So called “Top universities”
Today I received an email bearing the subject line Usha- a distressed parent from Usha Ganugapati which made me wince:
What are these so called ‘Top universities’ made up of?
For name sake these are among the top lined up universities!!
The teaching there -Nil
Marking- exteremely difficult which puts down the average GPA of a student. Students who are A graders in the schools and other colleges score a C- !!
If there is some teaching its tolerable
Just subjecting stuents to immnese stress and marking hard does not make them Good universities U . Toronto, Cornell Univerisity, Harward etc
They contribute nothing to the betterment of the student
Its the students who bring up the univerisity and not the staff or the teachers!!
To me it sounds like someone’s kid didn’t get accepted into any Universities, and now the parental units are disappointed. Of course to them, their kid is perfect, so clearly all “top universities” must be somehow defective. Or perhaps the kid was an existing student who got expelled–who knows.
The point of this email–that Universities are all worthless–is worth refuting. Good schools, even mediocre ones, install valuable training and lessons. Education is priceless. If you must request a quantitative measure of that, simply correlate salaries with educational experience and you will see that the real world values learning.
Today’s Fanmail
One of the Cornell University sponsored student bloggers–I’ll be nice and not say which one–wrote:
Elliot Back -
You really hurt my feelings when you called my blog “amateur”. I wish you wouldn’t post such hurtful remarks on the world wide web. I have looked up to you since I read you riveting piece on the Poffenburger stabbing. I almost think of you as an older brother. Imagine how let down I was when I read your post. You should really consider people’s feelings before you make such callous remarks in the future.
P.s. I would love some advice on how to make my blog better please.
My only suggestion is to drop the Cornell platform and do your own thing. I also have trouble responding to emails which misspell my name.
Electronic Crime, Harassment Bad
It’s not hard to imagine how an article I’ve written could land me in the territory of having enemies I’ve never met. While I respect those who take different ideological positions than I do, it’s hard to understand readers who react violently, emotionally, or criminally.
Towards the end of last semester I received a number of:
- Opt-in spam emails indicating that I had signed up for them
- Telephone marketing calls indicating that I had asked for more information about their products
In other words, someone was using my public status to create havoc in my well-ordered online life. I don’t like persistent telemarketers or spam. I don’t like receiving email newsletters with a misspelled version of my name.
Fortunately, one of the many spam emails I received included the IP address and the time at which the individual abused my identity. The moral of the story is that electronic intimidation, no matter how anonymous and safe you think it is, can be traced back to you.
It’s also a cowardly and childish way for you express your opinions. The person who did this is a Cornell student, but never left a comment on this blog, and never sent me an email. If you’re attending an Ivy-League institution, you should have the good sense to deal with a difference of opinion through open debate, not illegal harassment.
