General Politics Discussion (XI) [ARCHIVED] World • Page 782

No one in my group was like that. Most of us were smart and did well but no one was like excited about what we were learning. I didn’t start giving a shit until deep into college. These days I thirst for knowledge

 

I taught myself how to do a lot I would copy paste pre made code as a jumping off point

 

The only thing I remember anyone actually caring about was the few of us who were ballsy enough to take organic chemistry got to make our own bio diesel fuel using leftover vegetable oil from the cafeteria and went through the entire process of keeping a log or journal as if it was a real scientific lab and we got to test it in a truck my teacher got through a Pepsi grant he applied for and it actually ran on the shit we made. That was extremely cool and taught me a lot but the class was hard as fuck.

 

I'd imagine there's still lots of people just like that. Similar bell curve of overachievers, slackers, and the people that do just enough to get by.

 

i was a little bit like that sure, my college entrance essay was about "loving learning" and at the time i was like yeah this is like half bullshit only. but i was a dork ass nerd ass loser in high school so

 

I literally applied to the only college on my list that didn’t require an essay. I eventually did have to write one when I transferred lol

 

I screwed around way too much in college. Had a couple classes where I only attended exams

 

Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!

 

That was me my first year and a half at a huge university with 200-300 person lectures. Transferred to a small private college with an average class size of 12 and got a 3.5

 

Yeah those big lectures make it so tempting. Had an Anthropology lecture that only graded on exams and they were online, open-note exams

 

Yeah they’d post notes and lectures online and I’d make the huge mistake of pulling all nighters thanks to vyvanse or adderal or if desperate enough coke and study half a semesters worth of notes in 7 hours. My gpa my first three semesters was like 2.8, 2.5, and then I knew I was a transferring and gave up which resulted in a 2.1. thankfully my gpa started clean at my next school

 

I actually remember having conversations with friends in HS saying someone was fucking around too much and needed to get their act together and stop tanking their grades because we had to get into a good college so we could get a good job after

we were so naive and foolish back then

 

the first time I got a B from an all night cram was the worst day of my life because I thought I could replicate that every time and I absolutely could not

 

lol we did not care about each other that much lmao we knew who was destined for good schools and who wasn’t and that was that

 

I did way too well in high school for how little I actually tried (3.75 overall) and it made my first couple years of college extremely hard

 

I was always a good tester and just absorbed shit like a sponge so I never worried about grades. I loved learning, but not really about most of the things that were being taught in class. I would pay attention when it interested me and would get out of the class what I wanted and then explore stuff on my own.

Like I almost never read the books that were assigned in class, but I was always reading something, usually at least a book a week.

 

I had one real close friend who used to always try to watch out for everyone else and help them out - I remember him sitting next to me in the cafeteria junior year trying to explain stocks so I would know how to invest wisely and it blowing right by me haha

still don't know what stocks are, he tried tho

good dude

 

I’ve talked about this with multiple therapists but I think there’s a huge issue where kids aren’t properly prepared for college and I’m not talking about in an academic sense I mean in a living life on your own without an authority figure (parents, teachers) keeping you in check along the way. At 19 I was not even remotely prepared to take care of myself especially as I was starting to develop an undiagnosed mental illness or two and the way I lived my life outside of class really, really fucked me over and made it impossible to get my footing academically. But I didn’t know any better. I thought blowing off classes was fine, I thought doing coke on a Tuesday was fine, and then again on a Wednesday, etc. idk I just did not know how to take care of myself and how have a healthy lifestyle. It took moving back in with my parents to get my shit together but that resulted in isolation that led to even more problems. Idk. Kids are set up to fail in so many ways. Once you’re 18 society doesn’t really give a shit.

 

I don’t mean to make it sound like kids were angels who all did their work or whatever, but outside of like a 4-5 period period from like 2007-2012, I’ve been in high schools as a student and a teacher since 2001, and I think people are fooling themselves if they saw all that and didn’t think there was a difference in work ethic and enthusiasm of the students over that time. Theres a very clear difference in how kids are approaching their classes and work in 2024 vs 2016 vs. 2005, and there’s lots of different reasons for it, but I do believe reliance on smartphones and now ChatGPT are a big part of it. When everything else is a click away, the kids get really restless and impatient when required to work to acquire skills and knowledge. And because so much information is a click away, they don’t always understand why it’s so important to develop those skills. Why learn how to analyze a text for meaning and know it’s historical context when ChatGPT can just do that for me or etc.

Could also be the fall of pop-punk/emo as a mainstream genre. We peaked in 2006 and haven’t been the same since.

 

I did well my first semester of college then got way more into the social part of it - not even partying all that much, but more just hanging out and stuff - during my second semester and nearly lost my scholarship. I got my shit together after that though.

I was also a philosophy major in college, partly because it was interesting but mostly because it had the fewest required credits of any of the majors so it left me more time to take classes that just sounded interesting. And I came into college with a semester's worth of credits from AP classes so I just took 1-3 fewer credits each semester than I otherwise needed to.

 

What Ian imagines if he ever visits America

 

He's just trying to appeal to millennials by wearing no-shows.

 

Couple weeks back i had told people in here that Chicago was the best city in America

 

I went into college without knowing how to cook or do laundry heh.