March 2007 Archives

I arrived in Chicago last night after a fascinating plane flight. The flight will be the topic of another entry, which will receive the detail and care that the experience deserves. For now, though, I'm actually a little bored. It's a little surprising: my classes were excellent today and this quarter promises to be the busiest yet. I finished Bertrand Russell's epic and outstanding History of Western Philosophy (that deserves to be the subject of even another entry). In other words, I should be satisfied and expectant.

In light of this state, I was perplexed about ten minutes ago. It occurred to me, that this was essentially a state of boredom. But boredom occurs because one has nothing interesting to do. However the only burden which I normally have but do not currently possess is homework. Indeed, my cheap textbooks haven't arrived, so I can't even pretend to do homework when I actually have none! Consequently the fact is: I can find nothing more interesting than homework to do in college.

This raises a critical point. Usually when I have nothing to do, I generate homework for myself. I do something like learn Esperanto, which is kind of like spinning one's mental wheels but going nowhere. You see, I just realized that the critical problem is this damn weather. It was 80 degrees today, and it is 70 degrees right now at 10 PM. I just feel like doing nothing, but I can't go to sleep, and I want to do something. Rumor has it that there are schools in warmer latitudes. Memory seems to hint that there are places with names like "Stanford" and "Caltech" in these climates, which I might have even found desirable once upon a time. In fact, there are even industrious cities, booming metropolises in these regions. However, I simply don't know how anyone can get much done in this sort of weather. It was problematic enough in Portland, where the weather is quite temperate during the school year. It makes me yearn for the tundra that was winter quarter.

But my package with a textbook just arrived! A diversion! An attempt to pretend to work!

More likely, just another lazy walk through the spring weather... followed by another lazy walk to the Reynolds Club for a nice cool bottle of Naked juice. But hopefully not followed by more utterly wasteful, superfluous, and meaningless blogging.

"This illustrates an important truth, namely, that the worse your logic, the more interesting the consequences to which it gives rise."

--Bertrand Russell, while evaluating Hegel

Here's the reply from my message to the Office of Housing and Dining Services. It is interesting, but perhaps logically flawed.

Dear Adam,

Thank you for your message. We believe that our House Table program, or residential dining, is the cornerstone of our House System. We value them greatly, as we think that students' ability to feel connected in the House System is due in large part to their being able to eat together in the three dining commons that we operate. However, it is quite inefficient for a housing program our size to operate three separate dining halls, as a campus our size would typically only have one dining hall to serve this number of students. As a result, students who take meal plans pay for more than the raw food costs, but also pay to cover the associated costs of having our model of a dining program - the staffing of three dining halls, the facilities upkeep and maintenance for three dining halls, etc. It would not be feasible to operate our current system otherwise. Just like at a restaurant you don't pay for the pure raw food cost, neither in a residential dining facility do you only pay for the food - you also pay for the dining operation that produces the food.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions.
Best,
Ana

I was doing this math problem today, and my mind was wandering a bit from the argument. An astounding fact suddenly occurred to me, which prompted this email to the Office of Undergraduate Student Housing and Dining.

Dear Housing and Dining Services,

In the midst of my spring break pontification, a remarkable fact occurred to me. Undergraduate 1st years pay $1,546 per quarter for board, regardless of their residence. Yet, those who eat in Bartlett receive only 900 dining points and $110 flex dollars per quarter. Given that 1 dining point is equivalent to $1, the actual value of this meal plan is a mere $1010. Even assuming that every item purchased with flex dollars receives the maximal discount of 10%, the total value of this plan is no more that $1022.23.

As a resident of Burton-Judson Courts, I had never realized this peculiarity. Where does this remaining $523.77 go? My first guess was cross-subsidization for students at other dining halls, but this seems improbable given their comparatively lavish endowment of flex dollars. I daresay, you have me stumped.

Sincerely,

Adam Anderson
adamanderson@uchicago.edu

We shall see how they justify this remarkable discrepancy.

I am done with this quarter!

So, whose bright (no pun intended) idea was it to pass a new federal law so that the beginning of daylight savings time falls on the day before my physics final and two papers' deadlines? It's been a rather dim (no pun intended) day.

There is an alarming trend in the grading practices here. I have observed it with some curiosity for some time, but I learned more about it from my friend, Mr Cocco, who had modestly named it the "Cocco theory." The theory states that in all Hum classes and many Sosc classes, the amount of time and care spent writing a paper is inversely correlated with the grade it receives.

There are obvious limitations to this claim. Clearly, you will certainly do very badly if you write a five page paper an hour or two before it's due. Clearly, you will definitely do okay if you spend 20 hours writing a paper (the 5-7 page variety, that is). Barring extremes, this claim is supported almost universally by empirical evidence. I just received a graded paper this afternoon, in fact, which continues to uphold the theory.

While there are varying interpretations for why this phenomenon should be true, two possibilities stand out. Firstly, and most dramatically: grades in the humanities and social sciences are fairly meaningless. Professors can tell what is awful and maybe what is genius, but the quality of papers in between is not well-ordered, so to speak. That's a bit cynical, but plausible to an extent. Assuming quality is well-ordered and professors recognize it, the other hypothesis is that small amounts of pressure induce superior creativity and argumentation. Whatever it is, it's fairly annoying.

Regardless, one thing is certain. Unless you are absolutely and utterly brilliant, if you study little in the sciences, you will do terribly. So at least some disciplines are rational.

Not in the general sense, but in a particular sense it is. That particular sense is as a college student. What is the purpose of college, after all? To become educated, of course. Some people go to college for instrumental purposes: to gain technical skills to become an engineer or journalist, for example. But they really seek the same thing as the rest of us, and even if they didn't, those people aren't supposed to exist at my school. So we can all agree that college is for education's sake, here as much as anywhere. A corollary of that claim is that if one is fully committed to the educational values implicit in attending college, then one should act in manners that further that goal. So an action is only justifiable if it somehow furthers the goal of education.

But how could TV further the goal of education? There are two possible avenues. Firstly, one could watch educational television or classic films. But this TV-watching slag that frequents the lounge watches the lowest cable trash. Secondly, it could provide a method of relaxation that is required for maximizing educational attainment. But that is simply implausible. The TV-watching hooligans always numb their minds with the tube in packs. And if they travel in packs, surely they could learn more by simply chatting among themselves about something interesting, while still gaining the proper relaxation. If being with others is not relaxing, then clearly they could better relax alone in their rooms. And if that's not good enough, then they should just drink themselves into a coma in their rooms so that they produce no negative externality on the world.

There you have it. The TV-watching college student is a walking, talking, irrationality. And yet irrationality is so popular... Although given the number of mental breakdowns among people this quarter, universal insanity would not be surprising. That's my dose of passive aggression for the week.