I love university Do you know what I find fascinating? The lives of university professors. They do so many things besides teach. I once had a prof who spent half a class expounding on why the class he was teaching us was a very unimportant part of his work and hence why were were less important than even the lice living in the hair of his grad students. Well, he didn't put it quite like that, but that was what I got out of it. I went to an academic talk tonight about the geochemical heterogeneity of contaminated and uncontaminated aquifers. The talk was not as boring as you might think. In fact, the speaker was really quite good. What was most interesting was the maneuvering between the profs and the grad students (I was the only undergrad present). Who talked with who, who is a member of which organization, that sort of thing. To be employed as a professor by a university you're expected not only to do reasearch and teach, but to also be members of committies and organizations, and even to be on the executive of some. The prick (er...I mean prof) I was talking about earlier was a member of no less that 10 organizations having to do with his reasearch. 10! As I sat in this talk, and watched all the academics, I reafirmed my decision to never get a PhD. You get too weird, and way too caught up in reasearch for its own sake rather than working towards some sort of practical goal. I mean, if you compare a university professor and say...the poor dude who had to scan each and every page of the local white and yellow pages in our city. Now, in a year's work for both these people, a university professor will probably produce one or two papers that his fellow academics will read, and attend a couple of committee meetings. The summer student will allow a computer program to be produced which allows a PC (or Mac I'm sure) user to enter any name or phone number into an interface and get not only it's corresponding entry in the phone book, but the entire page it appears on. Now, which of these people contributes more to society in general? Obviously the poor sod at the phone company. Granted, this may not be the best comparison in the world, but I feel it makes my point. You may say, "but they're teaching you, you arrogant bitch!" However, this (in most cases) is an innacurate statement. Professors do not teach, they lecture. There is a difference. A lecture only requires the speaking of information. There is little effort to ensure any learning takes place. If they taught, maybe I wouldn't have gotten a D+ on my structure midterm. So, in closing, I'm a bitter sixth-year undergraduate student who just wants to get off this campus! |