It pains me to say this, but I must dedicate this entry to trash-talking about my soon-to-be alma mater. Upon initial glance, the Athens campus looks phenomenal. It is spacious and beautifully landscaped. The aging buildings appear to be bastions of wisdom and intellect. A visitor taking a casual glance around Tate Center during peak late morning class hours will witness a sea of students carrying backpacks and navigating their ways to various lecture halls. But first impressions can be deceiving---and UGA is rather good at making first impressions.
A few months back, I read an opinion column in the Red & Black written by a man who had returned to the university for a second degree after finishing his initial undergraduate studies. Having graduated once already, he was no longer a beneficiary of Georgia's HOPE Scholarship and was thus paying out-of-pocket to further his intellectual interests. He recalled an incident in which he stopped a professor from ending class early and reminded him how many minutes were left on the clock. As would be expected, his remark was met with various grunts and complaints from his fellow classmates. If I recall correctly, one girl even decided to give him a nasty word about it. Outraged by such reactions, the man questioned whether his peers even valued their education at all.
I'm not sure whether I would've done the same thing in that particular situation (it just seems a bit prudish to me) but I nevertheless think he has a legitimate point. The problem is that---at least based on my experience---the word "intellectualism" is a foreign term to the majority of UGA's undergraduate population. Allow me to stereotype a bit here, but a significant portion of these people appear to be complacent students from upper middle class suburbia (e.g. Alpharetta, Marietta, Peachtree City, etc.) with Daddy's money to burn. Let me vivify this profile with pictures of a blonde girl who got a candy-red Jeep Wrangler for her Sweet 16 and an All-American jock from a bad Disney movie with ample cash to buy endless rounds of liquor at one of the many bars downtown for his frat brothers. I speculate their favorite activities consist of: 1) Losing track of how many cans of beer they've consumed during a tailgate before vomiting, 2) screaming, "Go Dawgs!" between the hedges and not remembering what the final score was the next day, and 3) watching Jersey Shore when it airs on MTV. These are the people who go to office hours to dispute a test grade when they haven't even opened the textbook (or as an upgrade, they didn't buy or rent it in the first place). Who has money for books when Call of Duty: Black Ops is coming out?
Such a social phenomenon is discouraging and encouraging at the same time. On the downside, it is sad to see people who are completely happy taking meaningless multiple choice tests (uncommon entities in real life) and plugging in numbers to formulas they don't understand. I say this is sad because, as nerdy as this sounds, I have experienced bouts of excitement and passion when I finally understood the logic behind a philosophical argument or discovered the extent of controversial U.S. covert operations in various parts of the world. Our inquisitive minds and the constant act of curious questioning are what enhance our understanding of the world we occupy. But maybe it's not too bad that mindless people don't find any of this "fun." This means that "loser Myers kids" like me can easily manipulate them to serve our best interests (wow, am I a condescending prick or what?). On a more serious note though, a college diploma ought not be a wasted piece of paper that simply warrants that one woke up in the morning just to sleep again in the lecture hall with intermittent Facebook sessions. There is so much to learn and so much to discover, yet barely enough time in our lifespan to barely scratch at the surface.
I wonder if things would be just a little better if we dismantled the UGA Athletic Association. But I should not entertain such psychotic thoughts. It would be bad for my health.
