Realigning Priorities
January 21st, 2009
I came across the above video from a non-Villanova circle of teachers. It brought on a pretty interesting series of comments from the teachers, many of whom I agree with.
In short, this is what college is about. The pictures on brochures of three students sitting in a class room with shocked looks of “I get it!” while a fourth writes long algebraic equations on the board… well, I’m sure it happens, but that’s not typical college.
In my circle of friends, we have what has become the infamous “Throw Ball Cup” story. I won’t get into the details since you had to be there to understand why it was so funny, but I’ll provide a quick summary. Junior year, two of my roommates were up at 3am studying for some sort of engineering test. Amidst being bogged down with whatever it is they were studying, they somehow invented a game they named “Throw Ball Cup” that involved — big surprise — throwing a ball into a cup. The story lives on in infamy among my friends because of the fact that students who lived in the apartment below us and happened to be in their class and studying for the same test came upstairs to complain that the ping pong ball bouncing was driving them insane. Apparently, the floors in Villanova’s apartments are made out of paper.
This video is these two girls’ “Throw Ball Cup”, even more so since they were smart enough to record it.
In college, you’re taught extensively about your particular major. You’re taught that you must have responsibility in doing what you need to, how to properly communicate, how to balance 6 different projects all due on the same day… and so on.
But no one places the proper amount of importance on how to juggle all of those without driving yourself mad in the process. These girls figured it out. My roommates and I figured it out. But I unfortunately knew too many students who didn’t understand this. Hours and hours of stress and lack of sleep for that extra .02 on their GPA. They are the same people who freak out at the littlest things even now that we’ve all graduated.
When was the last time you spontaneously broke out in dance?
Brian R. Robinson
January 21st, 2009 at 3:15 pm
I spontaneously break out into dance every day when my 2 year old son hits the button on his fridge DJ. He likes to dance, but he likes company in doing so.
And if you must know, I also do some dancing at my desk when a good song comes on Pandora. This I will not record.
John Mazz
January 21st, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Jay – this brings up my own funny moment while studying (this has to have been 18 years ago or so, but its still so fresh in my mind, which is weird in its own right that I rememeber this so clearly). Me and a group of 2 or 3 other guys – also in the middle of the night but in the library – were studying for a tough electrical engineering exam. We all sat around and did example problems and when we all finished each one, we shared what we did to figure out who did what to get it right. Anyhoo, this one particular problem involved a simple calculus equation that required you to differentiate it to get to the answer. This one guy got a really strange answer and he showed what he did – he erroneously integrated instead of differentiated. Well, engineering geeks that we were, we laughed at him for the rest of the study session – “BAHAHA – he integrated instead of differentiated!”. We didn’t get much more done that night. Moral of the story – do not be afraid to laugh and have fun – even during midnight cram sessions (and even if it exposes you as the geek that you are).