[OT] destroy all software (was Programming language WATs)

[Adam D. Ruppe]

On Sunday, 22 January 2012 at 01:17:21 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator at gmail.com> wrote in message 
> news:mvloclloufauudewjnrj at dfeed.kimsufi.thecybershadow.net...
>>
>> First off, they required all the first year students
>> to live on campus. WTF. And, of course, they required
>> these exorbitant fees for all that too.
>>
>
> At BGSU, they required first *and* second year students to live 
> on campus. They had some sort of bullshit excuse about 
> "bettering yourself" or some other such meaningless crap like 
> that.
>
> But that's not the bad part: There was one year (that I *know* 
> of) where they had more first and second year students then 
> they had dorms for. Obviously, they couldn't do the sane thing 
> and relax the requirement (after all, that might make BGSU look 
> bad!), so they made a bunch of students (not me, luckily) 
> *live* together in the dorm's lounge rooms. That was one of 
> first of many "College, WTF?!" moments for me. (I had thought 
> Animal House was fiction!)
>
>>
>> Best of all, I have my own bathroom and kitchen. And it's
>> quiet here, pretty much all day and all night. I live next
>> to a fire station, and it's infinitely more quiet
>> than living next to college drunkards.
>>
>
> And even in the dorms, you still get the middle-of-the-night 
> fire alarms anyway (speaking of drunks). But in the place you 
> have, I bet you don't have to leave the house every time it 
> happens...
>
>>
>> The classes are OK, but the other crap they *required*
>> just gets a huge HELL NO.
>>
>
> I was...sort of...the other way around (kinda):
>
> There was admittedly a lot about campus life that was terrible, 
> but there was also a lot about it that I loved and still 
> sometimes miss (Many intangibles, but also the panini 
> sandwiches at the campus convenience store! Yum! Much as BGSU 
> sucked, they *did* have very good dining halls as long as you 
> avoided anything resembling asian).
>
> Even though there were a *few* very good teachers/classes, it 
> was mostly the academic (and administrative, financial and 
> bureaucratic) aspects I had a problem with. Oh, and the drunks, 
> of course.
>
>> Aaanyway, I did round two at the community college,
>> and switched to computer science figuring an AS in
>> computers is probably more useful than in physics,
>> and is something I should be able to turn around
>> quickly.
>>
>> And that wasn't bad at all. Government grants paid
>> for the whole thing (for three semesters... I had
>> already eaten a huge chunk of them in year 1) and
>> I could live wherever I wanted.
>>
>> I might be ok with finishing that off someday if my
>> business crashed and burned (and nobody took my years
>> of experience as a substitute for college), but
>> since the free money ran out, even the three or
>> four grand they'd want to finish it off just doesn't
>> look worth it.
>>
>
> Heh, I finished off with community college, too!
>
> I started college (in 2000) with 2.5 years at BGSU (public 
> party school, and in retrospect, the *best* of all the colleges 
> I've been to, not that that's saying much). I had an absolutely 
> terrible apartment situation the last semester (Lesson: *Never* 
> get into a student-oriented apt complex with management that's 
> based out-of-state. Especilly if it's leased by anything longer 
> than month-to-month.)
>
> So then I transferred to JCU (private school, highly-respected, 
> at least locally) so I could commute and save on living 
> expenses. Was there for 1.5 years, retaking all the same CS 
> classes I had already aced at BGSU (because JCU didn't believe 
> I could possibly know what I was doing - I was merely a 
> "student" after all - and an "undergrad" at that). Although it 
> was technically 1.5 years, the last semester I was so jaded I 
> was really only there physically; I wasn't actually trying at 
> all, and I didn't care to. So they did put me on a one-semester 
> academic suspension, but it didn't matter since I was already 
> done with them by that point anyway. (It was somewhere in the 
> middle of my time at JCU that I decided I genuinely *wanted* to 
> not have a degree. I know that sounds like a rationalization to 
> most people, but I swear it really isn't one for me.)
>
> At that point I went to the super-cheap[1] local Lakeland 
> Community College part time, mainly so I could keep the ~$100k 
> (yes, that's right) I'd racked up in loans out of repayment 
> until I could actually pay them (for the record: I still can't 
> :/ ). At the first two schools, I had been declared CS all four 
> years from day one. Did it differently at LCC: *Officially*, I 
> was going for...I think it was some sort of EE associate's or 
> something like that, but really I took the opportunity to *for 
> once in my life* actually take the classes that *I wanted* to 
> take[2]. I even took an acting class that I absolutely loved; 
> heck, it was the only class in my life I was genuinely sad to 
> see end (and then I took a second one that...umm...didn't work 
> out so well...)
>
> That community college is very highly regarded locally, and I 
> was fairly impressed with it - at first. Then the staff, 
> administrators, and one or two very specific instructors, kept 
> finding all manner of new and creative ways to severely fuck me 
> over. Eventually their demands got *so* unreasonable, and their 
> bullshit *so* deep, that I just said "Fuck it, I'm done." That 
> was probably about six-ish years ago. Things haven't been easy 
> since (Hah! Like they ever were!), but I've never had a hint of 
> regret about leaving. I have, however, had many regrets about 
> having ever gottn involved in the first place. And I've also 
> had many regrets about having listened to the people who talked 
> me into not cutting my losses much sooner than I actually did. 
> ("You've already gotten this far, you may as well get something 
> out of it!" Yea, *thanks*, all you self-righteous assholes, now 
> my debt is double what it would have been.)
>
> [1] That's "super-cheap" relatively speaking: it's still 
> insanely expensive (and less effective) compared to a good 
> library. Or even a good bookstore.
>
> [2] That was one of the many things I despised about college. I 
> had always been told that in college, unlike high school (which 
> made my miserable college experience seem like utopia by 
> comparison) you choose your area of study. But that turned out 
> to be a load of crap - unless you go to a tech school, 65%-75% 
> of credits are completely unrelated to your major and it's 
> *dictated* that you take them. (Academically, college literally 
> *is* an expensive redo of high school). Now, I might have not 
> minded the lack of self-direction, except that *I* was the one 
> paying tens of thousands of $$$ for the classes!  Who the fuck 
> has ever heard of, say, a grocery store that told people which 
> of their stock they could and couldn't buy? *Everyone* in 
> faculty/staff thought I was nuts for seeing it that way. In 
> their mind, you're *expected* to be happy paying them a fortune 
> for the privilege of being told what you're allowed to learn. 
> Talk about narcissism.