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Vonnegut never received an undergraduate degree. And he only received his Masters from Chicago 20 years after the fact when the school decided that Cat's Cradle warranted significant consideration to be a master's thesis.</p>
<p>I saw Vonnegut speak at a Cornell event in 2006. He was a consummate Cornellian.
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<p>So a few years at Cornell, followed by world fame as a creative novelist and social commentator ... a great school passing him a Masters for simply one of those novels ... close enough in my book. Maybe even better!</p>
<p>Cornell certainly played a pivotal role; it facilitated his defining his general direction in the world. If he'd attended a college with an easier science department and no school newspaper he might have become a mediocre chemist, or a pharmacist or something.</p>
<p>Surviving the bombing of Dresden also helped !</p>
<p>But his Daily Sun-honed reporter's skills no doubt helped him develop a tale out of that tragic event.</p>
<p>I think the undergraduate studies of a man who can leap tall buildings in a single goddamn bound, stop bullets, and see through walls deserves respect.</p>
<p>There is a long and noble tradition at Cornell that decrees that says that Going to Cornell and flunking out still makes you an official Cornellian. Even the Cornell fight song "give my regards to Davy" is about flunking out and maybe returning to Cornell one day. So by this traditional standard Kurt Vonnegut, Harry Chapin and many others are official Cornell Alums even though they did not graduate.</p>
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But his Daily Sun-honed reporter's skills no doubt helped him develop a tale out of that tragic event.
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<p>This Daily Sun and writing reference reminded me of another venerable Cornellian, at a decidedly different level of the written word: William Strunk, Jr. He wrote The Elements of Style, which has been in print in some form for almost 100 years. It is the book that another Cornellian, E.B. White, took over after Strunk passed away. I had to buy a new copy of the book a couple of years ago, after my original copy had become raggedly dog-eared.</p>
<p>BTW CR2005, I also saw Vonnegut speak, but that was about 25 years ago for me, and it is something I will never forget. You, however, must have seen one of his last lectures -- literally -- in 2006, since he went to the Big Beyond early in 2007.</p>
<p>I think that tradition of honoring flunkies as alum might have more to do with money. I still get solicitations from the college I went to before Cornell calling me an "alumni" and such. </p>
<p>But yeah - Vonnegut (and Harry Chapin) rocked, even if their creations always didn't. We'll always have "The Devil Wears Prada"...Oy...</p>
<p>Folks unfamiliar with Applejack's mischievous humor run the risk of misinterpreting his facetious post above, so a more straightforward abstract from another one of his recent posts (on another thread) follows, lol:</p>
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Ithaca is a quirky, isolated collegetown with beautiful natural features perfectly suited for a period of withdrawal, personal reflection, and intellectual inquiry that is often associated with college. Cornell life is very focused on Cornell, which can be good or bad. I found it to be good.</p>
<p>Big cities are seriously a lot more fun as a paid professional able to get into bars and you'll have plenty of time to spend in them over the ensuing 10-60 years. Cities sort of become an addiction. People start to need their urban fix and that level of distraction and entertainment to keep their mental sanity. I certainly fell into that category after graduating and moving to one. I'd visit my parents in the suburbs and just pace their house. I couldn't stand it. Made me appreciate that period of withdrawal sitting under waterfalls and wandering around that Cornell afforded me.
<p>^
Ya know, it's okay to make fun of ourselves every once in a while. It's just a school.</p>
<p>I mean, it's an Ivy League university that birthed the profound philsophical ruminations of both Ann Coulter and Keith Olberman. It not only has students with designated "crap closets" that house clothing literally covered in ... you guessed it ... cow crap, but also a massive satellite dish in Puerto Rico looking for aliens. </p>
<p>So, one is forgiven if Cornell seems a moving target of irony and confusion to both the uninitiated and the deeply matriculated. It's like that kid in school that wasn't really the jock or the nerd or the prep or the hick, but was a little bit of all of them off doing his own somewhat weird stuff. That kid always gets picked on.... trust me.</p>
<p>On one side of the academic spectrum you might find DeVry, the University of Phoenix (online based school), and your local community college – these too are “just schools.” At the other side of the college gamut are schools like Princeton, Harvard, and Oxford – these also are “just schools” by your reckoning. So I do not quite understand your point here, because the only generalization one can make about the commonality of schools is that there are consistently some sort of teachers and students involved. And of course people’s knowledge, aptitude, and academic proficiencies widely vary, as do campus environments. Differences between schools can be extensive, and they should matter to prospective freshmen and potential transferees.</p>
<p>So, there is nothing inherently unsound about defending a university from false, misleading, or malicious comments … is there? After all, these posts are viewed by many young students who are in a formative period in terms of beliefs regarding these colleges, and to Cornell. My premise is that the positive view of a superb school should not be neglected, particularly where the positive predominates.</p>
<p>Cornell can break away from the Ivy League and will do just fine. The same can't be said for couple other Ivies--when they don't have the label, they got nothing special.</p>
<p>Anyone familiar with Cornell at all knows it is a truly incredible school with excellent resources, faculty, students, and opportunities for a truly diverse selection of academic interests. If some idiot thinks it is the "worst" ivy, thatpersons opinion is irrelevant. End of story.</p>
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Not only was that kid picked on, but he boned the girlfriend of the jock that picked on him on graduation night.</p>
<p>...
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<p>Yes - that kid, at once embraced as somewhat familiar while at the same time kept at arms length for being just a little too different, was always capable of catching everyone off guard like that.</p>
<p>For the record - as my posts cnosistenty indicate, I love the fact that some of the best programs exploring both cow crap and the frontiers of astrophysics are at Cornell, or that the largest collection of dead birds sits just down the street from the world's most powerful underground electron collider.</p>
<p>That makes some people very uncomfortable who need a tightly bound bow of agreed upon stereotypes to package their college experience. Cornell's completely different everytime you turn around, and that's great for people that can get beyond stereotypes and bask in the vast grey area that comprises real life. In my experience, that is where the real breakthroughs happen.</p>
<p>There - is that good enough for you Colm? :)</p>