Here's the thing about ivy league colleges: everyone complains about how much work they have, but really? They all secretly enjoy it.
It's like a contest. "I have a ten page paper due tomorrow, plus a midterm on Friday, and then I have to do two posts for my philosophy class which I haven't even started the reading for!"
"That sucks. But *I* have a fifteen page synthesis paper due on Thursday, and a quiz, plus I'm the discussion leader for my sociology class and I haven't even met with the prof. yet. And I've been in the library since 10!"
And so it goes for the next half hour or so, whining about work and how we're just not gonna get it done. But we secretly love it. If you have the most work- you WIN. (Though, privately really, don't you lose?)
Anyway, so here I sit at a bright table near the giant picture windows in the back of the library with all my essentials: coffee to my left, cell phone on vibrate to my right, ipod on my lap soothingly playing Ray Lamontagne into my right (and better) ear, an outline for a paper somewhere on my desktop, and the whole day to look forward to. To work.
Naturally, like all good college students, CK and I are complaining about work: her, a biochem midterm tomorrow where there's "too much material to learn" and me on my ten-pager psych paper about the psychological effects of interrogation techniques used by the military. Zing. In addition, I have a project proposal due for geosciences, as well as a movie to watch and a brief 3page response paper. Plus reading 4 articles for the same class, and doing my work-study job somewhere in there. Rabble rabble rabble.
There are over fifty people around me in this library, cranking out papers, reading packets and papers strewn about them, or lying on the couch with oversized headphones taking a brief nap before jumping right into the magical land of academia again. I secretly love it.
which is why you should definitely think grad school.. xx
ReplyDeleteBut see, that's the essence of Williams (and, to make an assumption, other schools like it): People actually love to bitch about the work just as much as they love actually being intellectually engaged by it, if not more. I mean, you should know by your second semester of college that you're always gonna have a shitload of work all the time. It's not something so unexpected or so unwarranted that it should come as a shock or be taken as an undeserved burden. Good school = Good amount of work. A simple equation to understand if there ever was one.
ReplyDeleteSo when does the complaining and the self-pitying end and the acceptance and the actual doing of homework begin? Well, as Emofly just so wisely pointed out, it's a complain game, and that game is at the heart and soul of the rich tradition of the Ivy College lifestyle. Without it, we'd have no worthwhile way to vent our scholastic frustrations and we'd all probably jump off the Chapin Roof. Word.