5 ms·

Yup, that parallels my experience pretty closely, as an undergraduate at an Ivy League college that was in the news recently. There might have been about a hun

by douche 11y ago

Yup, that parallels my experience pretty closely, as an undergraduate at an Ivy League college that was in the news recently. There might have been about a hundred people on campus that were actively interested in protesting things (what things?, all the things). For the most part, everybody else is there to go to class, learn, do their own thing, and drink too much beer on the weekends/Wednesdays/Mondays, etc. This vocal, seemingly-permanently-aggrieved small subset of the population seemed to stir up almost all of the controversy, and seemed hell-bent on ruining everybody else's good time at every opportunity. Increasingly, they seem to be succeeding; I'm glad I graduated when I did.

mrtron 11y ago
This might be the first time I have seen someone from an Ivy league college not mention the name (intentionally). Why not just say X/Y/Z?
- elbigbad 11y ago
  I don't think specifying exactly which school, or even which "group of three" schools is really germane to the point being made. Probably "Ivy League" wasn't even especially relevant, but is a way to quickly state what probably was relevant, a "top school."
- LanceH 11y ago
  Don't they say that it is always Penn when they don't mention the school?
- douche 11y ago
  It's not something I like to trumpet out. I dealt with enough toolbags at said institution of higher learning who tended to have little personality beyond exclaiming how they got a 2400 on the SAT, that they were the valedictorian of their class, how hard corporate recruiting was, and how sick it was that they got that internship at McKinsey, or Bridgewater. Also white-trash Yankee hillbillies are rare enough at these sorts of places that I might as well give up any pretenses of online anonymity if I said specifically which one it was.
- 7402 11y ago
  It's not uncommon for people who went to Harvard to avoid mentioning it right away, because of the way it can derail conversations or create weird expectations. (It's sometimes referrred to as, "Dropping the H-bomb.") [1] http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2012/05/28/not_easy_for_harvard_grads_to_say_they_went_there/ http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2012... [2] https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-who-went-to-Harvard-sometimes-say-I-went-to-school-in-Boston-when-asked-where-they-went-to-college https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-who-went-to-Harvard-some...
MollyR 11y ago
Same here. Except replace the drinking with lab research and homework. I will admit it left a extremely strong negative impression of certain groups methodologies.
Balgair 11y ago
My wife went to one of the 7 sisters. She said 'This happens every 3-5 years with regularity. Just wait for the cocaine to run out. Things will quiet down after that'
- soylentcola 11y ago
  Amusing joke and I've run across similar ones (South Park, for one, had two old guys grumbling about how long it took "PC" to run its course last time) but on a more serious note, I wonder how much of it is just the nature of young, relatively wealthy/privileged people to want to "change the world" and find a cause. I'm a bit past college age these days but in the mid/late 90's when I was at university, there were plenty of "causes" that students took up (myself included) to various degrees and in retrospect, a lot of it came down to the newly-found freedom of adulthood combined with the idealism of youth and the lack of wider awareness that comes with a bit more exposure to the world at large. I think it's a good thing that young people are able to see some of the real injustice in the world that some of us older folks have learned to accept (or at least take for granted) and have the drive to want to improve things. At the same time, cultural attitudes don't change through force or under threat. Additionally, there's still a bit of that youthful naivete where just because something is a huge deal for you, you may not realize the bigger issues at play or know which "battles" to choose yet. I'm sure my attitudes will keep evolving over time but just between my college years and 20 years later, I think about how some things seemed so important and unfair back then but I've since found that there are usually bigger issues or at least more subtle and effective ways to address the problems you recognize in ways other than shouting matches or mob-mentality public shaming.
  - nemo1618 11y ago
    The biggest failure of such people is that their own conduct serves as a terrible advertisement for the sort of worldview they promote. Look at these people: do you see happy, healthy, mindful, compassionate, self-confident, well-adjusted human beings? I don't. I see bitter, spiteful, demanding, insecure, Us-vs-Them types, perpetually searching for the next perceived slight. Are these the sort of people I'm supposed to want to emulate? They are so caught up in making me a good person that they have not made good people of themselves. And everyone suffers for it.
nickbauman 11y ago
The most conservative group in the world is the avant-garde. They never change.

by douche 11y ago

mrtron 11y ago

This might be the first time I have seen someone from an Ivy league college not mention the name (intentionally). Why not just say X/Y/Z?

elbigbad 11y ago
I don't think specifying exactly which school, or even which "group of three" schools is really germane to the point being made. Probably "Ivy League" wasn't even especially relevant, but is a way to quickly state what probably was relevant, a "top school."
LanceH 11y ago
Don't they say that it is always Penn when they don't mention the school?
douche 11y ago
It's not something I like to trumpet out. I dealt with enough toolbags at said institution of higher learning who tended to have little personality beyond exclaiming how they got a 2400 on the SAT, that they were the valedictorian of their class, how hard corporate recruiting was, and how sick it was that they got that internship at McKinsey, or Bridgewater. Also white-trash Yankee hillbillies are rare enough at these sorts of places that I might as well give up any pretenses of online anonymity if I said specifically which one it was.
7402 11y ago
It's not uncommon for people who went to Harvard to avoid mentioning it right away, because of the way it can derail conversations or create weird expectations. (It's sometimes referrred to as, "Dropping the H-bomb.") [1] http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2012/05/28/not_easy_for_harvard_grads_to_say_they_went_there/ http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2012... [2] https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-who-went-to-Harvard-sometimes-say-I-went-to-school-in-Boston-when-asked-where-they-went-to-college https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-who-went-to-Harvard-some...

MollyR 11y ago

Same here. Except replace the drinking with lab research and homework. I will admit it left a extremely strong negative impression of certain groups methodologies.

Balgair 11y ago

My wife went to one of the 7 sisters. She said 'This happens every 3-5 years with regularity. Just wait for the cocaine to run out. Things will quiet down after that'

soylentcola 11y ago
Amusing joke and I've run across similar ones (South Park, for one, had two old guys grumbling about how long it took "PC" to run its course last time) but on a more serious note, I wonder how much of it is just the nature of young, relatively wealthy/privileged people to want to "change the world" and find a cause. I'm a bit past college age these days but in the mid/late 90's when I was at university, there were plenty of "causes" that students took up (myself included) to various degrees and in retrospect, a lot of it came down to the newly-found freedom of adulthood combined with the idealism of youth and the lack of wider awareness that comes with a bit more exposure to the world at large. I think it's a good thing that young people are able to see some of the real injustice in the world that some of us older folks have learned to accept (or at least take for granted) and have the drive to want to improve things. At the same time, cultural attitudes don't change through force or under threat. Additionally, there's still a bit of that youthful naivete where just because something is a huge deal for you, you may not realize the bigger issues at play or know which "battles" to choose yet. I'm sure my attitudes will keep evolving over time but just between my college years and 20 years later, I think about how some things seemed so important and unfair back then but I've since found that there are usually bigger issues or at least more subtle and effective ways to address the problems you recognize in ways other than shouting matches or mob-mentality public shaming.
- nemo1618 11y ago
  The biggest failure of such people is that their own conduct serves as a terrible advertisement for the sort of worldview they promote. Look at these people: do you see happy, healthy, mindful, compassionate, self-confident, well-adjusted human beings? I don't. I see bitter, spiteful, demanding, insecure, Us-vs-Them types, perpetually searching for the next perceived slight. Are these the sort of people I'm supposed to want to emulate? They are so caught up in making me a good person that they have not made good people of themselves. And everyone suffers for it.

nickbauman 11y ago

The most conservative group in the world is the avant-garde. They never change.