I decided to write a bit about my Romanian university experience, in a more descriptive fashion than wistful remembrance, maybe I’ll leave that for another time. To the title, I am not sure what the exact worldwide ranking is these days for the old Polytechnic U of Bucharest, but I doubt it cracks the top 1000, so top 10000 should cover it. Of course, this is today. Back when I was attending, it was considerably worse.
I probably witnessed the lowest point of this institution of higher learning. It was in the post communism dump, but before some new investments came about, after Romania joined the EU. When I attended, the university was a 5 year affair. Nowadays, it is only 4. The Electronics Telecommunications and Information Technology department, which is what I did, was probably the most prestigious of the lot of ’em. But that is not saying much. It did have a competitive admission, with about 3-4 times the candidates as spots available. The admission process was based on 25% the baccalaureate grade (mine was 9.4 out of 10, the Romanian literature component dragged me down) and 75% based on an entrance exam, half math and half physics (I had 9.8 out of 10 because I messed up some cross product on some electromagnetic induction question on my physics exam ). But in the end I got in without a sweat and then it seemed like an achievement at the time. While the university is so called “free” in Romania, this does not necessarily mean that poor students attend more than in the US, as well to do students often have tutoring to compensate the fabulous free high school education, and do better at entrance exams.
The next 5 years were thoroughly disappointing. This was in part because I was not really good with the ladies and such missed a component of the university experience. This was amplified by the fact that there were not that many ladies in the first place in electronics, a thing that seems somewhat improved in the present, and the campus was standalone, not grouped with other universities. There was even a sexist joke along the lines there are two types of girls-beautiful and those who attend a polytechnic.
Being from Bucharest myself, I was not eligible for a dorm room – there were not enough of these and saved for people who were from outside of the city – and so, as all my Bucharest colleagues, I lived with my parents the whole 5 years. So I did not have the “dorm room” part of the experience, for good and bad – and there is probably a lot more bad in Romania than the US.
Now… the actual scholarly part of the deal was shit. The course material was 30 years out of date, because no self-respecting Romanian university full professor bothers to keep the course material up to date. The lab equipment was 30 years out of date and falling apart. So were the buildings. We had a full semester of studying black and white television and another studying the wonders of color – PAL, SECAM, NTSC et al. In many classrooms there were not enough chairs, so we would wander around the building trying to find unoccupied rooms that still had chairs in them.
The largest lecture hall did not have functional heating, which was a pleasure in winter. The pleasure was enhanced by the smell of food coming through the floor from the cafeteria kitchen right below it. Other lecture halls had fewer places than people who were required to attend, and such some had to stand.
The structure of the student body was as follows: there was a large group called “serie” which consisted of 150 people. A lecture by the professor was to be attended (but never was) by all at once, where the theoretical part of the course would be presented. We would further be divided in 5 “grupa” of 30. With this group we attended something called “seminar” in Romanian, in which we did more practical applications of the theory presented in the lectures, but still pen and paper only. These groups would be split in half groups of 15 which would do “laborator” the most practical thing, with actual equipment, should it work properly, which it rarely did. A group had a 3 letter designation e.g. 321 meaning year 3 serie 2 grupa 1.
Overall lecture attendance was generally not mandatory, so we mostly did not attend. We would arrange to have enough people each time so the professor did not get too mad about an empty room. Seminar was more important, but you could skip a few. On the other hand, laborator class – this basically was supposed to be hands on but was rarely so due to the aforementioned broken equipment – was mandatory, miss one and you could not finish the class and get the credit, you did not even take the final exam without the lab hours. Off course these were done with subgroups, so if you missed yours you could go another time and do it. But you had to have 100% completed, even if it meant just sitting for an hour doing nothing. And I mean nothing, I had a friend who fell asleep on the chair, and woke up an hour later to find he had drooled on his pants. You had to produce some experimental results from the lab work, but that generally mean basically drawing some graphs as they were supposed to look and then making up experimental measurements to fit the graph.
There were two semesters and each ended with a period of exams in February and mid-June to mid-July. In that period there were no classes, and the exams were spaced out about 4-5 days apart. We had between 5 and 8 classes per semester, and such between 5 and 8 exams. People did not generally study much during the year, and would cram as much as possible in 4-5 days, take the exam, and then forget everything to cram for the next one.
And there was plenty of cheating. There were primitive techniques – crib notes on small pieces of paper, and advanced ones as well. The most advanced implied a small microphone which you would place in your ear using a small magnetic implement. It was invisible from outside. You had a small camera in a wristwatch band. You would send photos to a conspirator with a laptop outside of the room and they would dictate answers in the microphone. There was also a mobile phone involved for the voice part– this was before smartphones – and a hands free hidden in one’s shirt and a series of coughs to make the dictations slower or faster. It was a trick to it, one had to make sure they were writing as if thinking about it, not too automatic, otherwise it looked suspicious. You also should have had two phones, because teachers sometimes asked for the phones to be shut down and placed somewhere visible, so that no one was using them for cheating. So you used the second phone for cheating. Why so much trouble? Because most of the exams were nonsense, and you did not only need to know the subject matter, but you needed to know it in the exact way that professor was teaching it to get good grades. Because many teachers were selling books, and you should buy their book to know exactly how they phrase it to get good grades. There was a prosperous Xerox industry to minimize this cost for students.
There were cheating mishaps as well, like the time one of my friends was all wired up, and the person outside simply dictated the wrong Greek letters on some formulas. If you failed an exam, you had the chance to take it again in August. I never had a failed exam, but I did wake up early in the middle of summer holiday on several occasions to support a friend. In one of those cases, I dictated the correct Greek letters, but my friend got them confused. Still, 55% is a pass, so we take what we get.
Most times when not in classes, but having to hang around university, we would spend time in “The Filth” as the local student bar was called. While not living in dorms – most of my friends were from Bucharest, we did go to the area of the dorms because most of the cheap student night clubs were there, to drink or play pool or ping pong or bowling and hang out and such.
So the university years trudged along, learning little and spending a lot of time doing nothing. There were better or worse days – ones where you had mandatory classes between 6 and 10 PM for example, or others with classes from 8 AM to 11 AM and then again from 2 PM to 5 PM.
Attendance dwindled as the years went by to the bare minimum, as people got jobs to gain some money and experience. Being a technical school, most looked for jobs in the burgeoning field of IT. In years 1 and 2 I helped my father out with his small business, and in year 3 I got the first full time job myself, for a small software company doing inventory and management software for warehouses and shops and such, starting out at $180 US a month. The good part is that there was the understanding that I would work less during exams period and that I could take time off to get the mandatory classes in. But I did work some Saturdays and Sundays during regular times to compensate, as some of the clients were closed over the weekend and had the time for us to install and test things. Given the paucity of things studied in University, I was happy for the actual hands-on experience. And in the end it looked good on my otherwise empty CV. But this is maybe a story for another time. In these times, actual internships are a thing, and part time “working student” gigs at corporations such as the one I work for now, so there is less pressure to get that first job early.
The last semester of year 5 we had no classes and was used to prepare the final graduate project. I did that in Torino on an Erasmus scholarship, and got to experience what a better, though still not fantastic, Polytechnic looks like, and it put into perspective the shitiness of our own. Most did not take this much more seriously than the rest of the time. And we all got a nice engineering degree and little else to show for it. But, in this world we live in, that degree is important and it helped. Overall, while we bitched about it, the effort put in the university was not that much. It was some, and mostly pointless, but thems be the breaks and there were a few fun times to be fair. In the end, it was free at the point of delivery, for whatever that is worth, so at least I did not get any fucking debt out of it.
So you got a head start on modern SCIENCE! ?
Curses, I was going to post that.
There was even a sexist joke along the lines there are two types of girls-beautiful and those who attend a polytechnic.
The jokes at my school went the other way. The girls said about the guys: The odds are good but the goods are odd.
Georgia Tech was still greater than 3:1 male:female when I was there (including the business school being on par, so engineering was even worse). It is 2:1 now, so improvement. We used to joke about take Econ in order to meet women.
Hah! As someone with a degree in Economics, that made me guffaw.
Micro and Macro were required for College of Management students so the classes were about 50:50. Engineering classes were like 90:10.
Upper level econ classes looked a lot like engineering classes, I think.
Architecture was also fairly balanced, I think, but noboby knows as their schedules did not coincide with the rest of the student body. They slept in the day and were in their labs all night.
My “Trade School” was 10:1 male to female. My automotive engineering track was 10:0 and the whole mechanical engineering track was probably 40:1.
We tended to mingle with the near-by mostly girls colleges, Mount Saint Mary’s and Marymount.
AKA Mount Saint Mattress and Mattress Mount.
Architecture was also fairly balanced
about 8 to 1 at tOSU in the early 90’s, yo are correct about the scheduling however.
This describes MIT undergrad pretty accurately as well. I suspect that lots of dorky engineering dudes who were double majoring couldn’t believe their eyes when they walked into a Sloan classroom half full of sexy investment bankers 😉
We had 3 women enrolled in my major. I can describe them for you.
1) Straight Edge Punk, Vegan, Lesbian – attractive but so what
2) 6ft tall Tom Boy, generally great personality and was somewhat attractive
3) Crazy eyed oversharing and over emotional ginger with serious Prozac prescription
We had a good time overall, but the picking they were slim. Thankfully I was at a large state school with lots of other majors. I got to pass the attractive girls in the business classes on the bar patios on my way to the library.
I had more luck with the science grad students and the BS business majors. The international students from Russia were particularly attractive.
While RIT had few girls enrolled (mostly photography majors), we were close to UofR, Nazareth, and St john Fisher. The student bodies… mingled.
GT is in Atlanta. There was no shortage of college women. Any failures were solely on the part of the GT geeks being clueless, myself included.
(raises hand)
Mrs. Tree went to the Clarke County Cow College. We’re a mixed marriage.
I prefer CCCI, Clarke County Correctional Institute.
I used to always say: Agnes Scott – keeping GT students laid since 1889.
mingling is bad for grades.
This is why I went to Purdue instead of Rose Hulman. I remember walking around the Rose Hulman campus thinking “I’m here on a robotics club trip and I’m on the quiz bowl team, but I’m gonna be the cool kid here” as well as noticing the flagrant lack of women of any kind.
At Purdue, even though we joked about all the pretty girls going to IU or Testicle State, there’s enough variety across 40,000 students to have some choice. I did find out, however, that women in engineering events were not the best pond to fish in. Never have I felt more like a piece of meat tossed into a pack of desperate wolves than in the moment I walked into that lecture hall.
My old co-worker and almost friends wife ran the Women in Engineering program at purdue. I’d call him a friend, but his crazy wife scared me off.
Looked her up, it looks like she ,moved on to consulting . . . “Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, consult” I guess she moved down the ladder, but probably makes more money. Anyways she was at Purdue from 2009-2016. Don’t know exactly what years you were there, But she might have led your crazies.
Anyways she was at Purdue from 2009-2016.
Yup. That’s about right. The incident I’m thinking of occurred 2010/2011 school year.
Ah, you’ve never been a straight man on a nude gay beach.
What really hurts is being a straight man on a nude gay beach and still not getting any looks!
/Runs sobbing
I don’t think I ever dated a fellow student while in college. It wasn’t anything I tried to avoid. It was just the way things happened.
I did have an unrequited crush for two years on a girl from one of my classes. Very much out of my league.
I did have an unrequited crush for two years on a girl from one of my classes. Very much out of my league.
#metoo. She was always on again off again dating this dumbass POS who treated her like shit and, frankly, should have been fishing out of the same pond as me. Gave me much more hope than was realistic during the off again times.
#Cuck #MeToobin
Small liberal arts “country club” school as an undergrad. No shortage of good looking women, and this was in the early ’80s, so before the gender nuttiness and even the AIDS epidemic. As far as sex, drugs, rock and roll went, pretty much like the ’70s. The only limit on your social life were your own social skills. Mine were . . . suboptimal, but I still managed some hookups. Out of simple density, missed out on several more, in hindsight.
At the school I went to, the equipment all worked, but the students were not allowed to use it. It was always busy with something some useless professor was doing when they weren’t skipping class. You never wanted class with a full professor, their attendence was worse than that of the students, and they were apathetic towards the actual teaching. The adjuncts had jobs in the industry and actually wanted to teach, so they were who you wanted to get.
The Film School at UNLV (turn of the century) only got to use the Mac lab (in the Architecture Dept) for learning Final Cut (industry standard) a few times a semester. To this end, all underclassmen still had to cut on film, using hand crank moviolas.
I was pissed on the odd occasion I made it to class at 8 AM and the professor was missing
My second stint in college I was commuting 1.5hrs each way, pissed me off to no end when I made it there and a prof cancelled class.
You never wanted class with a full professor, their attendence was worse than that of the students, and they were apathetic towards the actual teaching.
We had a prof or two like that, but they were few and far between. The shitty classes were with the TA who wasn’t really fluent. “Then take the wha and debade with the pho and you have complex repretation of rangur momentum”
‘Now, everybody face toward Mecca and worship RGB’
If you’re color blind do you have to accept at least one of those as purely a matter of faith, or can you be selective?
No! There are Four Lights!
Incredible piece of drama, that. David Warner was sublime.
don’t be othering immigrants
“For-mate”. In Fortran we use the formate statement. It took three classes for us to figure out what that TA was telling us. I already knew fortran, but I couldn’t understand what she was going on about.
Practice for the real world, where in my case I’m corralling a bunch of Russians. Unfortunately each of them has their own unique version of Rus-glish.
What I found fascinating is that none of her colleagues had corrected it. What didn’t help is that she was just talking, and not writing. so didn’t point to the word, all other terminology was fine, if accented.
Occasionally I will pronounce a rarer english word and my wife (French) will say “is that how it is pronounced?.. I have only ever seen it written”
I can say “oxygen” and “nitrogen” like a certain prof, and everyone who went to RU within 10 years of me knows exactly who I am referring to.
Rhywun confirmed to be running an election interference operation!
Akshually… there is one team in I think Ukraine and one or two in Poland, and another team in Belarus. They all seem to speak Russian, though. I probably shouldn’t call them “Russians” 🙂
They don’t speak Russian in Poland.
I think I had only 4 english-as-their-first-language professors at Norf Dakoda State. I had to take Strengths of Materials twice because I couldn’t understand the Iranian prof (who chain smoked in class). In contrast, Mohammed, my Thermodynamics prof, spoke excellent english. He was also our student club advisor and didn’t drink alcohol, which came in very handy when we toured engineering sites in Canada where the drinking age was still 18 or 19.
“The fuck is verr-ah-boh?”
“I think he’s saying ‘variable’.”
We figured it all out in the end but there was something like that every single class and it was often something kinda important.
Heh, that’s my engineering masters degree classes to a tee..
I got a job as a lab assistant for a semi-retired engineering professor emeritus. It was mostly cleaning up and keeping other profs from stealing his assets while he was gone.
I was lucky I didn’t get irradiated given his lab dated to the 50’s and was full of old nuclear engineering department equipment.
And you didn’t develop superpowers?
You should sue.
He had vacuum tubes the size of kegs in there and a massive CO2 laser that I tried to get up and running to no avail.
But mostly, it was access to the machine shop equipment he had that made the job worth it.
There was one gal that I remember in my upper Computer Science classes. She was maybe a 6.5/10 on the hotness scale (a nose hit by a 9-iron!) but – no surprise – she got a lot of attention; even managing to score a job at a local auto tester manufacturer immediately upon graduation.
When I worked in Aviation reliability, we hired a girl. We called her Aviation 9. Because she would normally rank a 6 or so, but in the world of aviation (flight attendants excluded, also, they are usually on the wrong side of the hot/crazy matrix) she rated a 9
Vampires and Vacuum Tubes…
I may be buying this 1980s relic from a friend: Audio Research SP-8
It does need to be fixed as the solid-state portion apparently blew up, probably from aged electrolytic capacitors.
Strigoi in STEM
Baubau and bunsen burners
Marțolea and mathematics
Căpcăun and calculators
Pricolici at polytechnic
Ok, I’m out of Romanian monsters.
iele speaking of wymminz… zmeu and balaur … Baba Cloanța …
Iele are just discount szépasszony.
hmmmm….makes me want to go listen to Stick Shifts and Safety Belts
This was an interesting read for me. I went to the local branch of Purdue University for Electrical Engineering Technology, and then for Computer Information Systems. So the same type of degree you went for. In 5 years I got a Bachelors in EET and an Associates in CIS. Things were pretty well up to date and we did have to go to lectures. We did have one rogue professor who decided to go off script and teach Object Oriented Programming in a circuits class. That was fun. We also had a medical electronics class, where we got to play with all the medical gizmos and that was also fun.
We still had the same girls issue. I can remember exactly 2 of them in my EET classes. One was gorgeous, but she has a boyfriend whom she mentioned all the time. She did go out with me for pie for my birthday one year (no euphemism, sadly). But neither of the girls finished the program.
I know OOP, I’d like to learn circuits.
At the time we’d already done a few circuits classes and C++ was just coming out, so the professor was kind of psyched about it.
In one class we built an 8088 kit and then programmed it.
girls finished the program. – weird euphemism
Shouldn’t it be of no surprise that no women finished with a bunch of engineers? They aren’t known for their slick moves and sex skills.
I went to the local branch of Purdue University for Electrical Engineering Technology
The Mastadons?
I knew a few guys in the EET program at WLaf, and they were an order of magnitude more prepared for the real world than us ECE guys. It’s a very practical degree. Great balance between learning the theory and learning how to wield the tools of the trade with competence.
I ended up going with a career in programming, so the CIS degree was more important. However, my first jobs were in industrial automation, and my EET experience helped a lot when I worked with the control systems guys.
btw that transistor symbol looks a little uhm flaccid. Maybe he needs a little silicon porn to get him ready for the flow of electrons.
That’s obscene! Put the case back on
in case it was no obvious that was the official logo of the university . It had the worst fucking website in the world at the time
Were you in class with Nadia Comaneci?
In my school, even the DC townies that attended stayed in the dorms. They made sure to have enough of them because it was about $800/mo in income for them, per room. In the early 90’s, a 1 bedroom apartment could be had in a very nice neighborhood for $700 (about $2000 nowadays), so most of us moved out with roommates by our 2nd year.
Also, my alma mater was primarily a lib arts school, so there were a lot of chicks. And the dudes were…soyish.
is that where you studied comedy?
Most colleges make living on campus mandatory for freshman year, unless you can prove a compelling case not to. For the children.
When I was a freshman it was also “mandatory” but I found that such things can be ignored. I mean just pay for your classes, put your address as your folks place, and they assume you are making an hour drive.
I was living in an apartment my Freshman year – I couldn’t stand the short time I stayed in the dorms (when I was a senior visiting friends and during orientation).
My folks place was in Wisconsin, my College was in Las Vegas, NV. Not a ruse I could pull off.
Irina Privalova was training in the same indoor facility where I had PE classes at the university. It was weird to share a lane with her. She was already an Olympic medalist and World champion at the time.
I bet she could crack walnuts with dat ass
I enjoyed reading about your university experiences. We had a reasonably well equipped lab, but the BS students couldn’t play with the good stuff unless you did a few summer internships. That’s when things got fun for me. I spent a summers playing with lasers, vacuum systems, and high voltage for pay!!
after I finished my degree I never wanted to set foot in the place
I don’t even know where my degree is. Current job asked for HS transcripts, which I didn’t have, but I have my college transcripts, but they didn’t want those.
My college experience wasn’t terrible, but I would pick a different college if redoing things (and probably just do community for the first two years).
And choose a different major.
If I was back in highschool I would try to go to college outside Romania.
I wouldn’t change a thing. Same school, same majors (got me into a good law school), even the same frat (we were the campus animal house). The only thing I’d want to change is better chickdar and social skills.
I would have done thing differently. Gone to UofM, gotten a doctorate in Archaeology or History; gone into teaching.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m an okay programmer but it’s not a job I have any passion for, it’s just a way to make $$$.
, I’m an okay programmer but it’s not a job I have any passion for – that is probably a majority of programmers though.
gone into teaching
I wanted to be a law professor. Now I’m glad I’m not. Marinating in aggressive pomo quasi-Marxist Current Day lunacy would not be for me.
in law teaching you can’t even bang your hot students lest you get sued or something.
In law school, the hot students are few and far between. Out of my class of 550, there were 3? Maybe 5, if you grade on a curve?
weird.. I’d expect a bunch of pretty girls on law school…
Hmm, my class was full of hot ones.
The teaching would just be part of being able to do the extensive digs. Of course the problem is I have no interest in Native American history; Western Civ only, ancient Greek to about WW1.
sounding a bit fascist there man, be careful
it’s not a job I have any passion for
Maybe the Orthodox Jews that I have met have a passion for accounting, but they are the only ones.
#817 in CWUR World University Rankings 2018-2019, so actually top 1000!
My school comes in #139 in the world in those rankings.
#893 and #74 in the 2020-21 version. I don’t know what we did do go up so much in 2 years.
Who are these people and by what do they rank these schools?
https://cwur.org/methodology/world-university-rankings.php
You expect me to go to a site other than Glibs?
/snark
I have issues with it, but it is a hell of a lot better than the US News & World Report rankings.
Wow, those are useless metrics.
“How much does the school fit into the clique” given the culture of the publications and the people who give out academic awards along with the cronyism aspect of executive recruitment.
As I said above, much better than USN&WR.
The metrics I’d prefer to see are the rate of alumni being employed in their field, and their median income.
The extent to which the professors fluff each other is a negative, so those paper mills should instead get penalized in the rankings.
I agree, UNLV is ranked 811th in the world, yet it is the #1 school for Hospitality, and like 50th ranked film school, so these overall metrics don’t mean much.
Worker drones.
New football coach.
Who can’t win games, but at least he is exciting!
back then it did not scratch top 1000…. they must have bribed someone.
To be fair, based on what I learned from working students at the job, it is quite better now. both chicks and learning
Just looked up my alma mater.
AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAAA…*sharp inhale*
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAaaaAAAaaAAAAaa.
(we’re widely respected in my original degree field, tho?)
(That rag Foreign Policy puts my alma mater in the top 10 in my degree, so I got that going for me)
Rutgers is #50???? Get the fuck outta here with that.
Too high? Too low?
I don’t know, Rutgers has never been what I would consider an academic powerhouse
I was there for Engineering Undergrad and MBA. It is a solid state school.
I then worked in one of their research departments for about 10 years. I think it would be a solid second tier in science research. Works with the top tier labs and universities. Computing, developments in microbiology, lots of pharma with all of the NJ businesses etc.. so if their metric was researcher heavy, then RU would rate higher on the science side.
It is a solid state school.
Yet another of Bell Lab’s advancements?
We had a number of profs that came out of Murray Hill.
As well as one associate who the partnering team described as “not able to pour water out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel” He was sent from BL off to our prof’s team with a “find him something to do within his abilities”.
Harvard is still #1? What a fucking joke.
They can’t hold a candle to the average MIT or CalTech student.
And don’t get me started on Berkeley being rated better than Hopkins.
Harvard is still #1? What a fucking joke.
I saw that. And larfed.
My undergrad alma mater is way, way down. Probably about right. As much as finishing school for the upper middle class as an academic institution.
The thing is, Harvard would still be near the top if you used UCS’s standards, maybe still #1.
Do Harvard grads get jobs in their field? yes.
Are they well paid? yes.
Yup, near the top of the list.
Yup, the in-group takes care of its own.
The metrics are “How well does the institution fit into the academic clique” of which Hahvahd is the boss mean girl.
The running joke when Harvard kids cross-registered was always “The Harvard kids are actually kinda smart, it’s too bad they don’t challenge them at all over there”.
Sounds about right. Harvard is in the business of farming alumni for donations and influence. Its hard to do that if you are flunking the mediocre children of the nomenklatura and the apparat.
Huh, my u/g alma mater is #106.
Mine is in the top 300. W00t! ?
Mine *is* 300. And 101 in the US. Heh, I wouldn’t have thought that it rated that high.
#1354 !!!
Not surprisingly. I got accepted to a better school – U of M #16 – but declined to go there given the shitty experiences my older brothers had.
In the 50’s?? I’m surprised.
I’ll have to piss my wife off by telling her that her snooty $50K a year school is ranked below the most of the schools in Africa and Pakistan.
Lessee…
BYU (where I started out) is 574.
UMKC (whence I graduated) is 680.
My law school dropped a tier halfway through my 3L year. The University knew a brand new law school building was in the works so it gave up on the old one.
The concerned face on my student id taken the first day of school was because the photographer told me there were 2 guys for every girl in my freshman class.
I would have been jumping for joy at that ratio!
They were, in general, not attractive.
Now the Catholic all-girls school down the street, College of Notre Dame of Maryland aka CONDOM, was a wholly different environment that I frequented as often as I could.
Most lascivious behavior I got into in college was at the Catholic school down the street (aka Georgetown)
Sounds like a pornhub video. I’ll allow it. But not watch it.
I object to any personal involvement in such proceedings on grounds of preference and taste, but the logistics is certainly straightforward.
Said like a libertarian neo-papist. Would you like to receive my newsletter?
Don’t do it!
*Looks uncertainly back and forth between CPRM and UCS*
I had 0 game so the ratio was not that relevant
My program was 16 girls for every guy, but I was a moron and got in a committed relationship at the start of the program then broke up at the end. On the plus side I don’t have super-aids, so I’ve got that going for me…
I believe my wife had one man in her graduating class for her BSN.
150 ladies to ten fellas. However, UF is a massive school and the CON is a tiny piece, so it’s not like the girls were starving for attention. Approximately 15,500 men to 20,000 women for the university.
I wasted several years and acquired several grand’s worth of debt just dragging myself along in the humanities (I’m not sure why they are still called that), but on the plus side, the ratio there is pretty much 1:1.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I thot college was FREE! for everyone not in the USA.
no in England it is not. Nor in say Australia
THOT College? Now that’s a pornhub video.
Well the system as it stands is that anyone can get a huge loan from the
govtother people’s money to pay for their education, and most will never have a hope in hell of paying it back, but it’s sort of a long way around saying “yeah it’s basically free because the rate at which you’re expected to pay it back is minimal, even on a fairly substantial income”. Meanwhile borrowing from future generations happens one way or the other, but the overwhelming opinion is that all education “should” be “free”. Recently there were some murmurings from the executive about changing the system to incentivise enrolment in STEM course over the arts and humanities, but of course making a huge investment of public funds conditional on actually having some meagre hope of returning even a fraction of the principle, is decried as “an attack on the arts” and, yes, you guessed it, “fascism”. Oh well.I haven’t made one good educational decision since I chose my senior (high school) electives. In my defense, I didn’t make the initial decision (going to BYU), but I didn’t make the most of it and it went downhill from there.
The only good decision I made goes against my own beliefs. I knew they would try to bail-out people who borrowed for college, so I made sure every loan I took was subsidized. I’ll feel like shit when it happens, but I saw it coming.
I paid my and the wife’s loans off like a chump. The upside is when we go socialized healthcare, I feel my surliness and laziness will be justified.
I never had that much in student loans, so it was no big deal.
I never had a student loan at all – paid straight up every semester.
Somehow I’m on the hook for EF’s law school though – at least according to the feds even though I never signed my name anywhere both of our incomes are considered for the loan payment amount. I could have been making payments on a Tesla S or more for the same price as that initial monthly payment.
Pater Dean arbitraged my student loans (back when you could make real interest on CDs) and actually made money on me while I was in college. Exactly how I qualified for student loans when I was on a full scholarship, I have no clue, but I signed the paper, and he made the money.
Bonus: I didn’t have to pay for law school. I think because my parents were so shocked I was in law school rather than jail.
Hats off to Pater Dean. I find that incredibly impressive (because I thought about doing it but didn’t).
This goes way back, but an eyeball number on his profits was probably in the neighborhood of $3 – 5K. Even in the early ’80s, not a lot of money, but it was basically $20 bills laying on the ground.
A most enjoyable article, thank you. I have two questions.
(1) Where did you learn your excellent English?
(2) Of all the communist dictators, why was Ceaușescu the only one shot?
(1) Where did you learn your excellent English? – in Romania obviously
(2) Of all the communist dictators, why was Ceaușescu the only one shot? -who knows? dead men tell no tales presumably… the people right bellow him in the commie pecking order decided it is easier for them to take power if he don’t sing. Or maybe it was like so random, as the kids say
I think the question is whether english was part of your formal education, or if it was some other activity.
both?
My level of English is nothing unusual among my group of friends here in Romania, or among many urban Romanians my age.
That’s just what a Rushun Agent would say! #Biden2020!
Project Veritas strikes yet again – this time a vote harvester in Texas for a Republican candidate.
She appears very much to be incentivizing and people to change their votes from Cornyn to Hegar, so harvesting for the Dems? Apologies if I misunderstood your post.
It seems that she is officially employed by one group but harvesting for the other.
Unless there’s an error somewhere, but the repeated lines indicate that the change was to dem, removing Cornyn.
I don’t know. I lost track while cringing at what “voting” has become.
If it makes you feel better, even if it was 100% legitimate and non fraudulent, Your vote would still not mean anything.
How many grains of sand is a heap?
12358!
this is probably a too ridiculously high number though… probably 12! is more than enough.
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
What size pin?
coincidentally, also 12358!
Are they European or African angels?
* On the federal level.
Election Fraud is prevelant (IMO), at the State and Local level as it is much easier to perpetrate and since it’s just the “minor leagues” no one cares as much.
Did you say you liked cringey-voting pr0n?
I bet her dad was so happy.
Imagine defining your relationship with and memory of your parents around how they vote.
These people are supremely shallow.
I didn’t date in college.
My wife wouldn’t let me.
Tell her she is a fascist. seems to shut everyone up, because they don’t know what it means.
How selfish. Didn’t you explain that college is a time for….”experimentation” ?
but only threesomes with her involved as well, to be inclusive
#metoo (though EF was my long-term GF, she and I were practically married).
I did have a weird situation where a friend of hers wanted to couple swap. I didn’t fancy this friend of hers that much and I didn’t quite understand what she was getting at. I’m the sort of person who needs flares, not obtuse language.
So you’re H.I. ?
I was single as an undergrad – in Maine. Engaged when I went back to school in Southern California.
It’s to cold in Maine to worry about women anyways.
#metoo
Joe’s totally coherent speech yesterday.
Wow. I’d be sending him to the ER for a suspected stroke.
Does anyone know ASL? I’m curious what the interpreter did there (also curious about when he called him “George”).
Nobody knows ASL https://abc13.com/fake-sign-language-signs-interpreter-derlyn-roberts/2743729/
I like the ambition of that one 😉
Pie,
It was in the post communism dump, but before some new investments came about, after Romania joined the EU.
Did the EU put money into the university, or was there just more money from all sources (employers, past graduates, the state, etc) once Romania was in the EU ?
There were plenty EU funds and programs available for universities. Also a bunch of corporations helped or tried to… The company I work for struggled for years to give money to the Polytechnic. Also more local government spending as the revenues increased. Former graduates donating to universities is not a thing in Romania.
We have two source of graduates wanting to give $$$ to dear old alma mater…. sports and they got rich because of their education.
My alma mater got 100’s of millions of dollars from people who had studied computer science, electrical engineering, physics, etc and then went on to make huge money. They have buildings and labs and such named after them.
The sports teams….not so much $ because of them.(the basketball team was Final Four a couple of times and did help bring in some donations).
Still at #22 in the rankings… I dunno about that.
… Why did I get a printed catalog from Amazon in the mail?
It’s not sear-sized, but the whole damn point of having a website is that I don’t need a paper catalog.
I got the same thing. Thought it was strange too.
They know that’s how you get the kids though. My girls gobbled it up and looked through it.
The old BEST catalogs got my inner nerd cravings going.
BEST products…..oh, how that takes me back.
If it’s not a boat anchor, it must be extremely limited. Does it only include a few categories?
children’s toys. Looks like a christmas catalog without the holiday.
Yup. Got that. The kind of thing you do when you have that much money, was my guess.
That’s … odd. Amazon is the new Sears? You can use it for backyard latrine duty.
Why did I get a printed catalog from Amazon in the mail?
Trashchild #1: I want this one and this one and this one and this one.
Wife: When we were kids, we would circle the toys we wanted.
Trashchild #1: But I want all of them!
A part of Christmas that I thought was lost in the digital age. An unironic thank you to Amazon for enabling it.
That was not a part of christmases past in my household.
And now I’m debating whether it is cheaper for amazon to filter out people without children, then I realize the marginal cost is minimal, counts as an advertising business expense, and even one chance impulse buy would cover scads of catalogs.
When I was a kid we’d pore over the Sears catalog and we’d each get a different color to circle the things we wanted. By December basically the whole catalog was circled. I’m pretty sure my parents never looked at what we picked out, but they probably appreciated that it kept 4 kids quiet for hours at a time.
I make most of my Amazon purchases over my phone, and I often use “buy it again” so a catalog will do nothing for me.
Except pressing flowers maybe.
They have Amazon ads on the TV too.
ULine. My kid thinks it’s Christmas every time he gets one of their catalogs.
I’m still a sucker for Lee Valley catalogs. Tool and gardening porn.
Beautifully laid out catalog but addictive.
Sur la Table for me..my wife says I looks like a 5 year old going through the old Montgomery Wards catalogs.
Two for me:
A. G. Russell Ooh, they have a new Olamic!
Garrett Wade
I cannot look at a Lee Valley catalog without aching to win the lottery so I can outfit myself with a workshop that would put Norm Abram to shame.
I wasn’t able to see new articles since Sunday night. There was no one to First for two days. Just UCS with his drawl on topic posts.
are you sure you looked beyond the pinned article?
I don’t like that your accusatory tone. As if I did something wrong here by not scrolling down or something.
Say what you will, you make me laugh Borchetta
Well, you were the first one to miss all the posts, so there’s that.
UCS has a Southern accent?
Not even close.
I was hoping he meant “droll on-topic posts”
No…no, that can’t be it…
I was wondering what the improvements to the site were.
I guess SP has to go back to the drawing board now,
Surprise ruined!
STEVE SMITH GIVE LAST BIG SURPRISE OF HIKERS LIFE.
Pretty sure SP said she might need til Thursday. Something about having a life.
I’m thinking Scruffy was making a joke.
Well, a little reminder won’t hurt.
My ventures of college were dismal and I am glad that I found out that route for me only had me 5k in the hole. I got my technical training in the good ol USAF in one of the last classes before they bastardized it for the new technician monkeys of swaptronics.
Actually received a solid electronics background that can put me anywhere in the telecommunications world.
I tried to even go back to college after getting out but used my GI bill on more of life skills rather than a degree. Time will tell on that one when I retire in 10-15 years.
Hard to imagine a downside to your choice. Maybe it would be bad if your employer were a strict stickler for paper degrees.
In technology, “show me” is more important.
The Marines taught me a ton about electronics. When I decided to get my degree in EE, the weeder class was Circuits 1 & 2 and I was able to fly through those without really needing to study because of what I had learned. The hardest part for me was learning the formal math that went into it. The Marines taught you how to figure out all the voltages, currents and resistance without teaching the theory of Calculus that backed it all up.
The prof who taught Circuits thought it was super cool that I could figure out all the circuits on the homework from that training. He was a guy who appreciated applied knowledge as much as he did the theoretical stuff.
It’s 40 degrees outside, and my air conditioning just kicked on.
Passive solar heating for the win. 😉
So I reset the thermostat to 76 degrees. I need to make sure the air doesn’t kick on later.
I may have to open up a window.
It’s 40 degrees outside – no it isn’t. I have a thermometer
American degrees not foreign degrees.
So Gender Studies, Historical Oppression Studies, Women’s Studies?
ha!
You mean Freedom Degrees.
Of Course
Man on the Moon Degrees
Degrees Freedom, not degrees Commie.
Proof that libertarians truly are cold blooded?
I was trying to make it until Nov to turn on the heat but it’s getting down to the 20’s overnight and it’s only 58 inside right now, I probably wont make it.
In my electrical engineering degree pursuit, I was one of 5 chics in a class (EE only) of 150 people.
3-4 of us ladies were in the top ten of the class. Idiot chic sociology majors told me that was proof that women make better engineers. I said no, it’s just an indicator that women who enter engineering do so because they are highly motivated.
Isn’t that sexism? Shouldn’t 5 of the top ten been gals?
My favorite moment in EE was when we had our lecture on “ethics”. Tennessee required all engineers to have at least some ethics training to graduate. For EE’s I think it was 2 or 3 lectures during a circuits course.
The prof did the lecture and one of the points he made was that you were not supposed to take gifts from vendors and were supposed to pay for your own meals and drinks if you went out with vendors.
Kim – a very attractive young lady – blurted out “WHAT? Looking as fine as I do, I’m supposed to pay for my own meal? No way, I haven’t bought a meal since I was 14 and I’m not about to now.” The entire class burst out into laughter and the prof realizing there was no right way to respond just moved on.
Kim ended up in a study group with me and we gave her shit until the day we all graduated about that outburst. “WHAT? Do my own homework? As fine looking as I am?” I personally used that on her several times when I needed to copy some homework from her.
I was invited to a meeting with the Johns Hopkins board of trustees. They asked me what the state of ethics was on campus. I was brutally honest in my arrogant, autistic way.
I guess I was still annoyed at being plagiarized and having my textbooks stolen right before exams. The pre-meds were cut-throat to the extreme and hated the engineers for busting the Bell Curves on the shared classes.
Just gave blood. Wooo booy that was interesting. I wonder if I passed the written test. $5 hookers don’t count right?
If you don’t have to report it to the IRS, i think you are fine.
I just gave blood, too. At the skate park. I took a whomping tumble of a small bank. Maybe four feet. Got a patch of skin missing and some deep pain in my lower back. Still not needing an ambulance, so that’s good.
Owie!
Get well soon.
I’ll be fine, but thanks.
Ok… Have you seen the new Lincoln Project Ad against Trump?
It is hilarious.
nope
Whatcha drinking tonight, Pie?
nothing. I am trying to cut back.
Good luck.
I enjoyed the article.
https://notthebee.com/article/lincoln-project-releases-the-most-cringe-anti-trump-ad-yet
Is that the mommy telling her kid Trump is getting crowned prince of all time?
LOL. Drumpfler gonna suspend the constitution and keep running…somehow…
The high quality “I despise the rural poor” hot takes that Movie Bob has been dropping for years have all been in preparation for this absolute banger
https://twitter.com/Halalcoholism/status/1320892373916762112
there is no way in hell that chick was a republican
I despise the rural poor as much as the next guy and I have no idea what that tweet means.
I sense a lot of angst and hatred to go around in that discussion.
Twitter is like a window into the petty squabbles and insecurities that people air online.
She’s the one who compared her leaked nudes to being raped isn’t she? She may not have the tightest grasp on reality.
Meh.
I dunno, maybe it looks better in person.
Poor Joe.
All that hard work, undone by a crackhead.
Hunter is my new hero. If a guy with no skills and a crack habit can make $800,000 a month there’s hope for me yet.
Step 1: Get adopted by a prominent national politician.
“How to change your vote” – DON’T VOTE UNTIL ELECTION DAY, ASSHOLES.
Voting is so important that we must do it before the campaigning ends.
Yep. They have until Nov 3rd this year to make or break their case. I’m giving them til Nov 3.
OMG. *falls out of chair laughing*
I think this has to be a ploy where Biden just uses Covid as an excuse to sell super expensive tickets to raise funds.