Could have been a nuclear scientist, like Homer Simpson, instead he'll be a US Marine.
- Superior Mind
- (not macbeth)
- +1,755|6909
That's very true AR!AussieReaper wrote:
Well, you did make it to uni, so you did better than most.Hurricane2k9 wrote:
same dude, if I had known that not giving a fuck about school in 8th grade would have screwed me over for life I would have actually tried hard.Cybargs wrote:
man i wish i actually did well in math so i can do engineering. all the engineers at my uni are graduating with 200k+ a year jobs
theres quite a huge shortage of engineers around the world right now (except in asia lulz).
Look, engineering isn't all that. That there's more demand than supply in that sector only means it's easy to get started. Beyond that it's like any other field of work; you prove your worth through what you produce. If you didn't pick a study that was completely ridiculous and otherwise actually know what you want to do with your education, you'll end up working somewhere with a decent paycheck soon enough. The 'knowing what to do with your education' bit is usually what's difficult for most, in engineering it's very straightforward as you are given one that seamlessly translates to a real life job. In other fields of study you have to think about the point of what you're doing, many forget to do this and just pick subjects at random. Don't. If you do it right, the rewards can in the end be just as great if not greater, even if your starting salary may be a little less. And let's be honest - I doubt your only goal in life is to rake in money.
I figured out some time ago that engineering really isn't my thing and that my talents and interests lie somewhere else. I will forever enjoy (mainly reading about ) science but never again do I want to be stuck solving equations ad nauseam. It's just not what I want to do and it's not something I'm exceptional at.
I figured out some time ago that engineering really isn't my thing and that my talents and interests lie somewhere else. I will forever enjoy (mainly reading about ) science but never again do I want to be stuck solving equations ad nauseam. It's just not what I want to do and it's not something I'm exceptional at.
inane little opines
That's fine. I've never said that everyone needs to be an engineer to be successful or anything of the sort. It's simply what worked for me. I don't think anyone else has said that engineering is the only correct path either. Uzique just took it that way because he knows he took the path of least resistance through college and he was nervous about his job prospects, no matter his bluster.
I think the attitude mostly comes from the fact that you have to really like engineering in order to finish engineering school. We tend to like our jobs, because the ones that were borderline got weeded out in first or second year. That's why you get a lot of 'engineering is awesome' posts.
I think the attitude mostly comes from the fact that you have to really like engineering in order to finish engineering school. We tend to like our jobs, because the ones that were borderline got weeded out in first or second year. That's why you get a lot of 'engineering is awesome' posts.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
Yeah I figured. There's a lot of internet elitism surrounding the internet sciences crowd though but I guess that comes natural if they're all really into it . As you said, you have to enjoy it to finish it. If you don't see yourself working in engineering for decades to come, you usually drop out.
inane little opines
Design & prototyping is fun.Shocking wrote:
If you don't see yourself working in engineering for decades to come, you usually drop out.
Paperwork, meetings, middle management, budget bullshit, and corporate politics is why they have to pay engineers to show up to work.
Lockheed Skunkworks under Kelly Johnson is the dream.
Office Space is the reality.
Hi uzi.lichanura wrote:
Lol at you thinking Uzique took the path of least resistance. Not sure if joking or if you just had a frontal lobotomy?Jay wrote:
That's fine. I've never said that everyone needs to be an engineer to be successful or anything of the sort. It's simply what worked for me. I don't think anyone else has said that engineering is the only correct path either. Uzique just took it that way because he knows he took the path of least resistance through college and he was nervous about his job prospects, no matter his bluster.
I think the attitude mostly comes from the fact that you have to really like engineering in order to finish engineering school. We tend to like our jobs, because the ones that were borderline got weeded out in first or second year. That's why you get a lot of 'engineering is awesome' posts.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
Welcome back, Uzi(?).Jay wrote:
Hi uzi.lichanura wrote:
Lol at you thinking Uzique took the path of least resistance. Not sure if joking or if you just had a frontal lobotomy?
A little less caustic than the old Uzique.
Uzique would've been sure Jay had a frontal lobotomy...
Which is why I'm glad Canada and USA are not 1 nation.-Whiteroom- wrote:
Bama has my vote... wait, I don't have a vote...
The irony of guns, is that they can save lives.
yeah, but your opinion is shit so whatever. You're to dumb to know that both options don't end well for your country.War Man wrote:
Which is why I'm glad Canada and USA are not 1 nation.-Whiteroom- wrote:
Bama has my vote... wait, I don't have a vote...
I don't think it's Uzi.rdx-fx wrote:
Welcome back, Uzi(?).Jay wrote:
Hi uzi.lichanura wrote:
Lol at you thinking Uzique took the path of least resistance. Not sure if joking or if you just had a frontal lobotomy?
A little less caustic than the old Uzique.
Uzique would've been sure Jay had a frontal lobotomy...
Picked this off of Joe Rogans podcast
http://theintelhub.com/2012/09/02/audit … -bailouts/
Apparently the major banks in the US weren't the only ones getting bailed out during the 2007-2010 period.
Here's the link from Bernie Sanders homepage
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/ … 060dcbb3c3
Kind of frustrating to read as a person who had no job during that time period, and who was denied unemployment. While drug addicts and leachers fed off the system. I was denied and they sent trillions of dollars over seas as loans with 0% interest.
http://theintelhub.com/2012/09/02/audit … -bailouts/
Apparently the major banks in the US weren't the only ones getting bailed out during the 2007-2010 period.
Here's the link from Bernie Sanders homepage
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/ … 060dcbb3c3
Kind of frustrating to read as a person who had no job during that time period, and who was denied unemployment. While drug addicts and leachers fed off the system. I was denied and they sent trillions of dollars over seas as loans with 0% interest.
Last edited by UnkleRukus (2012-09-02 21:13:36)
If the women don't find ya handsome. They should at least find ya handy.
Engineering isn't for everyone, it isn't easy, its rigourous, there's no room for interpretation, and there are multiple unrelated fields you have to get your head around simultaneously which is no hard work, plus all the Maths, a friend doing Electrical Engineering was doing higher level maths and more of it than his girlfriend who was doing a degree in ... Maths. She was getting him to help her with her work.
There's a reason there are typically more jobs available than people to do them.
(I don't suppose Uzique's course was easy, a 1:1 from the University of London isn't to be sneezed at, even from one of the lesser colleges )
There's a reason there are typically more jobs available than people to do them.
(I don't suppose Uzique's course was easy, a 1:1 from the University of London isn't to be sneezed at, even from one of the lesser colleges )
Fuck Israel
Oh deary, deary me... you boys! Honestly, will you never learn? I haven’t even visited this site for nearly 6 months, and I get Xfire’d to this little calamity! Will you never make peace with your own selves? The last few posts in this thread are wet with the white slick sheen of status-anxiety. Jay is that guy at the back of the room at all the yacht-club functions, sweating uncontrollably in a cheap cotton shirt, wearing a slight wrist- and vocal- tremble like the trademark affectation of a poor-kid from the pits that has made his way and is now busily genuflecting and reach-around’ing to all those he must bottom-feed from. I can see your nervousness and interior-identity turmoil from here, Jay, and it ain’t pretty. Perhaps when you start making a nice little middle-class engineering salary, you can truly elevate yourself to the refined sensibilities of the middle-class by hiring yourself a personal shrink for all these deep-seated insecurities and denials you so clearly harbour. I’m sure you’ll do a marvellous job working out your daddy issues for $400 an hour. Maybe it’ll help you figure out all of these inane and illusory things you keep telling yourself about profession x, class y, specialism z. Alas, it seems you haven’t taken on the most basic point of a broadly humanist education: the understanding that, in today’s hyper-specialized world (and market), people have to play to different strengths; ‘horses for courses’, in your blue-collar demotic idiom, if you will. So, apart from the outwardly obvious and surely torturous levels of mental torsion going on in your posts – which always seem to say more about yourself than any external person or thing - I’ll take the pleasure to correct you on some points you make (in a very belaboured fashion, it must be said), because I really do relish the opportunity. And you give me so many!
To turn around all of the remarks I have made in the past about your clear behavioural displays - which all point with giant neon-lit arrows to a diagnosis of ‘class anxiety’ – into a matter of me being insecure and uneasy about “taking the path of least resistance” through life… is both an act of near-gymnastically deluded rationalising and, quite hilariously, factually and empirically wrong. Seeing as the reasoning and logic behind your ‘argument’ is a little loose and hardly a priori self-evident, I’m going to reach out a friendly hand and assume that your comments stem from some vague and teen angst-y dislike of humanities students (ah, that old comfortable dichotomy…). Now, as I frankly cannot be bothered to re-tread that tired and oft-travelled path of argumentation – I think any person of moderate intelligence can see that the distinction between science and humanities ‘knowledge’ is fatuous; you are yet again confusing market-earning potential with some sort of intellectual or personal ‘merit’ – let’s just put that broad and unwieldy generalisation of yours to one side. Let’s consider my putative ‘path of least resistance’. How are you inferring this, exactly? Especially when framed in the snobby tone and superior position that your post implies? I have two degrees from a school that is infinitely better ranked – domestically and internationally – than your own, with far higher and more selective entry-standards, far greater standards of academic marking and evaluation, doing a subject that has just as much academic rigour and merit in its respective field and branch of knowledge. At which point am I taking a ‘path of least resistance’, here? I am confused how you reach this conclusion. I took straight-top grades in English, Math and Sciences are pre-college level, and simply had to choose one to go into that interested me most. I received a mark in the national top 3 (that’s three) of individual candidates for my pre-college entry-exams (and can produce you an AQA certificate as proof to suitably ‘wow!’ you, I’m sure), so I took English (and have absolutely no regrets about leaving my Science and Math studies at an A* level standard in order to take something I find far more personally interesting and rewarding). Is this the path of least resistance? Or is this a wise choice leading to me spending 4 years of time and money studying something I absolutely love? Tough one. I graduated top of my class – the top of my graduating year – summa cum laude, with a 1:1 degree; I won the prestigious department prize for best undergraduate work (with about $750 of pocket-change thrown in, for good measure); I was immediately offered a place to continue my research at UCL, or a full-excellence scholarship (one of four to be awarded that year across all Humanities departments) covering full tuition and student fees to continue studying at my current institution (part of the same federal English department as UCL). Taking full financial responsibility for myself, refusing any family help, I graciously took the scholarship offer (one of my Professors from RHUL/UCL, a veritable éminence grise and academic heavyweight, told me quite reticently as I agonised over the decision to “not look a gift horse in the mouth”). By next week, I’ll have my Master’s degree at Distinction grade, graduating again top of my class. I have a confirmed tutor for my PhD (more specifically a DLitt) research at Oxford, and I’ll be going up in a year or two, depending on funding opportunities and my personal life decisions. “Path of least resistance”? What are you doing exactly that I am not, which makes my efforts pale in comparison? I would love to know. Just from one philosophical-intellectual genius to another, of course; secret sharing, if you will. I'm not even going to overly trouble myself with the white elephant in the room, here... that pesky little ad hominem fact that allows one to observe that all this talk of "path of least resistance" from the Forum poster that openly admitted to taking as much government money, handouts and military->college help he could possibly get. Practically grubbing around like a pauper. Being motivated to join a military engaged in killing tribesmen and farmers in far-off places just so you could get an easier ride into the middle-class world of college education that your peasant ass was formerly denied from. Both ethically and financially bankrupt, then... etc-ra etc-ra. The big fat lady really doth protest too much, methinks... You know, you could at least be coming from Rensselaer or MIT or something with all this self-assured superiority that you have. Instead, you took handouts and did something truly mediocre. But apparently not of least resistance, no, not at all...
To Dilbert, who always seems to take the schizoid stance of both wanting to belittle Galt and simultaneously fit-in a snipe at me: let’s break down your statement, too. “Lesser college” of the UoL (which you are right in saying is one of the best universities in the UK). RHUL is widely and consistently regarded as the 4th-best institution in the federal UoL – fifth if you include Imperial – behind: University College London, King’s College London, London School of Economics (and Imperial College). All of those institutions are world top50; 2/3 of them are regularly considered world top20. “A lesser college”, you say, well… in terms of institution-wide ranking and reputation, I concede it is 4th in a race against some fine horses, indeed. In terms of actual entry-standards I think we should remind ourselves that all of these universities require absolute ‘top’ minimum entry-grades (AAA/AAB, at a stretch – nominally the same as Oxbridge), and the only real difference is in how many other people you will be competing against for entry onto the course. To study English at my university is actually one of the statistically hardest courses to get onto: you need top grades, and it is a small and highly-reputed department, thus leading to something like an 11% acceptance rate. Check that against the acceptance rate to elite US liberal arts colleges, and you have something roughly analogous. Again, “path of least resistance” seems silly, and “lesser college” seems like you are splitting hairs. Furthermore, academia is my chosen career-path, so I’m interested in real and actual research quality and departmental suitability, not some newspaper’s general public ranking. I was offered an MA place at UCL if I wanted to take it, but realising that the differences between the two departments was not that high, I stayed-on at my alma mater. If I was concerned at all with being at a “lesser college” I would have taken the UCL offer; the truth of the matter is that the difference, in both the real-working world (where the top5-6 colleges of the University of London are regularly used as feeder schools to top graduate jobs; the University of London ranks shortly behind Oxbridge, Warwick and Manchester for top graduate recruitment destinations – and yes, that includes the two smaller colleges, RHUL and QMUL), and especially in the academic world, is non-existent. And, at the end of the day, all of the above-mentioned University of London colleges are regularly ranked in the world top100 – that’s the top 1% of universities and colleges worldwide. You are quite literally splitting hairs. It’s more confusing with you, and I can tell you’re just doing it to be a contrarian, because you have absolutely no reason to be status-insecure yourself. Jay’s delusion, on the other hand, is nothing short of pathological – and likely personally harmful.
Anyway, it has been my pleasure to bust in here with some of those empirical facts that you ‘real men’ of concrete positivism and factual certitude love to use. If, when taking a glancing look at my long and illustrious personal biography, you come to the conclusion that I have “taken the path of least resistance”… well, I suggest you may like to take a closer look at your tools of inspection. Jay, you are by all accounts a second-rate thinker and an insecure buffoon, and it is my pleasure to drop in to correct you. So whilst I am considered a ‘rising star’ in my department (with a clear vote of confidence in my research from Oxford, now, nonetheless), you can keep mentioning my name, desperately trying to feel better about yourself. I’ve felt no need to come to this Forum (least of all to witness the intellectual mediocrity on display in the ironically-titled D&ST) for months… and I take it as an honour of far greater importance than any of my academic or life achievements thus far that you are still invoking my memory. So deeply must I trouble you, it seems. Have a nice life fellas, I’ll drop by in another 6 months to make sure you cantankerous miserable fucks are still stuck in your locked groove. Oh, and to update you on my own incredible life, of course.
P.S. I'm quite sure, using my top-rate research skills, that the above poster is Androoz. You think I'd really still be visiting this pointless shithole for weeks under the radar to discuss weed and "buying gas"? I'm too busy #winning at life.
To turn around all of the remarks I have made in the past about your clear behavioural displays - which all point with giant neon-lit arrows to a diagnosis of ‘class anxiety’ – into a matter of me being insecure and uneasy about “taking the path of least resistance” through life… is both an act of near-gymnastically deluded rationalising and, quite hilariously, factually and empirically wrong. Seeing as the reasoning and logic behind your ‘argument’ is a little loose and hardly a priori self-evident, I’m going to reach out a friendly hand and assume that your comments stem from some vague and teen angst-y dislike of humanities students (ah, that old comfortable dichotomy…). Now, as I frankly cannot be bothered to re-tread that tired and oft-travelled path of argumentation – I think any person of moderate intelligence can see that the distinction between science and humanities ‘knowledge’ is fatuous; you are yet again confusing market-earning potential with some sort of intellectual or personal ‘merit’ – let’s just put that broad and unwieldy generalisation of yours to one side. Let’s consider my putative ‘path of least resistance’. How are you inferring this, exactly? Especially when framed in the snobby tone and superior position that your post implies? I have two degrees from a school that is infinitely better ranked – domestically and internationally – than your own, with far higher and more selective entry-standards, far greater standards of academic marking and evaluation, doing a subject that has just as much academic rigour and merit in its respective field and branch of knowledge. At which point am I taking a ‘path of least resistance’, here? I am confused how you reach this conclusion. I took straight-top grades in English, Math and Sciences are pre-college level, and simply had to choose one to go into that interested me most. I received a mark in the national top 3 (that’s three) of individual candidates for my pre-college entry-exams (and can produce you an AQA certificate as proof to suitably ‘wow!’ you, I’m sure), so I took English (and have absolutely no regrets about leaving my Science and Math studies at an A* level standard in order to take something I find far more personally interesting and rewarding). Is this the path of least resistance? Or is this a wise choice leading to me spending 4 years of time and money studying something I absolutely love? Tough one. I graduated top of my class – the top of my graduating year – summa cum laude, with a 1:1 degree; I won the prestigious department prize for best undergraduate work (with about $750 of pocket-change thrown in, for good measure); I was immediately offered a place to continue my research at UCL, or a full-excellence scholarship (one of four to be awarded that year across all Humanities departments) covering full tuition and student fees to continue studying at my current institution (part of the same federal English department as UCL). Taking full financial responsibility for myself, refusing any family help, I graciously took the scholarship offer (one of my Professors from RHUL/UCL, a veritable éminence grise and academic heavyweight, told me quite reticently as I agonised over the decision to “not look a gift horse in the mouth”). By next week, I’ll have my Master’s degree at Distinction grade, graduating again top of my class. I have a confirmed tutor for my PhD (more specifically a DLitt) research at Oxford, and I’ll be going up in a year or two, depending on funding opportunities and my personal life decisions. “Path of least resistance”? What are you doing exactly that I am not, which makes my efforts pale in comparison? I would love to know. Just from one philosophical-intellectual genius to another, of course; secret sharing, if you will. I'm not even going to overly trouble myself with the white elephant in the room, here... that pesky little ad hominem fact that allows one to observe that all this talk of "path of least resistance" from the Forum poster that openly admitted to taking as much government money, handouts and military->college help he could possibly get. Practically grubbing around like a pauper. Being motivated to join a military engaged in killing tribesmen and farmers in far-off places just so you could get an easier ride into the middle-class world of college education that your peasant ass was formerly denied from. Both ethically and financially bankrupt, then... etc-ra etc-ra. The big fat lady really doth protest too much, methinks... You know, you could at least be coming from Rensselaer or MIT or something with all this self-assured superiority that you have. Instead, you took handouts and did something truly mediocre. But apparently not of least resistance, no, not at all...
To Dilbert, who always seems to take the schizoid stance of both wanting to belittle Galt and simultaneously fit-in a snipe at me: let’s break down your statement, too. “Lesser college” of the UoL (which you are right in saying is one of the best universities in the UK). RHUL is widely and consistently regarded as the 4th-best institution in the federal UoL – fifth if you include Imperial – behind: University College London, King’s College London, London School of Economics (and Imperial College). All of those institutions are world top50; 2/3 of them are regularly considered world top20. “A lesser college”, you say, well… in terms of institution-wide ranking and reputation, I concede it is 4th in a race against some fine horses, indeed. In terms of actual entry-standards I think we should remind ourselves that all of these universities require absolute ‘top’ minimum entry-grades (AAA/AAB, at a stretch – nominally the same as Oxbridge), and the only real difference is in how many other people you will be competing against for entry onto the course. To study English at my university is actually one of the statistically hardest courses to get onto: you need top grades, and it is a small and highly-reputed department, thus leading to something like an 11% acceptance rate. Check that against the acceptance rate to elite US liberal arts colleges, and you have something roughly analogous. Again, “path of least resistance” seems silly, and “lesser college” seems like you are splitting hairs. Furthermore, academia is my chosen career-path, so I’m interested in real and actual research quality and departmental suitability, not some newspaper’s general public ranking. I was offered an MA place at UCL if I wanted to take it, but realising that the differences between the two departments was not that high, I stayed-on at my alma mater. If I was concerned at all with being at a “lesser college” I would have taken the UCL offer; the truth of the matter is that the difference, in both the real-working world (where the top5-6 colleges of the University of London are regularly used as feeder schools to top graduate jobs; the University of London ranks shortly behind Oxbridge, Warwick and Manchester for top graduate recruitment destinations – and yes, that includes the two smaller colleges, RHUL and QMUL), and especially in the academic world, is non-existent. And, at the end of the day, all of the above-mentioned University of London colleges are regularly ranked in the world top100 – that’s the top 1% of universities and colleges worldwide. You are quite literally splitting hairs. It’s more confusing with you, and I can tell you’re just doing it to be a contrarian, because you have absolutely no reason to be status-insecure yourself. Jay’s delusion, on the other hand, is nothing short of pathological – and likely personally harmful.
Anyway, it has been my pleasure to bust in here with some of those empirical facts that you ‘real men’ of concrete positivism and factual certitude love to use. If, when taking a glancing look at my long and illustrious personal biography, you come to the conclusion that I have “taken the path of least resistance”… well, I suggest you may like to take a closer look at your tools of inspection. Jay, you are by all accounts a second-rate thinker and an insecure buffoon, and it is my pleasure to drop in to correct you. So whilst I am considered a ‘rising star’ in my department (with a clear vote of confidence in my research from Oxford, now, nonetheless), you can keep mentioning my name, desperately trying to feel better about yourself. I’ve felt no need to come to this Forum (least of all to witness the intellectual mediocrity on display in the ironically-titled D&ST) for months… and I take it as an honour of far greater importance than any of my academic or life achievements thus far that you are still invoking my memory. So deeply must I trouble you, it seems. Have a nice life fellas, I’ll drop by in another 6 months to make sure you cantankerous miserable fucks are still stuck in your locked groove. Oh, and to update you on my own incredible life, of course.
P.S. I'm quite sure, using my top-rate research skills, that the above poster is Androoz. You think I'd really still be visiting this pointless shithole for weeks under the radar to discuss weed and "buying gas"? I'm too busy #winning at life.
Last edited by aynrandroolz (2012-09-03 06:22:31)
Ok.aynrandroolz wrote:
Oh deary, deary me... you boys! Honestly, will you never learn? I haven’t even visited this site for nearly 6 months, and I get Xfire’d to this little calamity! Will you never make peace with your own selves? The last few posts in this thread are wet with the white slick sheen of status-anxiety. Jay is that guy at the back of the room at all the yacht-club functions, sweating uncontrollably in a cheap cotton shirt, wearing a slight wrist- and vocal- tremble like the trademark affectation of a poor-kid from the pits that has made his way and is now busily genuflecting and reach-around’ing to all those he must bottom-feed from. I can see your nervousness and interior-identity turmoil from here, Jay, and it ain’t pretty. Perhaps when you start making a nice little middle-class engineering salary, you can truly elevate yourself to the refined sensibilities of the middle-class by hiring yourself a personal shrink for all these deep-seated insecurities and denials you so clearly harbour. I’m sure you’ll do a marvellous job working out your daddy issues for $400 an hour. Maybe it’ll help you figure out all of these inane and illusory things you keep telling yourself about profession x, class y, specialism z. Alas, it seems you haven’t taken on the most basic point of a broadly humanist education: the understanding that, in today’s hyper-specialized world (and market), people have to play to different strengths; ‘horses for courses’, in your blue-collar demotic idiom, if you will. So, apart from the outwardly obvious and surely torturous levels of mental torsion going on in your posts – which always seem to say more about yourself than any external person or thing - I’ll take the pleasure to correct you on some points you make (in a very belaboured fashion, it must be said), because I really do relish the opportunity. And you give me so many!
To turn around all of the remarks I have made in the past about your clear behavioural displays - which all point with giant neon-lit arrows to a diagnosis of ‘class anxiety’ – into a matter of me being insecure and uneasy about “taking the path of least resistance” through life… is both an act of near-gymnastically deluded rationalising and, quite hilariously, factually and empirically wrong. Seeing as the reasoning and logic behind your ‘argument’ is a little loose and hardly a priori self-evident, I’m going to reach out a friendly hand and assume that your comments stem from some vague and teen angst-y dislike of humanities students (ah, that old comfortable dichotomy…). Now, as I frankly cannot be bothered to re-tread that tired and oft-travelled path of argumentation – I think any person of moderate intelligence can see that the distinction between science and humanities ‘knowledge’ is fatuous; you are yet again confusing market-earning potential with some sort of intellectual or personal ‘merit’ – let’s just put that broad and unwieldy generalisation of yours to one side. Let’s consider my putative ‘path of least resistance’. How are you inferring this, exactly? Especially when framed in the snobby tone and superior position that your post implies? I have two degrees from a school that is infinitely better ranked – domestically and internationally – than your own, with far higher and more selective entry-standards, far greater standards of academic marking and evaluation, doing a subject that has just as much academic rigour and merit in its respective field and branch of knowledge. At which point am I taking a ‘path of least resistance’, here? I am confused how you reach this conclusion. I took straight-top grades in English, Math and Sciences are pre-college level, and simply had to choose one to go into that interested me most. I received a mark in the national top 3 (that’s three) of individual candidates for my pre-college entry-exams (and can produce you an AQA certificate as proof to suitably ‘wow!’ you, I’m sure), so I took English (and have absolutely no regrets about leaving my Science and Math studies at an A* level standard in order to take something I find far more personally interesting and rewarding). Is this the path of least resistance? Or is this a wise choice leading to me spending 4 years of time and money studying something I absolutely love? Tough one. I graduated top of my class – the top of my graduating year – summa cum laude, with a 1:1 degree; I won the prestigious department prize for best undergraduate work (with about $750 of pocket-change thrown in, for good measure); I was immediately offered a place to continue my research at UCL, or a full-excellence scholarship (one of four to be awarded that year across all Humanities departments) covering full tuition and student fees to continue studying at my current institution (part of the same federal English department as UCL). Taking full financial responsibility for myself, refusing any family help, I graciously took the scholarship offer (one of my Professors from RHUL/UCL, a veritable éminence grise and academic heavyweight, told me quite reticently as I agonised over the decision to “not look a gift horse in the mouth”). By next week, I’ll have my Master’s degree at Distinction grade, graduating again top of my class. I have a confirmed tutor for my PhD (more specifically a DLitt) research at Oxford, and I’ll be going up in a year or two, depending on funding opportunities and my personal life decisions. “Path of least resistance”? What are you doing exactly that I am not, which makes my efforts pale in comparison? I would love to know. Just from one philosophical-intellectual genius to another, of course; secret sharing, if you will. I'm not even going to overly trouble myself with the white elephant in the room, here... that pesky little ad hominem fact that allows one to observe that all this talk of "path of least resistance" from the Forum poster that openly admitted to taking as much government money, handouts and military->college help he could possibly get. Practically grubbing around like a pauper. Being motivated to join a military engaged in killing tribesmen and farmers in far-off places just so you could get an easier ride into the middle-class world of college education that your peasant ass was formerly denied from. Both ethically and financially bankrupt, then... etc-ra etc-ra. The big fat lady really doth protest too much, methinks... You know, you could at least be coming from Rensselaer or MIT or something with all this self-assured superiority that you have. Instead, you took handouts and did something truly mediocre. But apparently not of least resistance, no, not at all...
To Dilbert, who always seems to take the schizoid stance of both wanting to belittle Galt and simultaneously fit-in a snipe at me: let’s break down your statement, too. “Lesser college” of the UoL (which you are right in saying is one of the best universities in the UK). RHUL is widely and consistently regarded as the 4th-best institution in the federal UoL – fifth if you include Imperial – behind: University College London, King’s College London, London School of Economics (and Imperial College). All of those institutions are world top50; 2/3 of them are regularly considered world top20. “A lesser college”, you say, well… in terms of institution-wide ranking and reputation, I concede it is 4th in a race against some fine horses, indeed. In terms of actual entry-standards I think we should remind ourselves that all of these universities require absolute ‘top’ minimum entry-grades (AAA/AAB, at a stretch – nominally the same as Oxbridge), and the only real difference is in how many other people you will be competing against for entry onto the course. To study English at my university is actually one of the statistically hardest courses to get onto: you need top grades, and it is a small and highly-reputed department, thus leading to something like an 11% acceptance rate. Check that against the acceptance rate to elite US liberal arts colleges, and you have something roughly analogous. Again, “path of least resistance” seems silly, and “lesser college” seems like you are splitting hairs. Furthermore, academia is my chosen career-path, so I’m interested in real and actual research quality and departmental suitability, not some newspaper’s general public ranking. I was offered an MA place at UCL if I wanted to take it, but realising that the differences between the two departments was not that high, I stayed-on at my alma mater. If I was concerned at all with being at a “lesser college” I would have taken the UCL offer; the truth of the matter is that the difference, in both the real-working world (where the top5-6 colleges of the University of London are regularly used as feeder schools to top graduate jobs; the University of London ranks shortly behind Oxbridge, Warwick and Manchester for top graduate recruitment destinations – and yes, that includes the two smaller colleges, RHUL and QMUL), and especially in the academic world, is non-existent. And, at the end of the day, all of the above-mentioned University of London colleges are regularly ranked in the world top100 – that’s the top 1% of universities and colleges worldwide. You are quite literally splitting hairs. It’s more confusing with you, and I can tell you’re just doing it to be a contrarian, because you have absolutely no reason to be status-insecure yourself. Jay’s delusion, on the other hand, is nothing short of pathological – and likely personally harmful.
Anyway, it has been my pleasure to bust in here with some of those empirical facts that you ‘real men’ of concrete positivism and factual certitude love to use. If, when taking a glancing look at my long and illustrious personal biography, you come to the conclusion that I have “taken the path of least resistance”… well, I suggest you may like to take a closer look at your tools of inspection. Jay, you are by all accounts a second-rate thinker and an insecure buffoon, and it is my pleasure to drop in to correct you. So whilst I am considered a ‘rising star’ in my department (with a clear vote of confidence in my research from Oxford, now, nonetheless), you can keep mentioning my name, desperately trying to feel better about yourself. I’ve felt no need to come to this Forum (least of all to witness the intellectual mediocrity on display in the ironically-titled D&ST) for months… and I take it as an honour of far greater importance than any of my academic or life achievements thus far that you are still invoking my memory. So deeply must I trouble you, it seems. Have a nice life fellas, I’ll drop by in another 6 months to make sure you cantankerous miserable fucks are still stuck in your locked groove. Oh, and to update you on my own incredible life, of course.
P.S. I'm quite sure, using my top-rate research skills, that the above poster is Androoz. You think I'd really still be visiting this pointless shithole for weeks under the radar to discuss weed and "buying gas"? I'm too busy #winning at life.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
I know that you are going to read it, very quietly and very patiently - several times, perhaps. And I know that you are going to agonize over it. Snippets of passages and lone rogue lines and pernicious little soundbites are going to lodge themselves deep in the troubled strong-tides of your lower psyche, bubbling up to the surface to remind you of your inferiority at the most inopportune of times. I look forward to seeing news-reports of your imminent breakdown and shooting-up of a local elite college: 'Hostage Crisis as Colombia Dons Taken Hostage by Unindentified and Incoherent Obese White Male'. Please just don't beat your wife too hard tonight. That's what you blue-collar guys from alcoholic deadbeat families do when you get married, right? Feel free to print a picture out of me to exorcise your demons on, at will, whenever you wish. So long as it helps deaden the pain.
- globefish23
- sophisticated slacker
- +334|6540|Graz, Austria
blib blab blub
There's a good chance I'll be going to KCL for my postgrad. The dept. of war studies is, for me, like a giant playground.
To all the above: I lold heartily. Do have to say it's incredibly easy to draw you out of hiding Uzi
To all the above: I lold heartily. Do have to say it's incredibly easy to draw you out of hiding Uzi
Last edited by Shocking (2012-09-03 07:45:49)
inane little opines
KCL's modern English is not as good as RHUL or UCL. For War Studies and International Development it's pretty top-rate, though. I'd recommend RHUL over KCL for Classics or Ancient History. KCL mostly ranks higher in world-rankings because of its bigger size and reputation. It's considered the working-class oik school next to UCL . Lots of inter-university rivalries in the UoL! Which is probably more the source of Dilb's comment (being an Imperial grad) rather than any serious academic comparison.Shocking wrote:
There's a good chance I'll be going to KCL for my postgrad. The dept. of war studies is, for me, like a giant playground.
Oh and not really. I get told pretty often that you sad fucks are still mentioning me (which is really quite sad). Of course I couldn't turn down the opportunity to destroy Jay's inane comments this time. I'm basking in the golden glow of post-thesis submission. He's attacking the wrong person, really, because of all the non-engineering people to try and rag on... I am not an easy target. I have given myself singularly to a career pursuit and I am at the absolute top of my game. Nearly as completely fulfilled as I possibly can be. It's a good job I don't bother coming here anymore, otherwise my smugness about becoming a doctoral candidate at Oxford would make you all physically sick. I really don't know why he even bothers.
Last edited by aynrandroolz (2012-09-03 07:49:18)
nahaynrandroolz wrote:
I know that you are going to read it, very quietly and very patiently - several times, perhaps. And I know that you are going to agonize over it. Snippets of passages and lone rogue lines and pernicious little soundbites are going to lodge themselves deep in the troubled strong-tides of your lower psyche, bubbling up to the surface to remind you of your inferiority at the most inopportune of times. I look forward to seeing news-reports of your imminent breakdown and shooting-up of a local elite college: 'Hostage Crisis as Colombia Dons Taken Hostage by Unindentified and Incoherent Obese White Male'. Please just don't beat your wife too hard tonight. That's what you blue-collar guys from alcoholic deadbeat families do when you get married, right? Feel free to print a picture out of me to exorcise your demons on, at will, whenever you wish. So long as it helps deaden the pain.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
From what I gather it's been dropping in the rankings though. Doesn't really matter to me to be honest, as the war studies dept. is one of the only ones of its kind in the world (not to mention that it attracts academia that research conflict from all over the world). I'm not too concerned with the other dept./faculties.
inane little opines
postgrads in the UK are fucking expensive though (paying the domestic fee thank god else it'd be even worse). Going to increase my monthly student loan and put it in a savings account. It's almost as bad as US unis. Could probably opt for a scholarship though, I'm sure there's more than enough of them available to international students.
inane little opines
Most rankings are really just much of a muchness. The UoL is a powerhouse. All the institutions have been there for 100+ years, at a top world-leading level. Many of the lower-ranking smaller colleges are still world-leading in their small and specific interests. Same goes for certain departments/cross-institutional study centres (like the War Studies centre or the Holocaust studies centre at UCL/RHUL, or the Information Security Group, etc). I wouldn't worry about 5-year fluctuations. None are 'falling from grace' or really taking any meaningful hit to reputations. I'd only be worried and insecure about the prestige of my institution if I went to a military college, and had just got married, and was now basically staring a lifetime of monotony and mediocrity hard in the face. Then I would be really, really worried.Shocking wrote:
From what I gather it's been dropping in the rankings though. Doesn't really matter to me to be honest, as the war studies dept. is one of the only ones of its kind in the world (not to mention that it attracts academia that research conflict from all over the world). I'm not too concerned with the other dept./faculties.
Also there are approx. ZERO scholarships for postgraduates in the UK right now. Current government axed them. Wouldn't presume. I am the only person I know to get a full scholarship for postgraduate study - it is literally an academic career maker in the UK, because it is so rare. Our universities are not private like in the States, so they don't have huge endowments and large scholarship funds; they basically have what the government says they can have. Which in the last 2-3 years has been very little. To get funding for my Oxford DLitt (of which I have practically the highest chance any individual candidate can have, with my record) I have to go against nearly 1,000 annual applicants, of which about 40 are accepted for a place (acceptance only possible on the proviso they can sign and guarantee £60k in advance...) and about SIX are funded. Cambridge gets about four funded places per year. Getting funding for research/taught MA's is even harder, because they're not as important or crucial (or expensive, furthermore) as doctorates. I was the only scholarship to be granted by the English department (a high-ranking and prestigious department - you'd think they have a lot of scholarship money!) for the 2012 year. International students have even less of a chance than domestic students to get scholarships - unless you can find one from an external body, such as the EU or your government or somesuch body that have a 'vested interest' in your war/historical research (which good luck, by the way, 'cause trying to get postgraduate funding is probably one of the biggest obstacles to most academically-inclined people, which truly makes the difference between those that 'do' as a career and those that 'do not'. You must be exceptional compared with your peers, and your research-interests must be relevant to the university and funding body [which in the UK happens to be the government, so doubly good luck]).
Feels glorious to be able to say all of this now, 7 days from completion with a doctoral place secured Good luck!
sux2bu Jay, really. I get linked to these remarks the week that I wrap up my MA, on my triumphant victory-lap. It really brings out in sharp relief what a sad fuck you must be to STILL be mentioning me and using me as a benchmark, whilst I've been away, you know, actually achieving and stuff. Do you reference to and link your Hegelian monographs on here to future employers? Mong.
Hi uzique