Even though my kid was not interested in sports at all and almost never watched any sports, I (I played many sports when young) persuaded him to run cross country and track for one year as a sophomore just so he can appreciate the importance of keeping in shape. He actually turned out to be good in cross country. Long story short: He gained huge respect for kids who play sports year round and still manage to get good grades because when he played sports, every time he sat down at his desk to study, he fell asleep. Lol. Also, he realized the importance of keeping in shape and exercises when he has free time.
Funny thing is he likes to go watch football games at Stanford even though he doesn’t know who Joe Montana, Stephen Curry or Tom Brady is.
@FStratford If you don’t think New York City is poised to become Silicon Valley’s only true peer (as everyone is predicting it will) you’re in complete denial – a Chicago-esque kind of denial and insecurity.
New York as a tech center will be enormous for a certain set of elite schools. Maybe I’m being too bullish with Princeton and that offends you, but Princeton has already developed key partnerships as a result of the Amazon and Google expansions. Columbia will certainly see a boost, which is why I think of all the non-HYPSM schools it has the best chances to legitimately compete (especially since its the only other NYC area school ranked Top 5 in the nation and Top 10 in the world). Don’t get me wrong, Cornell is a great institution, but Cornell Tech is predominantly a satellite grad school campus. It certainly still carries the identity and strength of the university as well as engineering talent from its Technion partner.
Elite Culture! Welcome back. Everyone = you. I’ve seen one person say that NYC will become the second silicon valley. Additionally, nobody on the UChicago board in a thread about how UChicago could have the lowest acceptance rate at it’s current trajectory, has even hinted that they think Chicago will become the next Silicon Valley. Please, go start a thread that talks about NYC becoming the next Silicon Valley where you may sight cocktail party discussions, the domination of Columbia and Cornell and Princeton and Penn (because Philidelphia is just a suburb of NYC). That is not at all what the thread was meant to be. Don’t go away mad, …
We have largely become a nation of spectators. This “big star” environment has led to a false identity which is not a substitution for the experience of direct team responsibilities, sportsmanship and physical conditioning. The body and the mind are in the same individual. They just work better together for those lucky enough to use both.
There are those who think they cannot do math, act, sing etc. Without some effort and focus they will never know, This is all about optimizing their future now. It is not just about being a star athlete.
There’s a famous Saul Steinberg New Yorker cover depicting a Manhattanite’s view of America: Chicago and Houston and even Los Angeles are merely tiny scribbles in a small blank featureless landscape dwarfed by a detailed cityscape of Manhattan overlooking the Hudson River to the Pacfic Ocean. That cartoon has come to life at #243, without any saving sense of irony.
To say that Chicagoans are insecure and in denial for pushing back against the imperial arrogance of that worldview is merely an old strategy for silencing dissent from it.
246 is merely the West Coast version of the same phenomenon. Triumphalism is a coastal thing. Midwesterners have an old inhibition against braggadocio.
re: #247 Maybe eveyone’s world view is that way (with themselves in the center and everything else peripherally), since everyone is the center of their own universe; and anyway, it is a ‘New Yorker’ magazine. Maybe if Chicago had their version of the poster, NY wouldn’t even be on it.
At least Chicago, along with a few other cities, were depicted. See, Chicago is always on NY’s mind lol.
I think there are different versions. I just checked mine upstairs.
Jersey
Washington DC Chicago Canada
Mexico Texas Utah
Las Vegas
Kansas City
Nebraska
Los Angeles
China Japan Russia
Agreed, it’s funny because it’s self-ironizing and it does caricature a certain myopia that anyone who has ever lived in New York, even we Manhattaphiles, immediately recognizes as truthful. There was no sign of irony but a lot of evidence of the truth of the caricature in the post I was referring to.
@uocparent , Midwesterners no doubt have their own blindnesses, but they would never deny importance to either coast. The University of Chicago of course draws lots of kids from those coasts - and renders them honorary Midwesterners!
So many students from UChicago live in NY. After graduation, if they don’t stay in Chicago, they will no doubt be back in NY after their education in Chicago. So the tie-ins from Chicago to New York in academia and also on Wall Street is strong. And not that much of a jump, career-wise, from Wall street to the tech industry.
We’ll see what we’re unleashing here a few years hence, if not already unleashed.
Agree about the sports. Because academics is so often an individual endeavor, sports really taught my son the merits of many working together as one. He also understood what commitment meant, especially when he had to show up even when tired. Subsequently, he became an instructor in another sport and was able to teach. Not to mention that he enjoyed it, and it also kept him in good shape, lol.
"Agree about the sports. Because academics is so often an individual endeavor, sports really taught my son the merits of many working together as one. "
Our family doesn’t dislike sports. We participate in several and are pretty active; we like playing sports, not watching them. I’m just back from kicking some butt this afternoon (won 3 of my 4 races). The disconnect as far as we’re concerned is the disproportionate access and importance granted college sports teams and how that impacts the academics.
My husband is British and no matter how many times I explain to him how much preference recruited athletes receive in elite admissions and how at many schools the athletes with below par academic skills drag down the academics in classes yet receive support and dispensation for doing that, I’ve always gotten the feeling he doesn’t really believe this could be possible since it sounds so ludicrous. I suspect prior to the data in the Harvard lawsuit being made public, he suspected I was exaggerating how much preference is given to sports even in elite unis.
Playing sports is great - operating in a college environment where sports is more important than academics sucks. Of course not everybody feels this way and that’s why it’s wonderful there are so many good colleges to choose from.
I remember when we told our friends that we were moving from the NYC area to Colorado they said that would be great since we would be closer to our family in Michigan…um…My husband and I had a good laugh about how our friends had no clue - or really any interest - in what was west of the city.
