Top Ten Most Ridiculous Aspects of University

10) Putting Money on Student ID Cards: What the fuck is the point of this shit? Has anyone on campus heard of cash, credit or debit? Why would I need to move money onto my student card if I already have three other forms of currency? Some places on campus don’t even accept anything but student cards and cash. Why? Are they separate from the entire economic universe around them? I guess some students have mommy or daddy put money on their cards. That will teach them how to grow up real quick.

9) The Price of School Related Shit/Books: A coffee mug with your university’s name on it: 10$ – that’s a fair price. It’s plastic and made in China. You can afford it on a student’s budget. How about 75$ for a paperback book that you’re required to read 20 pages from and you’ll only do 5 and still get a B? Nothing wrong with that at all. No regulation needed. Professors and publication companies gain very little from this mega rip off.

8 ) Protests: If you’re in university you’ve got to protest every goddamn crack in the sidewalk. If the school tells you that you have to shit in a toilet pick up a sign that says, “Poo Freedom Now!” Everyone’s a fucking anarchist in Uni. Little do they know that they bend over and take it before they’re able pay for Bristol board and wood made from cut down trees in the rain forest.

7) School Spirit: who really gives a shit?

6) Emailing Profs and TAs: Good luck ever getting a response. Professors and Teaching Assistants have the only occupation in the Western World where they make their email addresses known and have absolutely no obligation to reply. Of course they have “other responsibilities.” I know when a customer asks me a question at my minimum wage job I tell them “I have studying to do – I can’t be bothered to help you even though I’m being paid to do so”

5) Left-Wing Bias: The war is over, the bums lost! Why is it that every social science teacher is a Marxist, Neo-Marxist, Socialist or whatever they’re calling their failed ideology these days? Profs get paid, right? And they buy shit too? OK then fuck off.

4) Marking: Here is how they mark a paper/exam in a social science/humanities class – they have a giant fucking wheel with the letters “A” to “F” labeled around the circumference and they spin it. In all honesty there is nothing in my four semesters at university to show that TAs and Profs mark with any formal direction what so ever. It is completely arbitrary.

3) Citation: Who invented this stupid shit? You can’t just write the name of the book and author, it has to be done a certain way. And of course it’s different for every department and every professor because apparently a PhD doesn’t allow you the intellect to understand Chicago style if you’re a Poli Sci Prof. Is a TA going to have a fucking seizure if the name of the author is in italics instead of the journal name?

2) Students Asking Unnecessary Questions: Put down your fucking hand. “When is something due?” If you didn’t ask that no one would ever know. This shit is not posted anywhere. And then there’s those who actually enjoy what they’re learning – you shut up too. Don’t make the lecture any longer to inquire about some intellectual masturbation.

1) Reading and Writing: This is all we goddamn do at university. Reading books and writing essays, read/write/read/write/read/write…Holy fucking shit every student that graduates is going to walk into their first real job interview and be asked, “what are you experienced at?” and all they can say is, “I can read AND write and do absolutely nothing else.” What job description is there that says, “we’re going to pay you for forty hours a week to come up with five ten pages essays on bullshit every few months”? All this drivel  is just words rapped around quotations in order to make the minimum number of pages required. However as long as we use the right citation, criticize the establishment, have a left-wing bias and get in touch with the TA/Prof in an non-electronic format they might actually pull something higher than a C+ out of the marking lottery used by the ivory tower to “educate” the masses.

The Ivory Tower of Shit

Today we’re going to talk about education, that’s right, education. You may or may not be aware but I have a community college diploma and am on my way to getting a university degree. But to be completely frank both systems don’t add up to much more than the paper they’re written on. Being the cynic I am I can only truly appreciate something when using it to criticize another item. When I was in college I thought there was nothing dumber than it. And now that I’m in university I can’t rap my mind around what all the hoopla is about.

I have an advanced (whatever the fuck that means) diploma in ‘Journalism: Print & Broadcast’ from the somewhat respectable, and hardly known outside the Hamilton Mountain, Mohawk College. And what does two years of courses, assignments and residency add up to – one point above shit. Because, lets get real, who the hell is hiring journalists? They’re not like tradesmen, technicians or those with an education in business or marketing that are always needed. However I have only my self to blame for studying what I did. I don’t much regret spending two years of my life and the incredibly over-priced tuition/ancillary fees to attend that program. The parties were sick and the people were great.

The problem with community college is that program coordinators are given the power to hire instructors as they choose. Some of these individuals may have no training as a teacher what so ever and also leave much to be desired in the area of social skills. Furthermore many don’t take their jobs very seriously. This apathy is the consequence of a college instructor’s only real value: their experience in the industry. Many individual course instructors are people that have worked in the field being studied. Unfortunately those that do cannot necessarily teach as well. And just like the students in the class, so many of the instructors are more concerned with putting something on their resume than the actual curriculum.

The area of lecturer inexperience is something that is shared between college and university. Professors may have a PhD (and in some cases don’t even possess this title) but they are certainly capable of not be able to convey ideas to a crowd of people. In fact, some are god-awful at it. And again, professors are often more concerned with their research and not their lecturing or marking.

The real shit part about university is the lack of social and workplace experience it offers. All that is required from the student in an individual social sciences’ course is to write at most 15 pages of double spaced drivel on god-knows-what and complete a maximum of 2 tests on the course material. What does that teach us about life or the work place? Shit. There are not many jobs that only require producing an academic paper every 4 months (outside of academia of course). And let’s face it: research papers, in all their eccentric and unnecessary glory,  are possibly the stupidest things to exist next to compact disc packaging.

College, on the other hand, gives students the experience of writing the odd paper but also having a schedule to adhere by and being responsible for smaller and more frequent assignments that mimic the activity of an actual workplace. While in university you may (or may not) know how to write a 20-page thesis but not have the faintest idea of how to produce a simple 50-word memo.

It is not only the weight that is given to essays alone at university but also a paper’s individual vagueness and absurdity that is problematic. It could be easily said that no one knows how to write a proper paper. I am entering my third year of undergrad studies with a good standing grade point average and besides knowing how to cite and use spell-check I have no further understanding of what makes a good essay. I have continually read the “comments section” of my supposedly marked paper and it is quite arguable that if I put my thumb over the grade the review could reflect anything from a C+ to an A. Shockingly this is all that is provided as far as marking is concerned in university – no rubric, no addition or subtraction of actual marks, no individual weight given to certain areas and no proper assessment of mistakes or “good points” beyond the word count and bibliography. This is sad and paradoxical. If universities are such prestigious institutions and hold essays in such high regard why do they provide less of explanation for the marking of papers than Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert do in their 2 thumbs down review of Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls? The marking that teaching assistants are required to do is about equal to a short movie review blurb.

I suppose I will never complain about a grade I receive above an A-, however if you decide that my paper is not fantastic than I’d like to be enlightened on how marks are categorically deducted for improper citation or a weak title.

When I come out of university I will have two things: a piece of paper that says I have an honours degree in political science and the knowledge that incompetency and ignorance exists in the most respectable and hierarchical of organizations. In fact, it can be assumed through the education I have, or have not, received that bullshit is rife and relevant in almost every aspect of society.