But at the time, especially in my latter years, it was frustrating and really took away from an awesome place.
     
  11. toddamus

    toddamus
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    I went to school at University of Colorado at Boulder. The campus is gorgeous and compact enough to not have to take a bus anywhere. The flatirons are stunning and right on top of the school. Academically it's fairly good with a few Nobel laureates scattered around the physics building. The lifestyle is great, snowboarding every winter than riding motorcycles on epic roads during the summer. I enjoyed seeing the flatirons from campus during the early morning hours from Norlin Quad, when its cold out the view is particularly stunning. I loved working IMs. I'm a proud Buff for sure.

    What I didn't like was all the hippies. Hippies are supposedly more open minded but ironically enough their not, their pretentious pot smoking morons. I disliked that I had to walk by green peace volunteers trying to get signatures to try and save baby acorns of some stupid shit, I disliked that they wouldn't let you walk by without saying something snotty. I almost got in a fight once with one of them on my way to class. North Boulder is ultra snooty and pretentious, it's on par with San Fransisco. Fortunately when you're a student it's easy to ignore that side of town.
     
  12. Flat_Rate

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    Didn't go. Picked up a trade right out of high school and started working, don't regret it all. I had a bunch of friends and family that went to Michigan State so I was there all the time enjoying the party side of college without paying 20k a semester.

    Now those same people are 60-80k in debt and back living at home because they can't find work with marketing, business, art degrees.

    Fuck that noise.
     
  13. shabamon

    shabamon
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    I, too, went to Ohio University. I graduated in 2008 with a public relations degree, worked a few years in Cincinnati, and last September I moved back to Athens, OH to work for OU. I really like that it is the quintessential college town, as you described. At first, I worried that living in a college town as a young professional would be terrible, but I can pretty much do everything that I did as a student other than go to house parties.

    The best part of OU is the community. It really is a friendly, inviting atmosphere, with a lot of culture and charm for those who look for it. Being an hour and a half from the nearest urban city forces people to bond with one another instead of being a hermit in their own interests. There's a quiet energy about the place, and the warmer months just beckon you to come outside. I have never met a student or alum who didn't enjoy their time as a student. I went to the Reds game on Friday wearing an OU tee shirt and must have been stopped eight times by fellow alumni. I feel like there's a great deal of school pride among the students and alumni, and I don't really get that feeling from any other school's people. (Note that I said school pride, which is not the same as sports team pride. Yeah, Ohio State fans love the football team, but I don't often hear a ton of affinity for being student there or living in Columbus. Regarding Ohio University, I'm finally noticing the school pride include sports team pride as the football and men's basketball teams are winning on bigger stages, recently, and it's getting less and less OK for OU people to wear Buckeye gear anymore.)

    Ain't that the truth. Pisses me off that our president is forced to apologize to parents of students and prospective students for some shit their kids didn't do.
     
  14. monkey0726

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    I go to Boston College, and the school had a similar program during our exam week. A fleet of baby animals rotated around to all the major dorms and off campus neighborhoods. At the risk of sounding like a sissy IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME. We got to play with piglets, beagle, lab and golden retriever puppies, ducklings, baby bunnies, kittens and other assorted baby animals.

    Other than angry sex there's no better stress relief than a beagle puppy play-fighting with you. Fuck pulling two all-nighters in a row and fuck macroeconomic theory.
     
  15. effinshenanigans

    effinshenanigans
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    The best parts of my college experience had everything to do with my friends and meeting new people and very little to do with my education.

    I learned how to talk to people. More than that, I met people I'm going to be friends with for the rest of my life--and as someone who walked out of college with a BA in English, that's really the only meaningful aspect of my experience at UConn that I'm going to bring with me into the future.

    That's not to say I didn't learn anything valuable in the classroom, but that stuff just doesn't compare to what I learned about how to communicate with people in any situation I'm placed in. Most of the success I've had since college is due to the fact that I learned how to talk to people at parties--as dumb as that may sound.
     
  16. Rumble

    Rumble
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    I went to St. Francis Xavier Univerity in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. I studied... uhh... let me think about this for a second. Computer Science, Information Systems, Economics, Psychology and History. Very few of those were studied for much more than a semester or two. Yes, I went to school for 5 years and yes I drooped out a semester or so shy of graduating. I started university at the age of 17 and I was way too immature to be expected to take it seriously.

    If I could do it all over again, I would graduate High School, move to Alberta and work in the oil field for a few years, grow the fuck up while making great money to pay for my schooling and then start university enrolled in an engineering program.

    Instead, I find myself at 32, in a OK job that pays the bills but secretly wishing to go back to school and actually make something out of myself.

    Focus: My school was pretty awesome if you can put up with small towns (I'm talking like 3k townspeople). It has a pretty small student body with great traditions and most people go there because they want a good education while having a pretty damn good time in the process.
     
  17. JWags

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    You're taking it way more existential and haughty then I meant it to be. Speaking of myself personally, I was a bit of a loser in HS. I had friends, and I wasn't an outcast, but I never really partied, didn't have dates for dances, felt out of the loop in the social game. It happens to alot of kids cause middle school and HS is a fucking dice roll. And when kids think of you one way at 13-14, they likely think of you the same way when you're 18, short of some massive change in athletic ability or some other meaningless arbiter of HS popularity. And like it or not, that can fuck with your head.

    College essentially resets all of that. Nobody fucking knows who you were back home unless you tell them. Kids, especially girls, were often interested in talking to you cause they had no idea who the fuck you were. And handled the right way, it went miles for confidence, social fluidity, and generally cultivating an adult personality without the influence of the same kids you'd been around for 12 years, not to mention parents. That is hugely important and while I've grown and refined since then, out of college, alot of the base was set up during those years.

    But if you want to continue over-rationalizing and assuming all college kids are either trust fund shitheads or pie eyed Greenpeace aspirational thinkers, go ahead. You clearly ignored my point to continue your jaded diatribe against a segment of kids you for some reason despise.
     
  18. mya

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    I went to University of Virginia. The biggest plus associated is that a degree from UVA comes with a pretty good reputation (at least around the east coast anyway, here is the midwest they assume it is a state school so they pretty much must accept any state resident who applies) and the University (as it must be referred to) is very well respected. It is consistently ranked as the top one or two public colleges and top 25 colleges overall. The school was founded by Thomas Jefferson, so it is steeped with tradition and the grounds (as they must be referred to) are beautiful. (If anybody remembers Tucker's Foxfield story, that is a UVA thing). We had an honor system, so basically that means that you can take your exams anywhere you damn well please as long as you sign "the pledge". I could still recite that thing in my sleep.

    On this flipside, all of this comes with alot of snobbery. Lots of old money there are UVA, so if you weren't a part of that (as I most certainly was not), you were made aware of it on a pretty consistent basis.
     
  19. scotchcrotch

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    Of all the groups of people that could use therapy, college students aren't even on the list.


    What is wrong with all the college kids these days? Cry me a fucking river
     
  20. dixiebandit69

    dixiebandit69
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    I started college to get a Diesel Technology associate's degree. After much pressure from my dad/(then) wife/instructors/friends, I decided to "do more with my abilities," and dropped the diesel program and became an English major.
    Halfway through that, I realized that I would probably hate any job I would get with an English degree, and decided to go back to the diesel/automotive field.
    So that's where I'm at now. I start summer classes in June.