What about all us non econ majors?

I'm always pleasantly surprised when I glance through a Hatchet article and think "Wow, I should actually read this article."

As a senior trying to figure out how I'm going to pay for grad school in the next couple of years, the article entitled "GW Preps for Loan Scare" easily caught my eye.

I'm not sure that the two weeks of finance that we covered in my econ classes were enough to understand the article:

The subprime mortgage crisis, which tore through the financial markets over the last year, has reached student loans. Officials at GW are wary, but confident that students here will be able to find loans to cover the University's sky-high tuition...

Student loans issued by brokers have traditionally been resold to investors on bond markets, since brokers rarely have the funds to cover the loan themselves. But the collapse of the market for home mortgages last year made such debt a pariah for investors, and student loans are the latest victim.

Eh?

By the end of the article, Bob Dylan lyrics popped into my head: "Something is happening here, but you dont know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?"

I consider myself relatively ready for the "real" world, but if i can't follow a Hatchet article, perhaps I'm not as ready as I think.

And just thinking about the current price of GW that many students have to finance through loans, I'm sure I'm not the only one who was alarmed.

Study Abroad. More staff. More results?

Thank goodness for a competent person on the job. Well done Nicole Capp. I’m thrilled to hear that the study abroad office will be adding more people to its staff.

"When you study abroad, it's a one-time thing - if something goes wrong, no one bothers to fix it. But I talked to other students, and we all would like a more competent Office of Study Abroad." Said sophomore Mackenzie Drutowski.

Exactly! As I sat in a high rise on Passeig de Gracia overlooking Plaza Catalunya, the number one tourist spot in Barcelona, I thought “Wow, I’m lucky to be here. But I wish I could check my email.” I was paying triple what my peers in the program were paying and the flaky snail speed internet isn’t what I signed up for.

I voiced my concerns in IES Barcelona Student Council and to a study abroad officer in person. Result? Clearly, I was not very effective. Look at this conversation with my friend who is in the IES Barcelona program this semester.

Christine: hahah yes
me: and the internet works? big shocker
Christine: I KNOW!
seriously
its weird that its working right now
it won’t be for long
IES sucks
me: it sucks cause like there is nothing we could do except complain about the internet, they fixed sometimes and then the new class comes in, knows nothing and still the problem exists
me: u there?
me: ???

End of conversation

So why don’t they listen? Does study abroad care what people think? Or are they done with you once they have the thousands of extra dollars that they profited off you? Why don’t we ask them? Email them at studyabr@gwu.edu or email Parent Services parents@gwu.edu. When they get angry parents calling, stuff gets done!

Want a Desk Job After Graduation? Neither Do I

Lately I have been thinking about how I'm actually going to be graduating college next year. At first, I was extremely sad. Not because of the working world, but because my friends live far away, and I enjoy sitting around, drinking, barbecuing, and having little to no responsibilities.

Then I got a job in an office and was pretty excited because I could be on the computer and relax at times. Two hours later, I decided I was BORED and desk jobs are NOT for me. This was my second freak out about graduating...where am I gonna get a job with little to no sitting, that pays well?

All of a sudden a bell went off in my head...the PEACE CORPS!! I have met so many people and randomly asked what they did after college, and I have just been realizing a ton of people go into the Peace Corps.

And the interview process seems pretty easy when they ask one lovely question

Are you ready to embark on a new journey in life, explore new opportunities, or be a catalyst for change?

YES...YES I DO! Luckily for GW students the Career Center is giving us an easy opportunity to get more information on the subject. On April 29th, there will be an open forum for discussions and to figure out if the Peace Corps is right for you. To find more details on the event click here.

We students is dumb?

My friend Alicia wrote on my Facebook wall today:

I sincerely hope there will be some sort of GW blogspot entry about the "GW has less intelligent students" hatchet story. Worst. Headline. Ever.

I couldn't agree more. While the headline is actually "Intelligent students decrease," problems still remain:

1. The headline does not tell anything about the story - the headline has nothing to do with the decline of National Merit students at GW or the allocation of scholarships and resources for more advanced students, which is what the story is about.

2. The headline is misleading - fewer National Merit students doesn't mean fewer intelligent students. As one professor once put it in one of my classes, having an advanced degree doesn't necessarily mean you're smarter than someone who doesn't. The same principle applies - quantifying the "intelligence" of a college student by a test is inaccurate and, well, unintelligent.

3. The headline paints GW in a bad light - while I know it isn't The Hatchet's job to defend the school, and while I recognize the subject was a necessary and important one to cover, is that really the headline we want prospective students to see when they come for April visits?

Granted, this is all a matter of semantics. But still, perhaps a better choice of words would have been, "Fewer National Merit students coming to GW," or "Does GW value smart students?" Both of these address the topic of the article, and are truthful, without making it seem that GW students are growing stupider by the year.

PS - Alicia, who suggested I blog about this, is studying abroad in Prague, which just goes to show how these perceptions and critiques don't stop at the boundaries of campus.

Somebody, please pinch me because I'm not sure if I'm living in reality

My last post was a bit placid, I thought, and I felt almost guilty that I had betrayed my own style. But I'm about to redeem myself with this rant.

I am really tired of hearing about all things religious on campus. I am an atheist, and I hate to have to be the target of marketed events such as the recent GW Forum on Faith and Politics, sponsored by the GW College Democrats. (Ironically, the Google search for this event leads you to the Beltway Atheists Meetup group and not even the GW Dems or anything GW-related).

It's events like these that tick me off because they show that we as a nation have adopted a mindset that as long as you have faith (whatever nebulous concept *that* is), you are automatically a person of credibility and authority. Bill Maher gets it right when he talks about the fact that religions are "fables that were written by men before men knew what atoms were":



Now, I can tolerate the occasional event here or there - and like I said before, some of the Muslim Students Association's events were really informative and interesting--but only from an educational perspective. Listening to lectures about Rumi and his poetry or about Jesus as an Islamic prophet was provocative, but did they make me recite the profession of faith of Islam? No.

But the whole premise of the GW College Democrats' event is flawed. Presupposing that it is good for a candidate to talk about faith in an open and direct way may be good for campaign strategy, but it really is not good for the population that Maher calls "rationalists", i.e., those who do not believe in any supernatural being.

So I only get angry about these things when I feel that I am being imposed upon from above -- and I would regard the Forum on Faith and Politics and the underlying assumption behind it as an imposition.

But of course, I probably would not have been inspired to write this post if I had not been so angry that it took me A HALF HOUR to get across Pennsylvania Avenue today after my class on K Street. Why? Because of the Pope. And the flock of insufferable sheep -- literally and figuratively who stood behind the gates to gawk at the visitor, his holiness.

The world does not need to stop for religion and for faith... business is simply more important. This blog post, for example, is an example of business as it fulfills a class requirement that I have to take care of lest my grade suffers. I could not do this post until I got back across the street to my computer, which was an almost impossible task today. I was therefore impeded from conducting business because of the irrational beliefs of so many and their almost laughable presence en masse.

After class let out, I made the huge mistake of walking towards Georgetown - and then fell victim to my own faulty logic of "a circle goes all the way around, so I can get to the other side even if I cannot right now". Yeah, the gate was still there on 24th Street. So I ask MPD, which is just oh-so-helpful, and they tell me you cannot get across "at this time" and I say "is there a barricade, say, as far down as 19th Street?" and I get "Walk a ways down...I don't know". You don't know. YOU'RE THE POLICE!!! I mean, if you have to protect the Pope, you would know where the barricades are and are not, right?

But all of this interrupted my daily life and wrongfully precluded me from doing the legitimate things that I needed to do. (I'm not sure if the barricades are still up, but in case they are, I'm counseling anyone reading this not to even try to go near Penn Ave.).

The GW Hatchet covered the Pope's visit and I won't go so far as to deem it as not newsworthy -- because it is. But that's exactly the problem - people should not have to feel the need to stop their lives for this. And they certainly do... because there weren't just tourists - I probably saw more people with their ID badges than I ever have leave work just to get a glimpse of the Popemobile.

I'm not totally sure what the world is coming to, but this didn't help me to be optimistic. It is very hard to be in a good mood when you are surrounded by thousands of irrational tourists who are slow-moving, in the way, taking up space, impeding myself and tons of other students who actually have to care about getting to classes, completing work, and things that are on the whole much more substantially important than unfettered, illogical mania.

Advising blues

When I read the Michael's post on the flaws of the CCAS advising system, I finally felt that I had some company. I remember very fondly an experience I had at the beginning of the semester with the advising system - and it was not a particularly bad one, but it was nonetheless pretty memorable.

Admittedly, I had not chosen my courses very carefully and ended up needing to drop something about three or four weeks into the semester (and I needed to replace this with another class). I consulted with the Columbian College advisers, who basically told me things that I knew and some things that were a bit condescending.

Their two observations about my planned schedule change were: a) that I would be a full-time student even with just dropping the one course, and b) that I was taking two upper 100-level classes as a freshman. To this latter point they seemed fearful, asking me if I was alright, comfortable, etc. in those classes since, according to them, "we usually advise freshman against taking them".

(Did I mention that one of these classes was SMPA 194?)

Of course they did not forbid me from changing my schedule - they cannot do that given the absence of an academic hold or some upper-level restriction. But the entire experience felt too impersonal, extremely business-as-usual (this was walk-in advising, so there was no real connection between the adviser and I) and just overall not extremely helpful.

I had already known that my full-time status would not be jeopardized, and I was looking for guidance about whether or not this change would be a good one to fulfill my remaining General Curriculum Requirements. Saying that the change would still fulfill a GCR is not exactly helpful - it is useful information to be sure, but I wanted the adviser to give me a personal recommendation of whether or not this was a specifically smart move. This is what I never got.

And then later that day I visit the Elliott School of International Affairs to inquire about the possibility of a completing a double major in a school that I'm not actually in right now. The academic planning aside, I was simply blown away by the quality of their advising system - it was professionalized, personal and I definitely felt like I was being taken care of to the nth degree. They were easily able to answer all of the questions I had, and I could tell that these advisers did this for a living. And their office suite was not parallel to anything else I had ever seen on campus, especially not the fear-inducing bureaucratic-appearing CCAS suite in Phillips Hall.

It was just very interesting that I was more than accommodated in a school that I'm not even enrolled in -- and that in the one I am enrolled in, my experience was not up to par to say the least.

I agree with Michael when he said that the Hatchet hit the nail on the head. Their expository piece on the CCAS advising system, though it is not surprising, is thoroughly disheartening. The following quote sums up the huge problem:

The school only employs nine professional advisers, including a director, for more than 5,200 students. There are also a few advisers who only see pre-med and pre-law students. The rest of CCAS's advising responsibilities are left to faculty advisers who also juggle teaching, grading, researching and holding office hours of their own.

So it is obvious - the adviser-student ratio is so woefully low, and as a consequence of this, advising becomes less and less personalized.

Nathan Brill from the Student Association says it right, as he seems to echo my exact sentiments about my experience:

Many incoming students are looking for a more engaging and personable relationship with their adviser so that they can get more tailored advising about courses and scheduling, the survey stated. Unfortunately, most (advisers) are so busy that students are rushed in, rushed out, don't feel at all welcome and are pressured to leave without having all their questions answered.

The similarity to what I experienced just seems uncanny. But apparently, Columbian has begun to consider how to overhaul the system, as the Hatchet is reporting that an advisory committee is close to releasing recommendations for such a procedure.

I just hope that these recommendations are sound, clear and feasible so that we can implement a system that will satisfy students and will also be on the same level as the advising systems of the other schools at GW.

Because really, isn't it really a remarkable travesty that I can get a better advising experience in ESIA, in which I take no classes at all?

The Truth About Tools

So, one of the words thrown around most at GW is 'tool' or versions thereof. I was making a white board video about net neutrality (soon to be posted) and ended up making a silly video about tools on campus as well. Alex & Colonialists: the campus crane makes a guest appearance in this video. Enjoy...