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I went to a very large state school about 10 years ago, and was in school for six years and got two degrees. I'm really confused at the picture of university li

by ixtli 7y ago

I went to a very large state school about 10 years ago, and was in school for six years and got two degrees. I'm really confused at the picture of university life this person is painting: > nearly everyone starts undergrad in the same way: After graduating from high school at age 18 > It’s hard to construct a more perfect incubator for mimetic contagion than the American college campus. Most 18-year-olds are not super differentiated from each other. > Everyone starts out by taking the same intro classes I'm not sure where this author went to college, but outside of a major city like London or NYC, you'd be hard pressed to find a more experientially diverse place (in America, at least) even amongst freshmen. Sure, there is class self-selection, but this seems like a really naive statement at best, and propaganda at worst. There were dorms specifically for married students, and the state gave tuition breaks to people older than 30. The only way you'd meet people who'd taken your classes is if you hung out in your department socially. There were many colleges in the university and hundreds of undergraduate courses: if you wanted to meet people who had no idea about what you were studying you just had to go to a different dining hall at a different time. To be honest it seems like this person is observing that, in a large group small sub-groups will form based on all sorts of criteria like geographical closeness and experiential background, and within those groups "memes" will spread efficiently the more similar people are? This doesn't seem novel or the basis on to which to extrapolate that somehow the result is negative or in any way new in society. Anyway, > Finally, not to join a fraternity or finance club, but to be part of a knitting circle or hiking group instead. now that is some advice I can get behind. EDIT: After finishing the article it strikes me that this person may have gone to a school that would be in the set he describes as "elite." I think this might have warped his worldview because they're the only places where people can unironically imagine America as a "meritocracy" as described.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
NPMaxwell 7y ago
"This person may have gone to a school that would be in the set he describes as 'elite.' I think this might have warped his worldview because they're the only places where people can unironically imagine America as a 'meritocracy'" Thank you for this very efficiently delivered powerful social critique.
akhilcacharya 7y ago
OP, like many people on HN when talking about college, is hilariously out of touch.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  I don't think it's about being out of touch. Even among the most out of touch people at the most out of touch schools, college students just don't behave like he's describing. Could you imagine the stereotypical prep school kid claiming that they're better than you, more valuable or higher status, because they got higher grades in an introductory class?
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Um, yes? Kids compete at whatever they are good at, including the cohort who are good at academics. Jocks think weaklings are losers, and nerds think dumbdumbs are losers. Not everyone does, but everyone knows one.
    - mcguire 7y ago
      Sure. But in most cases, that first semester of college beats that out of them.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
    It reads like he thinks college is an anime set in a competitive Tokyo high school. It doesn't at all reflect my experience at a t20 undergrad school. Most people were just busy having fun, getting laid, and maybe doing a little studying from time to time. Except the pre-med folks. They were doing a lot more of the latter and a lot less of the former.
kstenerud 7y ago
Agreed. His description of college life would be completely alien to anyone at the college I went to. But then again my college was in Canada... Maybe there's a cultural difference involved here?
- ajkjk 7y ago
  There is definitely a major difference between the Canadian and American university experience. But the parent poster is still correct that the author of this post's experience is warped.
StuffedParrot 7y ago
> I'm not sure where this author went to college, but outside of a major city like London or NYC, you'd be hard pressed to find a more experientially diverse place (in America, at least) even amongst freshmen. This seems to be a different claim than “they get the same indoctrination as each other”, which certainly seems fairly true from the fallout in a 9-5 job. Granted, I think this is more of a problem with the “ivies” (public and private) than an endemic one as there’s less pressure to politically and economically conform.
bookofjoe 7y ago
From Girard's Wikipedia entry: "... [he] studied medieval history at the École des Chartes, Paris." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Girard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Girard École Nationale des Chartes Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Nationale_des_Chartes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Nationale_des_Chart... Grandes écoles (of which group "École Nationale des Chartes is a member) Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandes_%C3%A9coles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandes_%C3%A9coles
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  The article's author is not Girard himself.
  - bookofjoe 7y ago
    Nowhere is it stated that it is.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
      Ok. So why are you bringing up where Girard went to college? It comes off like you are correcting a misperception in the parent post, since the parent post guesses at the author's alma mater. If that's not what you're referencing, what relevance at all does it have where Girard went to school?
      - bookofjoe 7y ago
        It just occurs to me that I answered the wrong question: the comments that prompted mine were about where OP author Dan Wang went to college — NOT Girard. My bad. FWIW, Wang went to the University of Rochester in the U.S. Source: https://danwang.co/about/ https://danwang.co/about/
mcguire 7y ago
I don't know where he went to school; you may be right about the eliteness, but I'm almost positive he took business. "In the US, where I attended college, nearly everyone starts undergrad in the same way: After graduating from high school at age 18. When they start school, few people have a clear sense of the career path they’ll set on; it’s rare to meet a person who has high confidence of what they’ll end up doing, and even rarer to see someone who actually follows that plan. Instead, people happily confess that they don’t know what they’ll do, and that they’ll figure it out by trying different classes and by joining clubs, sports teams, fraternities, and so on." I attended college in the United States as well, at UT Austin, and although I have only peripheral experience with the business school, that seems much more true of business students than any other majors I interacted with. Almost universally, the students are young, and choose that school because it offers good jobs if they have no "clear sense of a career path". His further comments, such as "By construction, whatever distinctions any does have are usually earned through brutal, zero-sum competitions", only emphasize the impression. In the STEM majors, you'd best hit the ground running, or you will spend some extra semesters catching up on things. [But, isn't "they’ll figure [what they'll do] out" one of the advantages of attending college?] On the other hand, there isn't anything "zero-sum competition" about it; do you know what they call the person who graduated from medical school in last place? "Doctor". Also, and moreso in other majors such as liberal arts, "[m]ost [students] are not super differentiated from each other" is simply false. Significant chunks of the students are older, from other countries, or just have otherwise odd backgrounds. (One of the guys I graduated with was getting twin degrees in CS and music; we didn't regard this as "zero-sum competitive dynamics", we just thought he was insane. Which he admitted himself.) Also, after finishing the article, I'm just very confused. I can't find a definition of "mimetic contagion", or why he would think Reddit-like "memes" have anything to do with it. I also find comments like, "No one has ever asked me how one should escape mimetic contagion on campus. Still here’s my answer: If one must go to college, I advise cultivating smaller social circles. Instead of going to class and preparing for exams, to go to the library and just read. Finally, not to join a fraternity or finance club, but to be part of a knitting circle or hiking group instead." to be rather horrifying. He seems to be both complaining about and advising the kind of intellectual inbreeding that colleges are designed to avoid. Take the damn electives outside your major; explore the options while you still have some left. Finally, I can't make head nor tails out of "[i]f one is a Girardian, then there is perhaps no greater catastrophe than the growing tendency of the American meritocracy to be incubated in elite colleges." 1. "American meritocracy"? Does such exist? Is that good or bad? If it's good, why is it a catastrophe? 2. "Growing tendency"? The "people running the country" have always come from the elite colleges and "hothouse environments". 3. When he says, "where tiny symbolic disputes seem like life and death struggles", is he unaware of the Southern tradition of honor? And he says, "I think mimetic contagion is worst in US colleges. In Canada, people apply to major in certain subjects; if they earn admission, it’s not so easy to switch, so there’s less of this intellectual loitering that one finds on American campuses." So, apparently, closing off your options as early as possible is a good way to avoid "mimetic contagion"? P.S. "Thiel gets at the learning capacity of the latter when he makes a point about Aspergers in the Valley: “If you’re less sensitive to social cues, then you’re less likely to do the same thing as everyone else around you. If you’re interested in making things or programming computers, you’ll be less afraid to pursue these activities single-mindedly and thereby become incredibly good at them.”" Don't say that he's hypocritical Say rather that he's apolitical "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department" say Wernher von Braun
monoideism 7y ago
Which state school gives a tuition discount to students over 30? That's really cool.
- ixtli 7y ago
  I can’t find the exact program but this was in Massachusetts. Quick googling showed me, though, that if you’re over 60 you can take 3 credits at a state school for free. There are a ton of tuition waver programs for all sorts of demographics. If you live in New England and you get into undergrad, you can go to Mass state schools for slightly more than in-state tuition, which is what I did. Probably saved me like 45000 dollars.

by ixtli 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

NPMaxwell 7y ago

"This person may have gone to a school that would be in the set he describes as 'elite.' I think this might have warped his worldview because they're the only places where people can unironically imagine America as a 'meritocracy'" Thank you for this very efficiently delivered powerful social critique.

akhilcacharya 7y ago

OP, like many people on HN when talking about college, is hilariously out of touch.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
I don't think it's about being out of touch. Even among the most out of touch people at the most out of touch schools, college students just don't behave like he's describing. Could you imagine the stereotypical prep school kid claiming that they're better than you, more valuable or higher status, because they got higher grades in an introductory class?
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Um, yes? Kids compete at whatever they are good at, including the cohort who are good at academics. Jocks think weaklings are losers, and nerds think dumbdumbs are losers. Not everyone does, but everyone knows one.
  - mcguire 7y ago
    Sure. But in most cases, that first semester of college beats that out of them.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  It reads like he thinks college is an anime set in a competitive Tokyo high school. It doesn't at all reflect my experience at a t20 undergrad school. Most people were just busy having fun, getting laid, and maybe doing a little studying from time to time. Except the pre-med folks. They were doing a lot more of the latter and a lot less of the former.

kstenerud 7y ago

Agreed. His description of college life would be completely alien to anyone at the college I went to. But then again my college was in Canada... Maybe there's a cultural difference involved here?

ajkjk 7y ago
There is definitely a major difference between the Canadian and American university experience. But the parent poster is still correct that the author of this post's experience is warped.

StuffedParrot 7y ago

> I'm not sure where this author went to college, but outside of a major city like London or NYC, you'd be hard pressed to find a more experientially diverse place (in America, at least) even amongst freshmen. This seems to be a different claim than “they get the same indoctrination as each other”, which certainly seems fairly true from the fallout in a 9-5 job. Granted, I think this is more of a problem with the “ivies” (public and private) than an endemic one as there’s less pressure to politically and economically conform.

bookofjoe 7y ago

From Girard's Wikipedia entry: "... [he] studied medieval history at the École des Chartes, Paris." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Girard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Girard École Nationale des Chartes Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Nationale_des_Chartes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Nationale_des_Chart... Grandes écoles (of which group "École Nationale des Chartes is a member) Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandes_%C3%A9coles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandes_%C3%A9coles

asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
The article's author is not Girard himself.
- bookofjoe 7y ago
  Nowhere is it stated that it is.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
    Ok. So why are you bringing up where Girard went to college? It comes off like you are correcting a misperception in the parent post, since the parent post guesses at the author's alma mater. If that's not what you're referencing, what relevance at all does it have where Girard went to school?
    - bookofjoe 7y ago
      It just occurs to me that I answered the wrong question: the comments that prompted mine were about where OP author Dan Wang went to college — NOT Girard. My bad. FWIW, Wang went to the University of Rochester in the U.S. Source: https://danwang.co/about/ https://danwang.co/about/

mcguire 7y ago

I don't know where he went to school; you may be right about the eliteness, but I'm almost positive he took business. "In the US, where I attended college, nearly everyone starts undergrad in the same way: After graduating from high school at age 18. When they start school, few people have a clear sense of the career path they’ll set on; it’s rare to meet a person who has high confidence of what they’ll end up doing, and even rarer to see someone who actually follows that plan. Instead, people happily confess that they don’t know what they’ll do, and that they’ll figure it out by trying different classes and by joining clubs, sports teams, fraternities, and so on." I attended college in the United States as well, at UT Austin, and although I have only peripheral experience with the business school, that seems much more true of business students than any other majors I interacted with. Almost universally, the students are young, and choose that school because it offers good jobs if they have no "clear sense of a career path". His further comments, such as "By construction, whatever distinctions any does have are usually earned through brutal, zero-sum competitions", only emphasize the impression. In the STEM majors, you'd best hit the ground running, or you will spend some extra semesters catching up on things. [But, isn't "they’ll figure [what they'll do] out" one of the advantages of attending college?] On the other hand, there isn't anything "zero-sum competition" about it; do you know what they call the person who graduated from medical school in last place? "Doctor". Also, and moreso in other majors such as liberal arts, "[m]ost [students] are not super differentiated from each other" is simply false. Significant chunks of the students are older, from other countries, or just have otherwise odd backgrounds. (One of the guys I graduated with was getting twin degrees in CS and music; we didn't regard this as "zero-sum competitive dynamics", we just thought he was insane. Which he admitted himself.) Also, after finishing the article, I'm just very confused. I can't find a definition of "mimetic contagion", or why he would think Reddit-like "memes" have anything to do with it. I also find comments like, "No one has ever asked me how one should escape mimetic contagion on campus. Still here’s my answer: If one must go to college, I advise cultivating smaller social circles. Instead of going to class and preparing for exams, to go to the library and just read. Finally, not to join a fraternity or finance club, but to be part of a knitting circle or hiking group instead." to be rather horrifying. He seems to be both complaining about and advising the kind of intellectual inbreeding that colleges are designed to avoid. Take the damn electives outside your major; explore the options while you still have some left. Finally, I can't make head nor tails out of "[i]f one is a Girardian, then there is perhaps no greater catastrophe than the growing tendency of the American meritocracy to be incubated in elite colleges." 1. "American meritocracy"? Does such exist? Is that good or bad? If it's good, why is it a catastrophe? 2. "Growing tendency"? The "people running the country" have always come from the elite colleges and "hothouse environments". 3. When he says, "where tiny symbolic disputes seem like life and death struggles", is he unaware of the Southern tradition of honor? And he says, "I think mimetic contagion is worst in US colleges. In Canada, people apply to major in certain subjects; if they earn admission, it’s not so easy to switch, so there’s less of this intellectual loitering that one finds on American campuses." So, apparently, closing off your options as early as possible is a good way to avoid "mimetic contagion"? P.S. "Thiel gets at the learning capacity of the latter when he makes a point about Aspergers in the Valley: “If you’re less sensitive to social cues, then you’re less likely to do the same thing as everyone else around you. If you’re interested in making things or programming computers, you’ll be less afraid to pursue these activities single-mindedly and thereby become incredibly good at them.”" Don't say that he's hypocritical Say rather that he's apolitical "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department" say Wernher von Braun

monoideism 7y ago

Which state school gives a tuition discount to students over 30? That's really cool.

ixtli 7y ago
I can’t find the exact program but this was in Massachusetts. Quick googling showed me, though, that if you’re over 60 you can take 3 credits at a state school for free. There are a ton of tuition waver programs for all sorts of demographics. If you live in New England and you get into undergrad, you can go to Mass state schools for slightly more than in-state tuition, which is what I did. Probably saved me like 45000 dollars.