<p>It is a foregone conclusion based on the ethos seen on CC that PG made a mistake. She should have gone to Wharton, started a hedge fund and become a gazillionaire.</p>
<p>What I meant is that at some colleges, students get actual course credits for things that are ECs at Harvard or Yale. Personally, I wouldn’t change this.</p>
<p>See? Ergo, I’ve failed. Thanks, texaspg!</p>
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<p>Right, but Yale does offer bachelor’s degrees in things like theater, don’t they? So it appears the arts are more integrated into the curriculum than at Harvard.</p>
<p>But who knows whether Pizzagirl would have used that great wealth for good or for evil? That’s another variable that we must always consider.</p>
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<p>Pizzas for everybody!</p>
<p>Hunt, I was replying to QuantMech’s statement,
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<p>Harvard may give some exceptional musicians credit. I just don’t think it’s true that musicality is a hook; I think it’s a trait often found in the sort of students who get in to Harvard’s sort of college.</p>
<p>Dramatic Arts are now a “secondary field” at Harvard: <a href=“http://drama.fas.harvard.edu/secondary-field”>http://drama.fas.harvard.edu/secondary-field</a>.</p>
<p>^Is that like a minor?</p>
<p>I guess…not a Harvard specialist. I think it’s a recent addition. (Online Search)</p>
<p>Ok, it’s quite new: <a href=“http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2013/12/04/harvard-to-offer-theater-major/[/url]”>http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2013/12/04/harvard-to-offer-theater-major/</a></p>
<p>I don’t think students in the Dramatic Arts will be able to get away with cutting class. </p>
<p>So having taken the time to read the Yale Daily News article, there will be a theater major at Harvard soon.</p>
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<p>Soon, people can start complaining about Theater Majors taking up spots from super-geniuses.</p>
<p>“Pizzas for everybody!”</p>
<p>I don’t even like pizza all that much! It’s a stupid screen name - it related to something else, not a personal love of pizza - and I’m sorry I chose it! So, no, no pizza for you!</p>
<p>I’ll bet Harvard was losing some cross-admits to Yale if the students were interested in theater.</p>
<p>After reading the article, I see that theater-focused kids were not applying to Harvard because it doesn’t have a major.</p>
<h1>570: Harvard is reacting to Yale getting all of the attention in theatre recently, due to James Franco’s enrollment there (half-way joking, half-way not). Incidentally, Franco reportedly got a D in one of the classes he took in his MFA program at Yale Drama School, due to missing too many classes.</h1>
<p>Literature is a serious pursuit. The arts are a serious pursuit. But they are also areas that people can pursue for pure pleasure. There are a few non-STEM people who read advanced mathematics for pure pleasure, but their number is limited, relative to the number of people who read or participate in musical groups for pleasure. (Is that a better term to use than “entertainment?”)</p>
<p>The future lawyer who is a member of a robotics team might be learning something about technology that is essential for him/her to understand in the future. Or he/she might just be having fun.</p>
<p>Also, I thought PG was already a gazillionaire!</p>
<p>I guess University of Houston will give Franco an honorary doctorate at some point.</p>
<p><a href=“James Franco is not going to the University of Houston after all: Star bows outof prestigious program - CultureMap Houston”>http://houston.culturemap.com/news/entertainment/03-19-12-james-franco-is-not-going-to-the-university-of-houston-after-all-star-bows-out-of-creative-writing-program/</a></p>
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I think you’re still not getting this, QM. I don’t think most students participating in musical groups would say they are doing it for “pure pleasure,” except maybe for some of the very casual pick-up type groups. My daughter is in the Glee Club at her college. She is not a music major, and is not interested in singing as a career. However, she is serious about singling and isn’t just doing it for fun. There may not be so many STEM-type activities like that, but some might be such things as star-gazing or bird-watching. Are those just for fun? Not exactly, at least for people who have a strong interest in them. And being serious about something is not necessarily just about learning something from it. Kids don’t sing in Glee Club in order to learn about different forms of music (at least not primarily). They do it because making music is important to them.</p>
<p>To give a more personal example, I read most of the newspaper for information–for educational purposes, perhaps. I read the comics page for pure pleasure. But I think I read books of poetry for a different reason–neither for pure pleasure, nor to learn something–I think it’s to experience and appreciate art. I don’t think that’s just pure pleasure.</p>
<p>To add: I don’t think people who are serious about sports are doing it for fun, either, although I’m not exactly sure why they are doing it. But an awful lot of it isn’t fun at all.</p>
<p>Hunt, as I mentioned, I have significant problems with pitch perception and pitch production. So you will need to forgive my ignorance in this area. But what constitutes being “serious” about Glee Club?</p>
<p>What if I drop “entertainment” and “pleasure” and substitute “not work”? (It might still take effort, as reading poetry does for me. But for me, that is not work.)</p>
<p>To me, being serious about something means that it matters to you in ways beyond just how much fun you get out of it. It means you put effort into it, and strive for excellence. I don’t think “not work” is the right term either. Perhaps it’s the difference between a vocation and an avocation. Many people have both, and for some, the avocation is more important to them than the vocation. For example, I have a job that is pretty interesting, but it doesn’t engage me as much as some other avocational activities I’ve done over the years. Most of those things weren’t necessarily fun–indeed, some of them were a lot of work, like helping with my son’s Boy Scout troop. But at various times I’ve had some “hobbies” that also occupied this kind of mind space–like photography, for example. I guess my point is that something can be “important” to an individual even if it doesn’t have an obvious pragmatic purpose.</p>
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<li><p>I sort of yearn for the olden days when the people majoring in Theater at Yale (of whom there were quite a number) actually had to major in something else, because Yale didn’t offer a Theater major, just a ton of opportunities to do theater. I was disappointed to find that they have turned it into a formal major.</p></li>
<li><p>I understand the paradox collegealum poses,. but I don’t think that college admissions can or should be judged on a student-by-student basis. No one, no matter what their process is, is going to do a perfect job. The only real question is are they doing an adequate job, and could they do it meaningfully better. I remain unconvinced that the answer to those questions are no./yes, for Harvard, Yale, MIT, or wherever.</p></li>
<li><p>Given the actual state of research funding for academic science these days, I would think that a person who gets discouraged by one setback (like not getting into MIT or Harvard, and being “forced” to settle for his state flagship, or maybe Chicago or Michigan) really doesn’t deserve an academic career, and is pretty much guaranteed not to be successful. I worry about the kids who don’t ever have to deal with setbacks, who get in everywhere they apply, and how they will respond when the setbacks start to come.</p></li>
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<p>Hunt got me thinking about his paper analogy.</p>
<p>Why do so many adults participate on CC discussions? What do they get out of it? Which applications will ever use this information? </p>