I realize I didn’t found a company or discover a new insect.

[intertribal]

the most overrated "crisis" ever.

"Students complain about lack of sleep, stomach pain and headaches, but doctors and educators also worry that stress tied to academic achievement can lead to depression, eating disorders and other mental health problems."  Good.  Who the fuck cares about, you know, arsenic in the freaking drinking water?  Here's the real health crisis of our times. 

Either go on medication (what I did) and/or suck it up, or don't apply to Harvard.  Having taken most of my classes at Columbia this semester I have become increasingly sure that there is pretty much no difference between the kid that gets into the Ivy League school and the kid that doesn't.

I have some hella dumb classmates, and I was rejected from their school.  Prestige is all B.S.  Even at Barnard, prestige is B.S.  I was at the Torchbearers reception sitting at a table with a filthy-rich alumna (and by filthy-rich I mean, filthy-rich off her husband and parents) who was talking about how great her sons' prep academy is - Dalton School, part of the Ivy Preparatory League, also known as the Children's University School, whose alumni include such "notable" people as Chevy Chase, Anderson Cooper, Claire Danes, Christian Slater, and Sean Lennon (shameful really.  Horace Mann's got Ira Levin and Elliot Spitzer, Trinity's got the McEnroes, and Fieldston's got Sofia Coppola, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Stephen Sondheim.  Dalton's the black sheep by comparison!).  Why, the teachers there are so wonderful, all the kids pool together money when they graduate (and by pool together money I mean, their parents drop off limo-loads at the front doors) and give a gift to the school, which is not by any stretch of the imagination lacking in funds.  But you know, said this Barnard alumna, quality should be rewarded with monies.

And as soon as she said the name of the school, Dalton, I immediately thought of this biographical story I read in a book called 33 Things Every Girl Should Know.  Cliched title for a book, sounds like it came from the American Girl Company, but those stories, told by adult women, seriously are 33 Things Every Girl Should Know.  I got that book when I was about 11 - it came from my uncle (!) - and I think it really influenced how I grew up and the beliefs I adopted.  That and People, by Peter Spier, which is hands down the best book I have ever read.

The story in question was called... well, I don't remember.  Follow Your Passion, I think.  It's not important.  But it was about this girl whose mother really wanted her to go to Dalton School, because it was such a good school, and they're at the interview, and the girl is thinking about the girls she's seen in the classes, the perfect pretty girls with jelly shoes, and when the interviewer asks her why she wants to go to Dalton she snaps her chewing gum and says, "Lady, I don't.  I wanna go to public school with my friends."  Her mother is horrified and clearly she doesn't get into Dalton.  Fast-forward twenty years and she's gotten herself to a prestigious college of some sort (Yale?  I think...) and is constantly having to tell the people she meets that she went to some prep school she made up so she isn't socially ostracized, when really all she wants to say is, "Lady!  I was a Dalton reject!"

Comments

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

While it's true that the prestige itself (= symbolic capital) is illusory, the institution is not. I do believe, that while some may feel entitled to their education and so not treat it as seriously as they might otherwise (contrariwise: they might also not get hung up on pointless class angst), and some might be admitted into that educational sphere without an 'equal' basis (no shit), that the symbolic or economic capital does in fact produce a different academic environment--professors that are at the top of their fields or who themselves have a thorough education who are there to teach and interact with students during office hours, etc.; smaller student-to-faculty ratios; student services; extensive libraries; and--though certainly not ideal--selective pick of students. Once you're all in that educational and institutional sphere, you are, or should be, there to get the best education possible. Some people are going to be dumb, some people aren't going to work for it. Hopefully they're graded accordingly. That said, I'm not so sure that there's much difference between the Ivy League and comparable non-Ivy small liberal arts colleges (e.g. Reed), except in the amount of East Coast elite bullshit.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

(Sometimes I think the Ivies can get away with more because of their prestige--they can not be as good of an undergrad teaching institution, they don't have to work as hard for their huge applicant pool because of their prestige.)

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I think that's definitely true. And I think that may be part of the reason for my "disillusionment", as it were.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think I decided that my first year at Reed...I guess because I thought I was much happier here than I would have been if I'd actually gotten in to Brown or Yale, and yet it had most of the qualities I valued about those schools. Though I got the impression Brown isn't as bad as the others. Harvard seemed bloody awful, though. But that was my, you know, college tour impression.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

To me Harvard = Quentin Compson's suicide school, and always will be. I could never go there.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

They didn't even bother to really give a college tour. They're just like, 'Here are a few buildings. If you're applying to Harvard, you've probably already decided, and if you aren't we don't really care, because we'll have more than enough applicants anyway. Our students are miserable, but it doesn't really matter.'

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

ugh. that's horrible.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

also, grade inflation = problem.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

And of course it's true what the article said, that no matter where you go to college, it only really means something if you work and take advantage of whatever opportunities you have while you are there. Which is how people can work their way up from undergrad to grad school to where they land a job (a number of my profs have followed this route, going to a larger school as an undergrad, doing well, getting a scholarship, going on to one of the better grad school in their field), or how they succeed at whatever else (internships, jobs, etc.) they do after graduation.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

*schools

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I guess it's hard for me to know for certain how different it is. My mother insists it is, so I guess I'll take her word for it, and I do like having so much available in the libraries. Our economics department is shit, our environmental science department is pretty much shit, and our poli sci department is failing because it's losing majors to other departments. Columbia's departments are so busy trying to save the world or publish papers in prestigious journals or start institutions or do research that they don't even care about undergraduates.

I get along a lot better with generic Nebraskans who go to UNL than Columbia types, however, most of whom don't even contribute to classroom discussisons because they're so busy making themselves look as knowledgeable/snarky/pretty as possible. And they are graded accordingly, but it doesn't really matter because they've got Daddy's Firm to give them an internship and a job post-graduation that doesn't rely on writing well, but relies on networking well, which is what they're here to do, preen and make friends. Tons of people get shit grades and it doesn't matter. But the "East Coast elite bullshit" is a really, really strong deterrent to attending an Ivy, in my opinion.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I guess, just from working at NE Book Co. and interacting with former classmates who go to UNL and attending PSU over the summer, I would say it's pretty different. I mean, if you're an honors student who plays their cards right, you might at least stand a chance of going to a better grad school, or taking the few classes that are good, but you're just a number, and you don't have to really challenge yourself to get good grades.

Of course, I get along better with a lot of such students, although sometimes I'm not sure if that's because of our class background or because they intimidate me less...I suppose those are two sides of the same thing, but in the long run, I value my education more, or at least I have to to want to stay here. And I do. I doubt I'd want to stay at an Ivy though. At least as an undergrad. Undergraduate school has become the sort of prerequisite that people who don't really care about the education get anyway, and sometimes I wish they wouldn't.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

*note: I recognize that it's funny i should mention my "class background" since in some ways my family has more money than my classmates, but well, it's called socioeconomic class for a reason, and i went to a public high school, neither of my parents are from upper-class backgrounds, and i am a first-generation college student. in short, the wealthy people, and even the pretentious upper-class people, carry themselves in a way that i don't, and can't.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

typo, should read "upper-middle class"

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

because most of the student body is probably more upper middle class than anything

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

no, I know what you mean.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

i would also say, some things are more possible to study at liberal arts colleges than others. like, the only problem with studying languages might be class size, but studying something like anthro...some colleges have textbooks for anthropology. i cannot convey how idiotic that is. i have stocked such textbooks. they make no sense. they're just like "look! different cultures!" god, it makes me die a little inside. you need to deal critically with theory, and even--as much as i hate to admit it--ethnography to study anthro. you can't just memorize shit. it makes no fucking sense.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

ling-anth dork note: this observation would be consistent with those that have shown that institutions catering to different classes will treat texts differently--what and how you're supposed to learn is different.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Well, the intro IR class I took at UNL was comparable (as in, the same books - and not text books) to the intro IR class here. Of course it was an honors class. And it was taught by a woman who got her PhD from Columbia.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

yeah, there are a few classes like that at most decent universities (certainly not all, and not community colleges or anything like that). i mean, i took an Entomology class in high school by a guy who went to Cornell that was pretty cool. But then, he often commented that our papers were better than the ones his college students gave him. And the same can be said of public high schools--sometimes you get a really great teacher, who knows their shit, and is committed to teaching students (especially in differentiated classes, AP/IB, and focus programs), but a lot of the time, you just don't. And sometimes there's only so much a prof can do when their classes are too big or their students are too apathetic and go out and get drunk four nights a week. Not that all UNL students do that, but it's definitely a different atmosphere.

I just...the people I know who ended up at UNL are kinda frustrated. They know they're smarter than their peers, they feel unchallenged and unmotivated, the profs in their department don't know what they're doing, they're getting their A's and getting out. I know the differences between state universities and private schools are exaggerated, but I still don't think they're comparable...I suppose it's more of a gradient in most ways (students and profs), instead of the categories of 'elite' and 'not' that they get dumped into socially. And part of it is more the difference between a large school and a small liberal arts school than public vs. private--different departments, different interests. I mean, if I wanted to major in journalism or something, sure, why bother going to Reed? Hell, if I wanted a "career in the real world," why bother going to Reed? But no, I want to know the secrets of the social universe, ha ha. I want profs with fewer than a hundred students at a time. I want classmates who are into what I'm into and can hold an argument with me. I want multidisciplinary input. I want to read all the classics, and I want to read modern criticism. I want to know everything I can possibly know that's relevant and important to what I will study, and I want to use it when I go on to grad school instead of adding "B.A." to my resumé and calling it good. If that's all I wanted, if a job was what I wanted, sure, I'd be fine at UNL, and I'm not saying I wouldn't learn anything. Nor is Reed, or any private liberal arts school, what I would ideally want. But I doubt I would have ever found what I want to study at UNL, and god knows what would have happened then.

PSU was an experience...I liked the students better, but then, I was better at Chinese than all of them (except perhaps the high schoolers who were taking it for their college applications...). I think the teacher was pretty good. Then again, he did teach at a private liberal arts college before he taught at PSU. He wasn't dumb, and I don't think private schools have privileged access to how to teach a language. If anything, what they have is more literature/history/culture focus, as opposed to practical knowledge, although that might partly be a first year vs. second year thing.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I think I'm a lot less sure about whether I want to just add B.A. to my resume and call it good. My desire to spend time studying and learning is directly correlated to the quality of the teaching. Throughout most of my first two years at Barnard I had no desire to get anything more than a Master's (either an M.I.A. or an M.A. in Political Science, both essentially "formalities") because I did not enjoy school all that much. Then I took the colloquium with Professor Cooley and I wanted a Ph.D., only because of that colloquium. I kept that up at the University of Melbourne, because I had two very cool female professors (Colman and McGregor), and Professor McGregor actually wanted me to stay in Melbourne to complete an honors thesis on Indonesia. I got back to Barnard/Columbia and I've been unimpressed with my professors this semester, meaning I'm back to the M.A. plan and at present can't imagine getting a Ph.D.

Most of the professors I've had here don't have a lot of tolerance for the kind of political science I like. Professor Cooley is really the only one who is. I think my vitriol amuses him. I had to listen to my Nationalism professor decry constructivism the other day and it saddened me, because most people here are hardcore realists for reasons I do not know, and for me taking classes with a realist bent is pretty much taking classes at UNL because it's so not what I care about and so painfully minimalist and shallow to me. The history class I took at Melbourne was really phenomenal in that sense that it actually had a nuanced approach to political events. And I think how I'd describe the kind of political science I like is... that it's poetic political science, soulful political science, the kind that remembers that:

"if you had no name, if you had no history, if you had no books, if you had no family, if it were only you naked on the grass, who would you be then?... I wasn't really sure, but I would probably be cold."

This is something I realized at Melbourne, when I was basically thrown into a very poor library system with no guidance, surrounded by a huge number of students who came from a variety of backgrounds but were not all that gifted, and allowed, based on this lower but more open threshold, to be more experimental. My teachers gave me more inspiration than rules and I wasn't stressed out about competing with my classmates, and I ended up actually learning things I was interested in on my own and felt safe responding to things emotionally as well as intellectually, as opposed to going to class armed to the teeth because I hate all my ambitious sharky classmates and my asshole-ish, anal teachers who can barely teach. I have the tendency to speak really colloquiually about political science and in the less formal environment at Melbourne that was okay - people didn't say "I agree with X's point", people said, "that was hot". I just don't speak in formalities, I fail at formalities because they feel dead and inauthentic to me, and I don't speak in classes at Columbia because you HAVE to speak in textbook language because everyone's a freaking future MAJOR THINKER. I never once had to gear up to going to class at Melbourne by listening to angry Rammstein, because I liked being part of a large and chill and anonymous student body, and even the brilliant students in my classes weren't snobs because everybody was wearing the same clothing brands and there were no cliques, none, and people actually wanted each other to do well.

I think the ridiculously flat, dry, and cold methodology that Columbia imposes on everything may be something particular to mainstream political science, which is part of the reason I don't think I want to spend a lot of time in graduate school.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I want to respond to this at more length, but:

1) I swear to god, you want to do political anthropology.

2) Yes, the teachers influence you, but the teachers here know their shit, even the ones who don't do what I like (i.e. formal stuff) and thus would not have inspired me. I wasn't saying that the teachers at this sort of college or all inspirational and make me want to get a Ph.D.

3) Well, yeah, I'm more comfortable talking in class that way, and a lot of other people are too, but everybody corrects themselves for no particularly good reason in the more awkward, formal classes. Jon's classes are the total opposite, where he talks bout the "what the fuck" parts of ethnography and how conference is "making shit up" and Freudian fetish starts when the child realizes, "There's mommy, I love mommy. There's something different about daddy...oh my. Mommy really loves shoes, I think I'll love shoes too, so I don't have to think about that." And how U Chicago (where steve went) is "dark from autumn to the vernal equinox, and not just literally. people are wearing all black, gnawing on their wrists, and chain-smoking from both hands." (since steve wears black and chain smokes, all that really remains is the gnawing...) And I am more open in his classes. Like, "I think his examples are really biased, I mean, of course it's going to look like they've all been sexually abused when the only speech patterns he characterizes are like the lady who says 'in, out, in, out, in, out."

3) Like I said, there are a LOT of colleges, that are somewhere in the middle in quality, and the really 'poor', 'low-end' schools aren't state universities at all. They're community colleges and technical schools and things like that. There are good and bad profs and students scattered throughout. There's also a big difference btwn. undergrad and graduate, and I think there are a lot of problems with the way undergraduate schools, and elite colleges, work. I am not saying I think prestige is all great and you know we should just worship the upper class. I am saying there are actual merits to these schools and just because you're intimidated by wealthy people doesn't mean they're bad schools. I mean, just because I'm more comfortable talking to certain people doesn't mean I should just only talk to them and never challenge myself or face my fears or actually try to compete with the people I'm not comfortable with. That's just limiting myself. That's putting moral value on my own weakness and hating upper class people just for talking how they learned to talk and and acting how they learned to act.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I understand what you mean, and I agree that there are actual merits to elite colleges. I'm not sorry I went to a "good" school, because I really like my department, and although I don't think my classmates challenge me (the thing with the east coast elite is they're not actually very intimidating in class, for the most part - they talk with New Jersey/Valley girl accents, don't know anything except the Western canon, and regurgitate a lot) other than making me hate their guts and want to beat them, I think the "aura" of Columbia is challenging, if anything because everyone wants to do well at something, no one wants to marry an orthodontist and raise kids. I'm sure that overall the quality of education is higher. I maintain that the quality of the students is about the same, because people at Columbia don't learn to think in any way that is critically constructive. There is no independent thought. There's the dogma. You follow the dogma.

As for "hating upper class people just for talking how they learned to talk and acting how they learned to act"... I don't know. I almost went out with a blueblood guy but we were just so different, with different priorities. I have rich "friends" that I have trouble maintaining a friendship with because they trust me enough to say that they hate poor people. I do try to compete with them, and I usually beat them when I do, because merit and hard work have nothing to do with income. Do I hate them? I don't know. Not inherently. It's not as if I want to shelter myself from all spoiled brats of privilege in the world. I mean, I want to be in the Foreign Service. Most third-world presidents (well, most presidents) are grown-up spoiled brats.

And yeah, I think I do want to study political anthropology. It's in the genes, I guess.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

yeah, i can't count, and there are typos, but i must go, sorry

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

uhhhh, sorry that was a really long response.

But also! Chinese students are often a little different, esp. after you weed out those that are just fulfilling their language requirement. Dunno why, maybe because they're studying something that takes a lot of work but has obvious practical use? Abbey says she noticed the same thing with Japanese majors at Vassar (even Abbey does not like most Vassar students, although freshman year she tried to fit in...and drove me nuts).