<p>" I understand cobrat’s point of view, and have spent much of my life in circles where people do care about what other people think. (This is quite common in the middle class, Pizzagirl.) From a position of privilege, one often need not concern oneself with what other people think."</p>
<p>Being concerned with what others think has absolutely nothing to do with financial status. It is an issue of personality and confidence. One can be very confident in their abilities without comparing themselves to others, and still manage to not brag about themselves or feel badly about themselves if they are working harder than others.</p>
<p>I think those that are always bragging about themselves care intensely about what others think, otherwise they would not bother to do so. While those who don’t care are probably not talking about their superior intellectual skills, they don’t need the pat on the back. There are bores from every walk of life, and polite, confident people at every income level. Not caring what others are doing or thinking does not equate to boasting and showing off, it could easily equate to having quiet confidence in your own abilities.</p>
<p>Anyway, what does “how people get admitted into Ivy Leagues” (for which, apparently, siserune is some exalted god on high, per canuckguy) have to do with the OP’s assertion that the Ivies (etc) are “diploma mills” that specialize in ridiculously easy classes that aren’t all that?</p>
<p>And rightly so, Cobrat; for some students certain subjects come easily, no matter how challenging they are to the others in the class. Several of my son’s high school math and science teachers told me he was the best student of their careers – and that he was well loved by his classmates. He’s quiet and never talks about his successes unless directly asked. In class, he didn’t have his hand up unless everyone else was stumped – one student cracked, “Well, teach, you know who to call on” and everyone laughed. He was the first pick when students broke into study groups and made himself available during certain periods as the school’s only AP math and science peer tutor. </p>
<p>A little humility and a willingness to help others goes a long way.</p>
<p>There were guts at Brown when I was there back in the dark ages.</p>
<p>One of them ate me for lunch and spit me out (a Classics course which was allegedly easy but it assumed you’d had four years of HS Latin which my HS did not teach) and another which I struggled mightily in (an allegedly easy applied math class… which unfortunately enrolled both people like myself for whom the material was new, as well as people who had dropped down from a more challenging math class who already knew half the material.)</p>
<p>Nobody likes to hear that the class they are struggling in is someone else’s gut class but I think by the time people get to college they understand that some folks are wired for literature but not econometrics, and some folks are wired for statistics but not Classics.</p>
<p>Brown has an ever-changing list of no-prerequisite classes only for freshman called First Year Seminar (FYS). Classes are small (20-ish), enrollment is limited to freshmen (called first-years) and it’s done by lottery where you pick your first 3 choices, with a second round to try again if desired.</p>
<p>I think its primary goal is to get students to explore beyond their intended concentrations. My son will be taking his selection next semester as a fifth class, along with two computer science classes and two applied math classes. If it turns out to be a writing-intensive class, he may take it pass-fail, so that he won’t obsess endlessly about always writing the perfect paper, but just get it done and focus on the classes in his major.</p>
<p>Adjusting to college is a big deal whether you’re going to Directional State U or Harvard. I see nothing wrong with having “lighter” classes that are introductory, in areas that aren’t your normal area of concentration or focus. Moreover, I think pretending that one should be taking the highest level of classes all the time without any break is arrogant and pretentious. I told my kids not to burn themselves out by taking only AP classes in high school - well, same principle for college.</p>
<p>Indeed, I changed my philosophy (I was a gunner myself) and had no problem with my kids taking foreign language classes that were relatively easy for them so they could fulfill distribution requirements. I used to think the opposite - that it was wrong to do so, and I never did that myself - but my constant challenging of myself to always push myself, be the straight A student, etc. wasn’t an unequivocally good thing in hindsight. Balance is important, and if that means a relatively easy Intro to Whatever class, well, then, so be it.</p>
<p>If that were the case, I’d be joining my fellow Obie classmates in their on-campus/off-campus political protests for causes ranging from Marxist-Leninist-Maoist revolution(Friends and classmates who knew my politics would ROTFLOL at the mere thought) to actually going onto the US Military base where the School of the Americas was located to protest its presence and its role in training some of the most brutal tyrannical dictators in Latin America. </p>
<p>I’d also dress in tye-dye, have neo-hippie affectations, not enjoy punk/pop-punk rock music, and feel much more guilty about not being a vegetarian/vegan than I am. :D</p>
<p>This is what bothers me about annasdad’s position. Many students will acquire essentially the same education at many schools. Some students will only be able to acquire the education they are seeking at a some schools. A very few students have interests they can only pursue at a very few schools. Some time back, on a similar thread Blossom had a wonderful post about the differences in studying art history at various colleges. Annasdad refused to address the issues she raised. I thought he was going to argue against connoisseurship, a position I could at least respect. Or if he would insist all higher education is essentially meaningless in a digital age.</p>
<p>The idea some schools are rigorous and others aren’t is pretty meaningless to me unless someone is talking about a specific student. I am guessing someone who isn’t challenged by the premed curriculum at Northwestern, will find premed no more rigorous at the majority of colleges in the country.</p>
<p>Maybe she does get essentially the same education everywhere? I doubt it. Some schools have more options for accelerated high achievers.</p>
<p>I don’t really see the problem with it, though. As an example - I was / am not a science person. I had to have 2 science classes as part of my distribution requirements, so I took two courses that were designed for non-majors: one was a Human Repro and Development course, the other was Genetics and Man. Both were interesting, I learned a lot - but they certainly weren’t the courses that the biology majors were taking. But why should they be? I got a lot more out of learning a “lighter” version of these topics, presented in an interesting fashion and tailored to my non-science needs, than I would have if I had slogged through courses with pre-meds by my side. The same could be said for any field, of course. If intro survey classes are wrong, I don’t want to be right.</p>
<p>Anyway, I think this is all just posturing anyway by people who pretend that it’s a moral failing not to be in Super Duper Honors Hardest Ever of Everything At All Times.</p>
<p>I have nothing against guts, in moderation, but I do think that there are good guts and bad guts. In a good gut, you still learn something interesting and worthwhile. My computer programming course was pretty easy, but it was interesting and exposed me to some new ideas. My “logic” course, on the other hand, was pretty worthless except for satisfying a requirement.</p>
<p>I think judicious use of a pass/fail option can be another way of approaching this–it can turn a non-gut into a gut.</p>
<p>That’s a fair distinction. I felt I learned from the classes I talked about above, though my knowledge wasn’t that of a biology major. </p>
<p>We had a class - not sure if it’s still offered - called North American Geography. It was sort of rite of passage for seniors; it was a large lecture class, offered 7-10 pm on Thursday, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a decent social scene surrounding it. But I have to tell you, when I went into the work world a few months later, it was one of the most useful courses I ever took - a really good survey course of the topology, topography, major rivers, industries, natural resources, etc of North America, explained in a way that tied together natural history, flora and fauna with each region today. It was extremely useful, even though it wasn’t “hard.”</p>
<p>Here is an article about the course I am referring to. It wasn’t “hard” but it was fascinating, engaging and I learned a lot. That seems fine and dandy with me, and was a welcome break from my other courses and writing my senior thesis, which was no walk in the park. Hope my son takes it, and goes out with his buddies afterwards :-)</p>
Which may be how a friend of my son’s ended up in a math class completely over his head which seems to have sent him on a downward spiral that affected the rest of his time at Princeton. (Well officially he’s still a student I suppose since he still hasn’t written his senior thesis.)</p>
<p>My first A at Harvard was Greek Lit in Translation taught by John Finlay. I still remember those lectures - they were that good. I remember the paper I wrote for the course too, which certainly isn’t the case for every course I took in college.</p>
<p>The NA Geography course was easily my favorite course at NU. Not difficult at all but very useful. Hudson enjoyed teaching the class (and undergraduates), something I can’t say for the majority of my instructors at NU.</p>
<p>The class helped lead me to graduate school in Public Administration with an emphasis in urban planning and geography.</p>
<p>My son, a senior in HS, is planning a major in geography (partly based upon my recommendation of the field). He loves learning about regional cultures, natural resources, geology, etc.</p>
<p>"My first A at Harvard was Greek Lit in Translation taught by John Finlay. I still remember those lectures - they were that good. I remember the paper I wrote for the course too, which certainly isn’t the case for every course I took in college. "</p>
<p>If you still remember the essay, it means it was a class you worked for.</p>
<p>With apologies for taking the thread off the OP’s topic, I’d like to go back to cobrat’s post #193, Pizzagirl’s #196, my post #199, and busdriver11’s #201. (If this digression is annoying to you, please read no further–I care about your opinion.)</p>
<p>In #199, I suggested that it was a middle-class attribute to be concerned about what other people think. It is my impression that this is a viewpoint shared by many sociologists. It seems to be simultaneously endorsed and skewered in Paul Fussell’s book Class. Perhaps someone on CC who is an expert in social psychology/sociology can comment on the validity of this viewpoint.</p>
<p>Richard Feynman (Nobel laureate in physics, Caltech prof, “No Ordinary Genius”) is probably the poster-boy for insouciance, at least when it comes to the opinions of others. On the other hand, there are detectable traces of the boy growing up in Far Rockaway, in the collections of anecdotes about him. For example, his girlfriend and later first wife once gave him a set of pencils with his name printed on them. At first he was reluctant to use them (since they seemed dorkish?) until she asked him, “Since when do you care about what other people think?” Also, I think that just a tinge of Feynman’s early insecurity is detectable in the story he recounts about his asking a librarian for a “map of the cat” and the librarian’s reaction.</p>
<p>To return to the example of the thermo exam from #199:
Student: Hands in exam, wordlessly
Professor (a nice guy, actually): How was it?
Student: Bursts into tears, rushes out of room.
I heard about this later. I thought the exam was easy. I have to agree 100% with cobrat that it would have been unwise of me to say so, in response to hearing about the other student’s reaction. I think it would have been unkind to say so, whether or not the other student thought that my reaction to the exam was of any relevance. I am not even completely certain that it’s not unkind to post this example, after all these years.</p>
<p>If people did not care about what other people think, that would render a lot of CC pointless . . . hmm, wait, that is perhaps not as strong an argument as I’d like to advance.</p>