Oh academia, academia, academia

As you know. I came to New York to study. And my 2nd semester is over next tuesday! I only have a writing folder to compile and a 10 page paper to write and then I'm done!!

but first I want to share this paper I just wrote. So it was for Cultural Studies. which has been the coolest subject. all we do is watch youtube videos and discuss insanely interesting topics. ok so each week we had to write a short paper about anything we wanted. he gave us ideas but we could do whatever and most people just turned in rants. like the one i did about the security guards at my dorm. but then he assigned the final paper. where we decide what grade we should get and he guarantees to honor it. so basically we didn't have to go to class or turn in any papers at all because he will give us whatever grade we ask for. he said we could write: fuck you A and we would get an A

but i wrote this paper. which was immensely satisfying.

Why I should get an A

I should get an A. I don't even believe in A's. An A doesn't mean anything. It's all so subjective, an A does not have a fixed value. Obviously an A from Harvard is not the same as an A from some community college, but not in the way you might think. An A from Harvard is worth more in the eyes of employers and society but it's not necessarily worth more in terms of the student's work. According to USA Today, “the fact that 50% of all Harvard students now get A's is a troubling problem”.¹

People pay a shitload of money to go to Harvard. And if your grades weren't good enough to get you into Harvard you are paying a fuckload in endowments to be there. So the last thing the university wants is for their students to leave. It goes both ways. Since the students pay so much they expect nothing less than A's. And the college wants the student to stay for as long as possible and to continue making contributions long after they leave so they make it as easy as possible to get A's.

Grade inflation isn't just confined to the Ivy Leagues. The same article states that: “fewer than 20% of all college students receive grades below a B-minus”. Make-up papers, exam re-does and contesting of grades are uniquely American things. It is uniquely American because there are very few countries, if any, where $40,000 per annum is the norm for college tuition. University is free in Russia, France, Denmark and practically free in other countries such as Australia where it's $4000 per annum but there is a government loan system whereby it's possible to never have to pay.

Americans are geared to think that more expensive means more valuable. In one of my classes, the professor asked if we would prefer free or cheaper university and only one person raised their hand. Of the people that didn't, one said they wouldn't want to pay less because than they would not care to be as motivated. Um, so they need to pay $40,000 in order to care? Couldn't they be just as committed paying $4000?

This is alarming. What's even more alarming is the extreme sense of self-entitlement that this brings. In another one of my classes, the professor asked us to grade ourselves but since we are paying a rather hefty fee to be there, he allowed people to ask to be graded by him. But then one student piqued: “Well, we are paying, so shouldn't we be able to decide our own grades”.

NOOOOO. We shouldn't be able to grade ourselves just because we pay $40,000 a year. That would be like buying grades, which is pretty much what we're doing now. Where grade inflation has made an A worthless. But still, we clamor for them. So in the spirit of assimilation: I am demanding an A because I paid for it.

And my ponytail now is really cute. It's never cute! it's usually pouffy or frizzy or blah but now it's cute!