And that’s why I won’t leave the house this winter without my Firebox Titanium Nano Stove.
I just fired a student, a first for me. 55 minutes into our THIRD session on his college personal statement, I started seeing lines get crossed out in the Google doc, and EDITED by a third person. He said “I have someone else looking at my essay now, I’ll tell her to wait.
I asked “Who is this other person?” He said “She’s a friend of the family, a professional grant writer, and she helped her son get into University of Chicago.”
On the other hand, sounds like Owl, the tutor is doing the same thing, but demanding the students dot the ‘i’s themselves.
Fudging on one’s university application is probably so common now that honest students are at a serious disadvantage. Admissions may be filtering out the good ones.
My next band will now be called “Retrokidney”.
I’m still a little ways off from retirement age. But, I invite all of you to join me in a little plan I have for when I reach that milestone. I plan on registering for the most liberal college within a reasonable distance from my house. I plan on getting some garbage degree (Urban Studies, Gender Equality, Community Leadership). But, the degree is not the goal. THE goal is to see how much turmoil and “wrench in the spokes” noise I can make on the way. I will put “educators” on the spot with facts and documented evidence. I will challenge every statement they make that can’t be backed up by documentation. I will point out racism, prejudice and faulty conclusions. I will use real life examples to make my points and invite the teachers and students to counter my positions.
I will do all of these things soundly and solidly within the policies associated with the school. So, when they ultimately decide to kick my out, I will have the Summons and Complaint all ready to roll. And, the entertaining factor will be that the other students within those classes will be my witnesses (and have to admit what actually occurred…perhaps changing some minds in the process). For each classroom experience will be recorded for posterity. I’m giddily looking forward to my eventual retirement.
I hope you enjoy the first week of your first term at college before you are told to leave and never come back, Orson. ;o)
It won’t matter, though. You will have a blast. Happy trails!
I freely admit that I … ahem … assisted my kids in writing their college admissions essay. It was a collaborative effort, just a little brainstorming about ideas to capture the readers interest and express meaningful descriptions of my kids as people and prospective students.
Yes, I freely admit that was part and parcel of their “white privilege” … but hey! that’s what parents are for, right? Oh … I forgot the whole “parental privilege” thing too.
Kenji,
I bet you also cheated for over 20 years by having books in your home, and telling your children to read, write and learn math too.
Governments are doing their best to stamp out “Two Parents in the Home Privilege.” They have already succeeded in destroying Black Families, and are applying the same strategies to all the other families too.
They are facing a battle though. Good parents always make sure their children do the best they can.
Again, I shamefully admit we read to our children until puberty (when they were DONE with us) … and yes, checked their homework, and told them to look up their own damn word meanings … and very late on even introduced them to the Kahn Academy … because there’s no privilege quite like Indian privilege … smirk … we tried to keep up with the Asians.
I taught English in South Korea. Those kids are amazing…
I stayed late one night at 10pm trying to help a kid in detention. I left at 11pm. I’m walking to my apartment. There was a park, just a few swings, filled with kids hanging out after night school. I went to ‘Family Mart’ for some soju and the place was packed with kids hanging out and eating Ramen after night school. 11 pm. Weeknight… Damn..
I saw a girl walking down a dark road alone. I couldn’t help but think that if she was in Detroit, she’d be raped.
Culture matters…
My son graduated with a degree in Applied Math from UCLA. The Math Dept. graduation ceremony was very revealing as with no exaggeration 95% of the names called were Asian. I kid you not … when they got to my kids name … everyone sat up and looked at who the roundeye was whose name was called. It was pretty funny.
Oops. I forgot … there were a fair number of Jewish graduates too … about equally males and females. The crowd never batted an eye at the Kleinham’s and Fincklestein’s … but when they got to my kid’s Germanic name … everyone lOOked
That’s funny..
On another thread, I mentioned my nephew.
Smart as hell. Accepted for Math at Western. White guy in a room full of asians.
I once went to an employment test for a company in Michigan. The test was a miracle of science. You could tell how amazing a computer programmer would be by the test. So I go in, me alone with a ton of Indians. I was young and double checked every question.
Hot, skinny black woman comes to me. I was the only person to ever get perfect on the test. Ever.
Go team White Guy.
Oh. And I forgot … my daughter graduated from UCLA with a History degree. Her History Dept. graduation was literally about 10x the number of graduates as my son’s Math Dept. graduation … and was about 95% white, 5% other.
Behold the state of our children’s institutions of higher learning. And that was 18 years ago …
Personally I think it’s a moral obligation to lie and cheat on a college admission essay, especially for straight white males. They are bullshit exercises explicitly designed to weed out straight white males who may be suspected of having conservative tendencies and I think it’s every citizen’s obligation to undermine them.
We should all follow the brave leadership example of Elizabeth Warren and ensure every application is from a non-binary aboriginal lesbian chafing against the patriarchy, white supremacy and capitalism.
After the 2020 US election, why would Uni/ College kids see a problem?
For the last 15-20 years college has been all about who can Google the answer the fastest. Who can cheat the best.
Helping a friend with some math homework a few years ago, I was laughed at for using the internet to try to relearn calculus.
“You’re doing it wrong.” “Just cut and paste the question word for word into Google. The answer will be somewhere on the first page of results.”
I did the same thing for Trigonometry. Learning something when you want to learn is a lot easier, especially when you can chose your instructor.
“your kid likely won’t do well in college”
No, he’ll do just fine. His parents will pay someone else to do all his work for him there as well.
I guess I’m just too dense, but I don’t get the connection between “[…] why I won’t leave the house this winter without my Firebox Titanium Nano Stove.” and the saga of the kid getting someone else to write his personal essay for college admissions even though being coached on how to do it himself.
Is the Nano Stove a reference to something unique to Canada, perhaps a gee whiz stove that does everything for you? Is it an idiomatic expression in Canada?
I’m stumped. Not about the story. Just the relationship between the stove and the story.
@H.R. “Is the Nano Stove a reference to something unique to Canada… idiomatic expression”
Not exactly. To survive in a harsh environment (as I’d characterize a Saskatchewan winter), one either needs some luck and a very high-functioning honest, high-trust society filled with intelligent and capable people that are cooperating and appointing the best people on merit. This yields very reliable infrastructure, and excellent emergency response personnel. So one can gamble, and “forget your mackinaw” [google logger lover lyrics] and one might live if lucky.
The alternative way to survive is to be increasingly well prepared. As society corrupts and degrades (e.g., by people cheating to gain credentials) you’d better be more and more prepared for disaster, (e.g., roads blocked by dead electric cars in a snowstorm that their low profile tires can’t handle). Thus, having a portable stove always handy for cooking and warmth.
Thanks, Holmwood. The “forget your mackinaw” get’s my mind going in the right direction.
Paul, just below has a bit more to add.
I don’t own a Nano, but I have a lot of stoves, and prefer my Solo Stove.
@H.R
“…….the relationship between the stove and the story.”
The stove is another “end of the world” apocalyptic supply necessity to keep on hand for when civilization comes apart.
I’m think I’m getting the drift of it now, Paul, between Holmwood’s and your clues.
So with kids routine cheating becoming the unthinkable norm, at least unthinkable only a half generation ago, academia is facing an apocalypse. It’s the “End of the world – of kids doing their own work – as we know it.”
Canada is cold, so idioms of pending doom would tend towards expressions related to the deadly dangers of cold. Canada knows cold.
Some of us here speak Canadian as a second language and the nuances can escape us. ;o)
@H.R.
Yes, in a nutshell “the end is near” so have your bacon, beans, and bullets ready. The “new” generation is leading us to our doom. Be prepared.
This is a good explanation of why so many younger people seem to be increasingly incompetent at whatever they chose to do. I think “fake it till you make it” is the credo of millennials. You can look at just about any profession these days and the majority seem to be imposters. Teachers, economists, climate scientists etc. Who cares about the job as a craft anymore? Give me the cheque!!
Love my Titanium Firebox stove (the full size version). Let’s go!! (btw, Firebox Stove youtube channel has some great content of the owner, his two goats, Bill and Levi and his dogs going trout fishing in Utah)
This has been the best thread in awhile. Humor, sarcasm, gentle explanation on a ‘Canadianism’ and a complete miss on the essentials: ‘bacon, beans, bullets and beer’.
Good stuff
“I will also challegne their use of voccabulary, and …” Nice sentiment, Ma’am, but you could kind of use an editor yourself. And, people pay you for this?
Not correct to capitalize the “M” in ma’am, sir. And the rudeness is also out of place.
When I was an undergrad, back in the ’70s, I took an Intro Astronomy course, mainly because i found it interesting, being something of a geek. Many of the people in the class were pre-Med students, taking the course because it was considered an easy class and counted as a Science credit towards med school admission. There was no final exam, and your mark was based on a series of quick multiple choice mini tests each week on the previous week’s lecture. Not hard stuff at all, and since the course was rather fun, I found it pretty easy. But the prof would hand out the quiz, and then duck out for a smoke while we completed it, trusting that no one would cheat. But the competition for Med school admission was intense, so the pre-med students all cheated, comparing answers and copying each other. And the prof came back early one day and caught them in the act. Now, whenever I go to the doctor, I wonder what his marks were like and then I think, he only needed a 60% average to pass! What if I have a condition that’s in the 40% of the course he didn’t learn?
Well, the doctor still gets to bill for it of course!
Right you are, Johnboy. It’s still a $30,000 surgical procedure whether the patient lives or dies. That’s U.S.
I suppose Canadian “Free Healthcare!!” surgeons are hired at a salary, so they get paid the same whether the patient lives or dies.
Engineers get fired and/or sued if things don’t work out.
Somebody remind me, why did I choose engineering instead of medicine?
Because you wanted to make things?
A doctor buries his mistakes.
An architect grows ivy to hide his mistakes.
An engineer’s mistakes collapse for everybody to see.
And a dentist’s cover an acher!
“A doctor buries his mistakes.
An architect grows ivy to hide his mistakes.
An engineer’s mistakes collapse for everybody to see.”
LOL.. I’m borrowing that one…