Category: Seen On Campus

Observations from an elderly student

Training Vs. Education

Seen On Campus

Here’s something I wrote back in 2008, and unbelievably, it’s just as valid today than it was then, perhaps even more so. I’ve also added a few things to clean it up a little and make it better.

The “Power” Elite

July 9, 2008
8:00 AM CDT

The required reading for today’s class is, first, William Deresiewicz’s article about the transformation of our elite universities into high-priced trade schools:

Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers.

Next, you should read Mary Grabar’s bleak article about how the college curriculum itself is becoming less academic, and more like an Oprah Winfrey show:

Oprah is us. Course offerings on Oprah appear in college catalogs, while those on Milton disappear.

When you’re done with both, have swept up the broken glass and china, and repaired the bullet-holes in the walls, come back here and read the rest.

As long as there are people, there will be elites (and elitists) — and as long as there are those, there will be institutions which cater to them, and attempt to perpetuate them. Thus the phenomenon of “Oxbridge” (Cambridge and Oxford universities) in the UK, the “Ivy League” (Yale, Harvard, et al.) on this side of the Atlantic, and their “feeder” schools (Eton, Harrow, Groton and so on), all of which exist to provide an education to the scions of the elite families. The primary difference between the elites of yesteryear and those of today is that social standing was more important then, while wealth is more of a deciding factor today. (More on this in a moment.)

‘Twas ever thus, and to be frank, they served their purpose, up to a point: that point was where the mediocre assumed positions of power simply because of who they were and where they’d been to school, rather than on pure merit (G.W. Bush is the most famous example, in the modern era, although history is littered with them).

To be frank, the elite institutions are not a bad thing in and of themselves. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with catering to the elites, just as there’s nothing wrong with catering to the working classes. At least, it can be said, those institutions helped the elites prepare to govern and to manage in their later lives.

What interests me about the fall of the “Ivies” in the United States is that because they have become so dependent on wealth for their survival, it should come as no surprise that their focus has likewise become narrowed towards creating wealthy alumni. In other words, what was once a happy coincidence is now a grim necessity — so there can be little doubt that the focus of universities would shift towards careerism and wealth accumulation, and away from actual education. Small wonder that Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Business are the tails wagging the Harvard dog, because those alumni will be more financially desirable to Harvard than, say, a Harvard-trained tenured professor of English tucked away at some small Midwest school.

And the Ivy League schools, unlike the unglamorous places like the University of Michigan, do not have the luxury of successful sports teams to bring in alumnus support, so, in the absence of actual merit (that ugly word) they have to rely on the cachet (a far more romantic one) of their names.

Of course, once the Ivies descend from their lofty perches of academic excellence to become simple training facilities, they are exposed to stiff competition from non-Ivy League institutions. At one point, for example, more Fortune 500 CFOs were alumni of Chicago’s Northwestern University than any two Ivy League schools combined, while the Harvard MBA has, generally, been a real-world synonym for “expensive failure”, except as consultants, where they are a synonym for “expensive disaster”.

At some point — probably now — the Ivy League ought to lose their title of “universities” and become mere “colleges”. No longer are they institutes of higher learning, but simple trade schools. (It should be noted that it has only been a fairly recent development that Law, Medicine and Commerce became fields of study, rather than just the product of apprenticeships.)

Certainly, this process is being hastened by the demise of classical education at all colleges, if Mary Grabar is to be believed (and even a cursory glance at the curricula being offered in today’s Humanities departments should provide substantial proof thereof). In place of rigorous study and its attendant discipline, students instead are being taught to rely on their “feelings” and “opinions”, as though the untutored and callow sentiments of youthful inexperience are worth as much as thoughtful, studied analysis.

(A personal aside: I remember once using a translated quote from a Roman philosopher to further an oral argument in a freshman Philosophy class, only to receive a stinging rebuke from the professor, who quoted the entire passage back to me in the original Latin, and proved that I’d misread the intent of the argument completely. One wonders if any modern-day professor is equipped to do the same.)

Professor Grabar is refreshingly blunt about the problem:

I blame it on women, specifically those women who, instead of working their ways into the club through rules of evidence, common values, and objective scholarship, have pushed in their alternate “ways of knowing.” The feminization of education has led to the idolization of Oprah. In the matriarchal upheaval in the academy, the great works of the canon that draw from our Western tradition, like Milton’s majestic Paradise Lost, are replaced by crudely rendered emotive investigations into oppression, like Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” or any of the “multicultural” offerings in the latest anthology.
In addition to eviscerating the canon to add women’s writing, of whatever dubious value (personal letters, diary entries, popular books), the academic feminists’ project was to attack the base of our way of thinking, which they correctly traced back to the notion of a monotheistic God who created a universe with an order based on reason, however indiscernible that at times might be to those he endowed with reason. The matriarchs’ attacks began on linearity, logic, argumentation — the very notion of the individual thinking self. Theorists promoting the “maternal presence in the classroom” accused even the thesis statement of the freshman five-paragraph essay of having embedded within it masculine goal-oriented thinking that in a rapacious manner eliminates weaker ideas.

And thus, the real danger of this nonsense is revealed. The recipients of degrees earned by the embrace of “alternate ways of knowing” are going on to positions of government and management.

So “weaker ideas” are given as much consideration and weight as ideas proven to be logical, effective and workable. It’s risible when this approach is taken by teachers, but it’s not so funny when this thoughtless nonsense becomes the basis of laws, government and commerce.

We should not be surprised, therefore, when a young, inexperienced Presidential candidate [Urkel Obama] uses as his platform a vacuous belief in soft, unattainable (and unprovable) concepts such as “hope” and “change”. We should likewise be unsurprised when this vacuity finds strong support from a bloc of youthful idealists who have been schooled only in similar terms, as well as the intellectually-lazy older group of voters who believe that Oprah Winfrey has actually contributed anything of value to the social and political worlds.

We should also show no surprise when the modern corporation favors unfocused “group decision-making” over individual responsibility and management, even when the end result is no result (an excellent example: the WTC “memorial” which, ten years after 9/11, was still pretty much a large hole in the ground).

It is even less surprising that this so-called “management style” has started to pervade the military: where a sniper has to get approval from “higher authority” to destroy a target already designated as one worthy of destruction.

At some point, of course, all this will collapse on itself. Emotion and feelings are no substitute for logic, reason and experience: and institutions which accept the former must, eventually fall prey to their competitors who use the latter.

What is most depressing is not that this is happening, as much as the fact that the process has been designed, aided and abetted by those who are supposed to keep us away from such mistakes. That would be academia, the so-called gatekeepers of learning and education.

But they’re no longer educators: they’re trainers. Even worse, they’re trainers who are training people in a way which will, eventually guarantee failure.

The only bit of good news is that the people who started this nonsense may be dying off (somewhat too slowly for my liking). But their disappearance will likely come too late.

Teaching, My Ass

Seen On Campus

Aaugh! as Charlie Brown used to say. If you haven’t taken yer blood-pressure meds yet, you may want to pop them before reading any further. This takes the bloody cake.

Penn State York is now offering a week-long “Social Justice and Education” course to teach educators, counselors, and social workers to employ a “culturally responsive lens” in the classroom.
According to the university’s website, the course will be taught by Kathy Roy, associate professor of literacy education at Penn State Harrisburg and coordinator of the literary education program, and will focus on training educators to be “culturally responsive” toward their students.
…
The school notes that Roy’s academic experience is “grounded in social justice frameworks,” saying her research primarily “examines the classroom and community experiences of new and existing refugee and immigrant populations in the U.S., focusing particularly on the intersections of race, culture, language, and other markers of identity.”

I think that “associate professor of literacy education” means that she teaches people how to read, but maybe I’m just being too literal and stuff. Note too the sex of the “educators” who will be foisting this utter bullshit on the delicate flowers known as “students” as per this priceless finale:

Francine Baker, coordinator of the master of education in Teaching and Curriculum at Penn State York, said the course will provide useful tools and techniques to “maximize the learning experience” in the classroom.
“Every day, every teacher makes multiple decisions that impact social justice and equity in their classroom, school, and thus the community-at-large,” Baker explained. “Every student comes with their own story, beliefs, values and ideas. The summer institute at Penn State offers educators the research and strategies to support and expand educational practices that connect students and maximize the learning experience.”
Baker also maintained that the course will allow educators to “design activities to directly embed in their curricular area, classroom and school, while earning three graduate credits or Act 48 hours.

Good, so the educators will receive bribes (“credits”) for perpetrating this insanity, which is cloaked in meaningless jargon such as “maximize the learning experience“. And this part, “intersections of race, culture, language, and other markers of identity” makes me want to have intersectional intercourse with their mothers. And excuse me, but since when was it a goal of tertiary education to “connect students“?

And if all that doesn’t take the cake, this surely will: [RELATED: University to host ‘social justice summer camp’]

Follow that link at your peril. That whirring sound is that of Plato and Socrates (and anyone who ever taught students prior to 1970) spinning in their graves.

New motto for this particular college: “Penn State York: a place to keep hidden from your children.” Or if we want to go all Classical (I know, Irony Alert):

Non Attendendum.

You Can’t Say That Here

Seen On Campus

Tyler Durden (the other one) talks about how free speech is increasingly becoming criminalized, and it’s absolutely true, of course. When someone can get jailed for “hate” speech (my favorite kind, especially when it pertains to politicians of all stripes and Marxist politicians in particular), and when simply wearing a T-shirt can get one into trouble (try wearing a MAGA shirt on the Berkeley campus, for example), it’s easy to prove Tyler’s thesis.

I have two anecdotes on the above, relating to my oh-so brief period as a full-time student at a four-year college. (I should mention up front that while U of North Texas is, by Texas standards, an island of PC and Green groupthink, it’s like Hillsdale College by comparison to Yale or Berkeley.)

Anyway, sometime during my second week on campus I was strolling towards the coffee bar at the student union building or whatever they called it, when I saw a small expanse of lawn, maybe forty feet square, in front of which was a small sign designating this lawn as a “free speech zone — permit required” area. I happened to see one of my professors walking towards me, and I stopped her.

“Am I seeing things, or is this the only place on campus where someone can make a speech? And you need a permit?”
“Uh huh,” she replied, clearly oblivious of the trap I was setting for her, “You get it from the Student Affairs office.”
“Doesn’t sound very free to me,” I observed. “If one has to get a permit to speak, it could, theoretically, be turned down?”
“Oh, they hardly ever refuse a speaking permit.”
“Hardly ever doesn’t really seem to jibe with free, does it?”
“Well, they try to avoid allowing anything that would rile up other students.”
“So if I stood up there, permit in hand, and started yelling that women and niggers shouldn’t be allowed to vote, there’d be repercussions?”
She flinched at the sound of the word “niggers”, which was my intention all along. “You’d probably be suspended!”
“So really, it’s not a free speech zone at all, is it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Exactly how is it free, when I have to get permission to speak, the content is subject to penalty, and where I can speak is constrained by regulation?”
She had no answer to that, but walked off with a horrified look on her face. As did I. I can only imagine the discussion in the faculty lounge later that day. (Despite the evidence that I was a troublemaker, I still got an A for the course because after a few lectures it was clear, both to the prof and to the other students, that I could have taught the class. So why did I take the class, then? It fulfilled a stupid requirement, and as it was an easy A, it freed up time for me to concentrate on Post-WWII German Economic History, which was an absolute monster.)

The second of my many brushes with this free speech foolishness was when I saw a student, a young kid of maybe nineteen, wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt. As we were in a classroom waiting for the professor to arrive, I thought I’d have a little fun.

“Why are you wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt?” I asked.
He looked down, as though seeing it for the first time. “‘Cause it looks cool.”
“You mean, you like the design, or you approve of his revolutionary ethos?”
I think he was a little confused by the word “ethos”, but he replied, “Both. He was a cool dude.”
“You know he was a mass murderer, right?”
The little shit smirked. “He was doin’ what had to be done.”
“Killing his political enemies, without a trial or any legal procedure, just lining them up and mowing them down with a machine gun?”
The kid started looking uncomfortable. “He didn’t do any of that.”
“You know there’s photographic and documentary proof that he did, right? And you know one of his most famous quotes?” (Long ago, I’d taken the trouble to memorize this one, for just such an occasion.)
“What?”
“To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail.” I paused. “Still think he was a cool dude?”
The kid was saved further embarrassment by the arrival of the professor, but after the class another kid came up to me and said, “Dude! That was awesome! Can you write that down for me, what Che said?”

Maybe, just maybe, I prevented at least one kid from becoming a Marxist. At worst, I exposed the other kids in the class to the reality of Guevara’s barbarity. One at a time, folks; one at a time.

College Bound

Seen On Campus

As promised in an earlier post, I want to talk about college — and if any of my Loyal Readers have kids (or even grandkids) who are thinking of attending college, you may want to pass this on to them.  Here’s my opening statement:

Most people have absolutely no business going to college.

I know that a college degree is now the same as a high-school diploma was, forty years ago; as the late Joseph Sobran once put it, we’ve gone from teaching Greek and Latin in high school to teaching remedial English in college. That doesn’t matter; here’s where we are now, and that’s all there is to it. The question is: what next? How to make the best of a bad thing? Here are a few observations, based on my being in college in two separate time periods, the early 1970s and most recently the late 2010s. (I was a slacker in the first, and a serious student in the second.)

Most kids are wasting their time in college. Unless they or their parents are independently wealthy, a class in any of the Humanities has no benefit other than educational. (Remember: I have a B.A. summa in History, which qualifies me to do exactly… squat.) As I looked around at the kids in my classes recently, all I could see was a bunch of slackers, stupid people, party animals and future schoolteachers. The guys were even worse. Few of them belonged in college. (No doubt this is not the case in most STEM classes, which is an even better reason not to get a B.A.)

All that said, let’s assume that everything I’ve written so far doesn’t apply to you, and you’re hell-bent on going to college. It’s going to cost a mint — you, your parents or grandparents are going to spend about $50,000 per annum or more — so if you’re going to go, get it done as quickly as possible. I took three years to get my B.A., which means that just about anyone can. So here we go:

Kim’s Rules And Guidelines For College Success

1. Treat college for what it is: it’s a JOB, a job to get a degree or certification. This means going to every scheduled class, lab or tutorial, taking notes, doing the pre-work and homework, and handing in assignments on time (or early). Your job is to ingest and retain educational content, not piss around in frat parties and pep rallies. Just like a job, you should spend at minimum 12 hours per day, whether in class or studying (for each hour of classroom time, add three hours for studying). Over and beyond your regular studying time, you should spend at least 18 hours prepping for a test, no matter how well you think you know the subject. This, by the way, is the kind of daily time that company managers devote to their job, which is why they get the big bucks and why the clockwatchers get stuck with minimum wage / basic salary scale. Work at least six hours per day on weekends if you have to; they’re not holy days, but class-free days in which you can prepare for the following week’s classes and tests. (And if Saturdays or Sundays are holy days for you, you’ll have to make up the missed time during the week.) I know this sounds like a lot of work — but it has a double benefit: you’ll succeed in college, and the work ethic will transfer to your future jobs and make you stick out from the slackers and deadbeats who are your colleagues.

2. Take copious notes. If and only if you can type at 90/90 (w.p.m. / % accuracy), then by all means ask the prof if you can use your laptop to take notes; otherwise write them — and then rewrite or type them up immediately after class while the memory is still fresh and you can fill in any gaps. My experience is that where profs are not allowing laptops in class, it’s because too many idiots are abusing the thing (Facebook, gaming etc) and worse, distracting the other students.

3. Turn off your damn phone in class. This is becoming such a problem that one prof has been known to take a half-filled bucket of water to the classroom, and put it on his desk with a warning sign: “Final destination for ringing phones.” His choice for the students: drop the phone in the water themselves, or leave and be suspended for a week’s classes. One student had to leave an exam — earning him an F — because his phone rang and he refused to dunk his iPhone. He appealed to the college administration, and lost.

4. Always show up early for class, especially on Day 1. The first class is the most important day of the semester, because that’s where you learn about the prof and how he teaches. Many profs are now not allowing latecomers into the first class at all, because of how important it is for the others who arrived on time. For all other classes: be ready to go when the prof is ready, which means arriving at least 5 minutes early and taking your seat.

5. Don’t sit in the back row. Usually, that’s where the screwups choose to sit, and the profs know it. Also, it’s easier to get distracted by other students when you’re in the back. If you inexplicably fear sitting in the front row (are we still in first grade?), then sit in the second row. Finally, don’t sit next to your BFF (this is especially true for women). Once again, we are not in first grade; we are there to study and learn like adults. On a related note: never take food or drink into the classroom. If you can relate a lecture to an important business meeting, then ask yourself this question: would you take out a Big Mac during a corporate budget meeting? (If you answer “yes” to this, you have a career waiting for you at the DMV, and even they don’t allow eating at your desk.) You’re not going to die of thirst in an hour; visit the drinking fountain en route to the classroom, and you’ll survive.

6. Mimic the study habits of the “A” students. Don’t fall into the slacker category (even though it’s easier or “cooler”). If possible, BE the Smart Kid in the class, the one who’s asked to join a study group rather than the one who’s always begging people to study with them. That said, there’s only space for one name on your degree certificate, so:
a. Avoid study groups. Mostly, you end up wasting your time propping up slackers and/or stupid people. Your education is your responsibility, and yours alone.
b. Avoid group projects, and avoid classes which set lots of group projects, as much as possible. If you HAVE to do a group project, secretly do ALL the work yourself and have it ready for when one member (or more) of the group flakes and doesn’t do their part of the assignment (the chances of this happening at least once during your college career: 100%).

7. Take the free marks. If there’s an attendance grade(!) and/or graded homework which will count towards the final grade, those are free marks. Grab them and get 100%. Think about it: if attendance is 5% and homework is 15% of the final grade, that’s 20% of your final grade in the bag if you get 100% for each. More to the point, NOT getting 100% for the giveaways is throwing marks away. Don’t refuse the gift.

8. Visit the library early and often. Google doesn’t count. Look up related books on your courses, and discuss how those authors differ from your prescribed texts with your prof. He’ll know you’re a serious student, and he’ll take your papers and exams more seriously. And in doing so, you’ll actually learn more about your course of study — which, lest we forget, is a Good Thing. Serious students get As, and if you’re not working towards As and Bs in every single course, you have no business being in college.

9. Enroll in as many summer classes as you can. Three months’ vacation is just wasted time, UNLESS you’re working like hell to pay off your tuition instead of taking out a loan. Also, use spring break to get ahead of your upcoming studies instead of puking your guts out / winning wet t-shirt competitions in Daytona, South Padre or Cabo. People who work in the real world get only two or three weeks’ vacation a year; as a student, you’re entitled to no more. One more time; college is a job, not an opportunity for Bacchanalian excess. Even worse, it’s a job you have to pay for. Treat it accordingly.

10. Choose your courses wisely. Know up front, by the way, that just because a particular course is in the catalog, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be taught during any particular semester. (I missed a French sub-major because the one class I needed for qualification wasn’t offered during my final semester.)
a.) If you’re not going to get a STEM degree, consider carefully whether you should be going to college at all. At worst, you should consider a business degree — a serious one, not “Business Communications” or suchlike nonsense. A serious business degree will involve heavy-duty statistics, math, economics and at least two accounting classes — more, if you’re going to specialize in Finance. If your prospective college’s school of business doesn’t offer such an intensive degree, find another college. Doing well in a business course (MBA, MFA etc.) requires as much work, study and dedication as a medical doctor’s M.D. degree.
b.) Expect to have to look for a job in the global market, so become fluent in a second significant* language, and if you’re of foreign origin and are already fluent in Spanish, Hindi or Chinese, for example, become fluent in a third language. It helps especially if the second language is relevant to your future career. (If you’re no good at languages, you’d better be damn good at something else.)
c.) Don’t take any course with the word “Studies” in its title or catalog description. You will find that “ethnic” or “gender” studies qualify you to do nothing at all. If you have a burning desire to take such courses, postpone the action for post-grad, as “adult education.”
d.) Degrees in “Communications” or “Education” are worthless. They do allow you to say “I have a college degree” but they are a red flag to anyone reading your resume. Ditto all the courses mentioned in c.) above. Here are just two examples relating to this choice of career.
1.) Back in the 1930s, a professor asked one of his students what he intended to do after graduation. When the student said he was interested in becoming a journalist, the professor was appalled, saying “That’s no career for a university man!” Wiser words were seldom spoken.
2.) In this day and age, if you’re getting a degree which (you believe) will get you a teaching job, you will be wasting your time and money. There is a huge glut of teachers, and most college teaching jobs will soon be made redundant by online courses anyway. Public school teaching nowadays is a career for deadbeats and idiots: no matter how dedicated you are, or how much you love the chillins, the public school bureaucracy will stamp that out in a minimum of one year. The dropout rate for new teachers is appallingly high: 60% on average will quit after the second year of teaching, and go on to do something else. If you’re one of the 60%, don’t even think of getting a job in corporate training — your B.Ed will make you the dunce of the applicants, and H.R. knows it. (If you can’t define the difference between training and education, quit now.)

If all the above do not make you want to become a welder, carpenter or electrician, then good luck to you. (The often-scorned “tradesmen” jobs such as the ones listed are actually a far better bet than a B.A. when it comes to long-term financial success, but I’ll be discussing that in another post.)

Oh, and one last caveat, if you’re absolutely set on going to college: never, ever join a sorority or fraternity, no matter how much you hear about the wonderfulness of being a sister or brother. They are degree-killers, and the failure rate in the “Greek” community is appalling. Animal House was great comedy, but it’s no way to go through life, son.

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*a “significant” language means a major economic country’s language, such as Chinese, Japanese, German, Russian, Hindi, or Arabic. Languages such as Catalan, Celtic or Icelandic, for example, may be lovely romantic choices but they’re irrelevant, economically speaking.

Culture Clash

Seen On Campus

While I was attending our local community college, I struck up a friendship with a kid in our Physics class. Hassan was Moroccan, about 20 years old, and had a wonderful sense of humor. He looked like any American kid, behaved like one and without his slight accent, you’d think he was born in Ohio or something.

So one day Hassan and I were hanging out in the corridor outside the classrooms, when two girls sat down next to us and started chatting away in some foreign language. They were, in a word, exquisite (in a trashy-Kardashian kind of way) — dark, expressive eyes, long black hair beautifully styled, fashionable clothes and expensive shoes. They looked more as though they were about to go out on a date than attend class.

Anyway, at some point a Muslim guy walked past us — Muslim, because he was wearing that silly skullcap thing and the white shift over long trousers. He looked at the girls, said something in Arabic to Hassan, and walked off.

Hassan bent over double with laughter, and when I asked him what the guy had said, he replied, “Persian whores.”

And there you have it, in a nutshell. Three recent immigrants (Hassan and the girls) who’d come here and assimilated (a little too much in the case of the girls, but still), and one asshole who’d brought over his 11th-century culture and would never assimilate.

And if you think for one minute that he’d inflict some Islamic-style caning on those two pretty girls if he could, you’d be perfectly correct. I saw it in his eyes.

 

Back To School — An Introduction

Seen On Campus

After the end of my old blog, The Mrs. decreed that before her health got too bad, she wanted to fulfill her lifelong dream and go live in France for a few years. Of course, our finances would not allow us to do that — Paris is obscenely expensive in terms of apartment rental, not to mention all the other stuff — so she came up with a Grand Plan.

“You’ll just have to work there to support us.”

“Doing what?”

“Teach. At an American school or something.” (Grand Plans, by definition, are somewhat vague on details.)

“But I can’t get a teaching job without a university degree.”

“So get one.”

Therefore at age 55, it was back to school for Kim, with (in the Bard’s words): “shining morning face, creeping like a snail unwillingly to school”. One and a half years at community college to get the “core” courses (what I thought would have been covered in high school, silly me), followed by one and a half years to get my B.A. (I took on a per-semester course load which would have made John Milton weep, and took every summer class I could).

Anyway, to make a very long story not quite so long, at age 58 I graduated summa cum laude from University of North Texas with a B.A. (History, Modern Western Europe emphasis).

During my last semester at UNT I started looking at American schools first in Paris, then elsewhere in France as a backup. (I speak both French and German more or less fluently, but The Mrs. didn’t like the idea of living in Germany even though it would have been a lot easier to find a gig at a U.S. military base.)

Then Connie’s health went over a cliff. First, her back collapsed completely, necessitating several spinal operations which didn’t help, but reduced her height from 6’1″ to 5’11”. Mobility was going to be an issue, so a ground-floor apartment in Paris was going to be the only option.

And then came cancer: Stage 4 ovarian, with a 95% mortality rate. At that point, a move out of the country was clearly impossible.

I’m not going to dwell on the latter, for reasons I’m sure you understand. What I am going to talk about, in the months that follow, are my experiences at an institute of hire learning [sic] and my encounters with academia. If you think of me as that “Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur”, only with a very bad attitude, you won’t be far wrong.

Oh, and lest anyone’s still curious about my finances and the need for a GoFundMe appeal, allow me to add just two words: student loans. The tuition at Collin College was paid in cash; the tuition at UNT was not.