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Reflecting on Washington, DC

As the semester dwindles down to a close, I suppose I can begin to wrap up my thoughts about Washington. I could list a litany of adjectives to describe it, but I feel that this city goes beyond descriptive words. Indeed, it has a captivating aura that traps anyone walking within the beltway; however, DC has a certain plainness that you don’t get anywhere else. And although many who live here like to believe it is the center of the universe, let alone the world, Washington is no more than a series of Roman architectural buildings conveniently separated by makeshift street lights and grids that occasionally confuse the regular passerby when Avenues decide to make a quick, angular turn through the city blocks.

The buildings are correspondingly low and the city’s bed time is 9:30pm. It hibernates whenever it snows and blossoms for just a couple of hours when the weather turns around. The lights go out at night and the apartment lights turn on, giving DC a soft, glowing hum of yellow light cascading over the horizon. Over the weekends only certain areas remain alive while others give you the creepy feeling of walking through a deserted alleyway that’s deserted for a reason. Adams Morgan becomes the talk of Monday morning, although, the few streets that are lit up are short lived by the ludicrous drinking laws and three-dozen cops watching your every move.

Metro dictates social order and common law. It is partially responsible for the premature bed time that DC has and is capable of granting unexpected vacations to Congressmen who once complained of recess being too short. Its escalators and elevators are in constant repair at every stop, making their existence unwarranted and, as the Supreme Court would say, “moot.” Metro can make your day or destroy it like a thousand suns. It has the power of the gods and the demigods; it is the alpha and the omega.

Interns roaming the streets aimlessly in search of the nonexistent bodegas and mom-and-pop-shops often have the sex appeal of a tootsie roll and the intellect of a snail. They have egos the size of New York skyscrapers and résumés the length of their toenail. Eagerly looking for the closest happy hour to attend, they often get denied for being underage or realizing that their pockets have been run dry from the high cost of living in this small city. Lunches often run at $15 a person while Ramen Noodle soup begins to look like the most appetizing thing you can buy at a supermarket.

Everything is Federal, but nothing is political. There is the law and everyone agrees with it, or is forced to. Taxation without representation is so 18th century and Keynesian economics is the cool way to go. When it comes to employment, people aimlessly depend on government. And when it comes to making money, government depends on aimless people. Everyone has an opinion, but no one cares of yours. Senators compete with Lady Gaga for fame while lobbyists happily walk the streets with the egos of interns. Congressmen often forget that there are over 400 of their kind in the beltway yet their egos reach an undiscovered outer planetary galaxy somewhere near Andromeda.

The city resembles Constantinople, 1453. It looks beautiful from the outside but stained on the inside. The Dome and Tower can be seen from miles away but the mistakes from the people inside can be felt oceans away. It is a microcosm of the world; hundreds of thousands of different types of people all itching to legitimize themselves in some fashion or another gives you the ultimate feeling of hathos. You hate to love it but love to hate it. DC has all the good and bad qualities of America blended into a city that contains Northern efficiency and Southern charm. It needs to exist, I suppose. Or else New York would have to take its undesired place.

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Quarterly Report

card2282So remember last year when I wrote that absolutely fantastic memoire of my Fall and Spring semesters? Well, considering that this is the last Rutgers will see of me this year because I have chosen endeavors in the world brothel know as Washington, DC for the Spring term, I have decided to write a memoire of my Fall Semester. Rutgers, once again, has taught me valuable life lessons in important fields of education like religion, politics, and your mother’s backyard. Now, I know what you’re thinking; why on earth would Rutgers University teach life lessons on a subject as silly as politics? Well, I don’t know either.

This was an interesting semester. I learned one thing and one thing only: Roy, don’t ever take 18 credits ever again. Ever. I somehow managed to come out of this godforsaken, sugarplum, rainbows, and butterflies semester unscathed while taking a seminar class, a science class, and teaching a class. How did I manage to do this? Ever since November 4th, 2008, I have been forced to pray to Messiah Obama in hopes to obtain goodies and candies. When I lost all my money to his tithing, I realized that it was my education that really mattered if I ever wanted to go places in life; and learning about globalization and why Thomas Friedman is the largest douchebag in the universe just for the simple fact that he titled his book The World is Flat, was utterly necessary for my Law School application to look sexier than a pregnant college student partying at a frat. So was taking the class “Planet Earth;” completely necessary for my Political Science major because I truly needed to know how and why beaches are formed. Thank you Rutgers for wasting my time and forcing me to take classes that are completely unrelated to my major or life ambitions. As a result, I’m going to blame all my problems on two people: Greg Schiano for draining the school’s money and Thomas Friedman for being the ignorant prick he is (and George Bush. I know that makes three people, but it’s necessary because that’s just what people do).

My Junior year, overall, was slightly different. Some things changed while other things remained the same. For instance, I finally moved out of the Black Forest and instead moved into the Everglades because Cook Campus has no concept of an irrigation or sewage system whatsoever. My class sizes were still enormous with the exception of Globalization because my professor was smart enough to utilize scare tactics to his advantage (well done, might I add). And while I too experienced the stadium expansion inside my classroom, many things remained the same. College Avenue was still an obnoxious conglomerate of mismanaged buses and subhuman mongoloids roaming the sidewalks like misshapen apes. With poorly functioning classrooms, illiterate students, and an administration comparable to that of Joseph Stalin’s, I learned that I needed to GTFO ASAP.

I use acronyms because I live in a globalized world.

We can start with this absolutely wonderful class I took called “Globalization.”

The great journey to this class began in the wee hours of the morning as I struggled to dress myself into that snazzy buttoned coat and $300.00 scarf that makes me a cosmopolitan and “global citizen.” After I waded my way to class through the wetlands of Douglass Campus, I learned that, yes, Thomas Friedman’s still the world’s biggest douchebag. Why? Because what academic actually tries to convince me that the “world is flat?” Better yet, who comes up with a title to a book with something they told their wife in their sleep? Or some silly colloquialism to grab the layman’s attention? At least “Clash of Civilizations” held some merit because the title conveyed something epic.

What is this?

Something cute?

I can find more academic material in Lady GaGa lyrics.

And then there was Benjamin Barber. My dear Mr. Barber, how did you ever to get to publish that compilation of recyclable garbage you call “Jihad vs. McWorld”? Not only was it insanely difficult to comprehend because of your redefined version of grammar, but you make Samuel Huntington look like the Bush Administration’s pansy. “Jihad vs. McWorld” sounds a lot like “The Rest vs. the West.” Who are you kidding? The voters?

Oh…

After I realized that academia may indeed be a world full of animal excretion, I realized that so was Rutgers and the way it handles its students and core requirements.

Then, on the seventh day, God created “Planet Earth.” God saw all he made and realized he created Thomas Friedman.

This was a great class. I truly enjoyed the lectures and a lot of the material was very interesting. I actually mean that. But what in Zoroaster’s good name does this class have to do with my major? In fact, why on earth does the School of Arts and Sciences require me to take these core courses? In any case, I did learn one valuable thing. The earth is ROUND, THOMAS FRIEDMAN. DID YOU HEAR ME? IT’S ROUND. I SAW PICTURES OF IT.

This class also explained how oil fields are created, which explained to me why humans crave oil like they crave the welfare state, which inevitably explained to me why Turks aren’t human; this also explained to me why Greg Schiano isn’t human either. What human being needs a $1.3 Million salary, a salary large enough to suck the administration dry of its cash, place semi-retarded monkeys in each segmented School, and have these monkeys draft “core requirements” for its students? I’m 20 years old. I am a Junior in college. I think I knew where my life was headed since I was 17; giving me cores is an insult to my intelligence and waste of school funds that could be going to, oh I don’t know, making class sizes smaller? Purging the school of bad teachers (and students, for the love of god)? Opening another dining hall so I don’t have to eat standing up at Neilson?

Being that Turks aren’t real human beings, I decided to write my “History Seminar” paper on precisely that.

My History Seminar was an interesting course. We met once a week in a cramped room inside Scott Hall. Before I continue, I must point out that Scott Hall is by far one of my favorite buildings on campus. Resembling my High School cafeteria just slightly expanded, Scott Hall has the tiniest and largest rooms in the entire school (minus Busch and Livingston campuses because I’m never there precisely for the fact that they are to me what the Sahara is for Canadians: a dangerous, unnecessary place). The rooms have two temperatures, as do all Rutgers classrooms: sauna and igloo. More often than not, the average Rutgers student feels igloo during winter and sauna during summer. Why? Because Greg Schiano needs to prioritize his own proper heating and cooling mechanisms for his football team, which operates like the Italian Army in World War II. But I digress. I chose to write my seminar paper on British intervention in the Ottoman Empire before and during World War I. Not only did I have a blast writing this “dissertation-quality piece,” but the research I did showed me that Turks came from the same planet as L. Ron Hubbard and practiced a more sanitary form of cannibalism when being the Kaiser’s little bitch. Therefore, Turks were not and hence are not human beings, comparable to Guidos. Just as the Greeks desire the liberation Constantinople, I too will one day liberate Brooklyn because we have a “Situation” going on right here.

Speaking of aliens, “Religions of the Eastern World” proved to me that peace is in fact an alien idea.

Religions of the Eastern world was either the hemorrhoid or Bataan Death March of the semester. I’m not entirely sure what I learned because it’s really difficult to comprehend something that exists and doesn’t exist at the same time. Because the Dao is and isn’t. But it is. And isn’t. But it still is. No, wait, it isn’t, sorry. Jesus Christ, make up your mind, Laozi. At least Thomas Friedman made up his mind about the shape of the earth. And then we get to Shinto, which apparently applies to only one part of the earth, Japan. The same way one must be Japanese to be or understand Shinto, is quite similar to how one must be French to understand true laziness, Prussian to understand militarism, American to understand the meaning of Christmas, a Democrat to understand true socialism. But one thing all of these Eastern Religions had in common was finding peace and harmony within one’s self in order to bring peace and harmony to the world. Not only was this a bizarre and foreign idea to me, but these religions also had the nerves to tell me that I have to be “benevolent” in order to achieve true harmony. And then I paused, remembered Genghis Khan, Mao Zedong, Hirohito, and Kim Jung Il, and realized that no matter what religion is preached anywhere, humanity is still building a bridge to nowhere. I mean, just look at Mecca…

“20th Century Europe”

This class is worthy of neither a title nor an explanation. Probably one of the most poorly organized courses I have ever sat through, “20th Century Europe” was a combination of feminism and socialism swirled together into a cluster of misguiding information equivalent to that of the current State Department or the Bush Administration; I might as well have had Hillary Clinton teach the class, and even then I’d rather listen to a lecture on quantum physics than sit through this lunatic garbage. Never in my three years at Rutgers have I seen such an unnecessary collection of information deposited into a student’s mind. What did we learn in this course? Nothing; my brain is mush and the only thing I can reiterate from that class was, “LALALALA” because that was the only thing I was able to say after sitting through an hour and twenty minutes of pure, vile, idiocy. Because, yes, all of Europe in the 20th Century is defined by the modern girl and the holocaust. No, professor, I quite frankly don’t care about European menstrual cycles and think something is missing when you mention only half the victims of the genocide of the century. What about the gypsies, homosexuals, and Catholics killed during the holocaust? The Normandy invasion? The political bipolarity in Europe? Jupiter Missiles? Battle of the Bulge? Any World War I battle? Not even the Somme? NOPE. Apparently a woman finding her missing sexuality in Yugoslavia clearly triumphs state politics, war, diphtheria, and totalitarianism. It’s no wonder your gender finds it hard to get jobs! Sheesh!

So Roy though it would be a good idea to teach a “FIGS Class.”

Shattering any genuine desire I had for becoming a college professor, I learned that freshmen were the bane of my existence, the unholy scriptures of universal thought, the flaw in metaphysics, the ugliness found in beauty. They were capable of destroying worlds and collapsing empires. Teaching them history was like driving nails through hard steel. While most survived my Bataan Death March, others simply couldn’t see the dark side (or the real world). I noticed that Freshmen students are, not dumb, but insanely naïve and happy-go-lucky. Their idealism would have made Barack Obama shatter in tears and Karl Marx rethink his Manifesto. But why is this the case? It’s because this is what you get when you place a cynical alpha-male behind enemy lines in none other than Candy Mountain or a scene right out of the Teletubbies. I only wish the school recognized me as an individual versus a Rutgers ID# and then they would realize that sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows are detrimental to my physical health and mental wellbeing. After suffering from severe hyperventilation, I made it out alive… kinda.

So what did this semester come down to? I’m not really sure what but my perception on humanity hasn’t changed. I’m still the disgruntled citizen who despises his government for taking away his money. I still think Jesus was one hell of a magician, Mohammed, the greatest pimp of his time, and Zoroaster, a bearded man whose only competition for fame and facial hair is Billy Mays. I have officially lost all hope for humanity; Thomas Hobbes, here’s a blank check, you fill out an appropriate amount that you deem necessary, sir. This semester, I have encountered liars, bullshitters, thieves, Lady Gaga, socialists, and even a rapist, but there’s still one thing I’ll never stop believing in, and that’s McDonald’s because Smiles Are Free “in these hard economic times.”

And speaking of McDonald’s, nothing irks me more than seeing a fat schmuck with earrings and a buzzed haircut (let’s not forget the tape-up) walking around College Avenue hanging out with his “bros” at the frat, thinking he amounts up to something in life because he was capable of downing a few watered down beers (how dare he even call that “beer”) and playing with his little fire-hose on the weekend. Can we add more irksome people to this list? Of course we can, Roy. How about that obnoxious professor who says “right?” at the end of every sentence to the point where the girl next me keeps tally marks of how many times the word has been said in one class period (376 count one Thursday class). That idiot student, who sits in the back of the classroom, offers a tidbit of information once in a while about something he knows nothing about, like taxes, foreign policy, common sense; and then you ask yourself, “How did he ever get into this school?” And then you realize, “Oh, this is Rutgers.” Or how about the mongoloids heaped up in the Cook Campus Center, studying for their Biophysics Engineering (I still don’t know what that is) final since March of last year? Legislators who argue about “behind closed door deals” when they should be arguing about actual Legislation? Authors who come up with cutesy titles like “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” thinking that the world can easily be divided into two groups of people? Americans who want healthcare with low taxes? Parents with kids but don’t know how to raise them? Bill O’Reilly?

So after all was quiet on the Western Front, I noticed that not much has changed. The system remained the same, except with new agents like, Lady Gaga, the (never came too soon) ghost of Michael Jackson, and Ben Bernanke. It was these irksome people that made me get up in the morning, smell the fresh air emanating from the Everglades of Cook, and say, “I love this world; we must really be scraping the bottom of the gene pool by now!” Keep it up guys.

I really miss New York, where people there are more intelligent, severely short tempered (for the right reasons), and blunt about everything. Sorry New Jersey, but you are still the unnecessary buffer zone that New Yorkers have to pass through to get to Philadelphia. Even then, your existence is still futile and detrimental to the wellbeing of children around the world. Your “towns” exert a beautified sense of bore that only a native or mongoloid can understand. So what do you people do in your spare time? Sex, drugs, and alcohol? While New Yorkers haul the weight of the East Coast on their shoulders? Because we have better things to do with our time? No thanks, you’re another reason why New York City should secede and become its own city-state. We’ll hail a militia of hippies or something.

I just can’t wait to see what the world brothel has to offer me besides Sam Huntington and pansy UN Eurocrats.

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The economy fell, along with my education

frisco_educationI have a really sad story for you this time. There once was this country. And in this little country, the people complained a lot and its politicians were hungry for power. So, the politicians got together and asked, “How can we pretend to educate these people?” One politician stood and said, “I know! We’ll offer them ‘free education’ and then pressure the population to go into higher education to inevitably devalue education!” The other politicians looked at each other, nodded and agreed to this little compromise.

Maybe one day, when I’m old and decrepit I’ll have a real story for you but I hope this one sufficed. The American education system and societal values are innately flawed and corrupt for several reasons. Let’s take a look at the world we live in today. In the United States, more and more High School seniors are receiving college acceptance letters. There are several problems with this.

The more people see education as a right rather than a skill in this country, the lower the value of education will be. For example, if everyone in this country had a college degree (which is becoming the case today), the value of the college degree within itself becomes depreciated and ultimately valueless. Why? Because everyone has one. No longer does an employer look at the diploma or transcript and notice that you stand out from the rest of the herd.

But what does this do to the value of your education? If more and more students begin attending higher education, colleges and universities begin to act like assembly lines. No longer does the university focus on the quality of one’s education, but rather the quantity of the education. No longer are you, the student, getting a quality lesson when you are stuffed into a lecture hall. In fact, the banking method of teaching is perhaps the least effective way of ensuring a student actually learns the material. Instead, students walk into a lecture hall, listen to a lesson, and become nothing more than a student ID number to the professor. Does this really qualify the student as an academic? After all, why do people go to college to begin with?

People have different answers to this question. Some say that people go to college for job experience. Others say that people go to college to live away from home. Perhaps they go to get a different taste of life, learn something new for fun, or maybe they go because of parental pressure. But is this really the culture that we have developed into? We essentially have successfully taken something as sacred as academia and prostituted the idea to the point where everyone, no matter how intelligent or dimwitted, can obtain this education and receive a diploma for simply sitting through a lecture and answering a couple of questions on a ScanTron sheet correctly.

A center of learning has been transformed into a Ford assembly line where intelligence need not apply. If people want job experience, what ever happened to actually getting a job? If people want a different taste of life, what ever happened to travel? If people want to learn something new for fun, what ever happened to our local libraries? If students feel pressured into going to school, they need to understand this and this only. Not everyone is meant for academia.

I have noticed that the value of my education has decreased exponentially the longer I stay in college. There are too many students here who take classes because it seems this is what society has dictated. These are students who quite honestly do not care about the material they are learning and are in school simply for the fact that they need a diploma to show their employer or a transcript to show law schools that they were able to twiddle their thumbs for four years. You know college education has been devalued when you’re able to substitute college credits at the High School level. Ever heard of “Advanced Placement”? Apparently, our society thinks that High School students are capable of college level work. I feel that college level work is “college level” work for a reason. It no longer becomes “college level” when those who are not in college are capable of such work. And hence, the value of college education has decreased.

When students show up to classes (or don’t for that matter but are enrolled anyway) and slow down my class discussions, it truly takes away from the academic experience from those who are sitting in class and actually want to learn. There are too many “A’s” being given out to students who tried their hardest but also truly don’t care about the subject material. Way too often do I hear “Leave me alone. I just want to finish this paper so I can pass,” or, “Can you help me out? I really need an A.” No – you don’t want to just pass because this isn’t the mentality or reputation a university should have when its students operate this way. No – you don’t really need an A if you are essentially admitting that you are not capable of doing the work. Again, this truly slows the progress of the class for those who are actually interested in the material, are actually good at the material and want to learn more, or those who are planning on taking this material into graduate school.

Since when does having a Political Science or History Degree qualify me to go to Law School? Why do so many students have the common misconception that Political Science immediately equates to Law School? Shouldn’t practicing law need certain preparation that goes beyond just knowing theories and policymaking? Of course it does. And I don’t want to hear “Political Science makes you think analytically,” because, no, it doesn’t when your papers are graded over a rubric versus the individual quality of your work because there are so many goddamn students lurking around my university searching for whatever class to fill “this and that” requirement.

Students today are more worried about finishing because they have to instead of actually learning something. And it seems that those who actually do the work end up getting the same grade as those who just want to get by. Again, the value of my education has truly been depreciated.

What America needs to understand these days is that a college degree does not naturally equate to “smart” as if the power of some god naturally endows those with a degree with some unforeseen power. It doesn’t. And as a result, a college degree is no longer sufficient enough for an individual to go places in life. What’s next, the depreciation of a Graduate School degree? Are we all going to become PhD’s or lawyers too?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with someone who chooses vocational school over college or university. And in most cases, those who end up choosing vocational school have better experience at what they will be doing in their future careers than most college graduates do. And in even more cases, vocational school doesn’t take the bajillion and seven years to finish like college and graduate school need, which naturally means more time in the workplace and more money faster. Ever notice how most college graduates don’t know how to fix a car? Do their own plumbing? Electrical work? Housekeeping?

It ultimately barrels to societal values. And at the rate this society is going, we’re valuing a piece of paper over work experience or real skill. Leave academia to the academics. Young people need to find their skill and exploit it before they start exploiting the wrong skills at my expense.

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