Just some nerdy musings…

If you didn’t know already, I’m a university student studying engineering. And I really like it. I mean, I haven’t gotten to much engineering yet, but I know that I love building, designing, creating, and imagining. If it involves math, science, technology, engineering, I’m on it. But I’ve been doing a little thinking. Engineering programs are often accompanied by general education classes (GEs), which often get in the way of learning engineering as well as being often unrelated. What if there was a school that only taught engineering? What GEs were tied into the curriculum? English about engineering. The history and politics of science in the 20th century. It’d be awesome! A small university. I don’t know where this is all leading to, but in the back of my mind, I’ve been thinking about how awesome it would be if I could start a college based solely around engineering, a school that would produce the world’s best engineers, engineers that could easily move across different disciplines. Or what if I started a school in India? Or in Nigeria? Or Brazil? Just imagine these countries, typically known for strong bouts of poverty and illiteracy, full of highly educated people that can do all sorts of things with such great technical knowledge.

I don’t really know what I’m getting at. But starting a teaching institution excites me. An institution that can change lives and provide footpath for creating change in this world.

Incredible.

Tuition and Registration

I have a few things to talk about that have been on my mind and have been irritating the heck out of me.

To start off, I attend a public state university in California. The institution I attend is known for their engineering and agriculture programs and is known for producing excellent college graduates that are known to succeed in industry. However, on question entered my mind as I was contemplating this idea; how can a respected institution such as the one I attend claim to have students succeed in industry after they graduate with such a large amount of debt? How can they claim they want students to succeed when tuition increases every quarter? How can they claim they want students to succeed when students can’t even get the classes they want, much less need? This absolutely infuriates me!

Let’s start off with a few monetary figures.

Year          Tuition Cost

2002          $760

2008          $1681

2009          $2066

2011          $2662

% Increase from 2002 to 2011 = 350%

This is absolutely outrageous. Tuition keeps rising. But with rising tuition, you think that there would be an increase in class sections, more teachers to teach, a wider variety of classes, and more materials to work with. If anything, this has been almost the exact opposite, or has at least been untrue. While there may not be a lessened amount of teachers, there has not been a significant increase in the amount of teachers to accommodate the increasing number of students. I can personally attest to this through the frustration I have felt through registration. In the twelve rotation registration schedule, I was scheduled to be tenth. I needed (not just wanted) a chemistry class, a physics class, a math class, and engineering class to progress on my degree. I signed up for my engineering class just fine. I was enrolled in a math class, and while I am not totally satisfied with my selection in teacher, I have a math class. However, I am on a waitlist for sixteen classes for chemistry and physics, not to mention classes that I specifically have to meet with the professor to gain special clearance to take the class. There were absolutely no spaces left for the multiple sections of chemistry and physics that I signed up for. And I was scheduled tenth. I feel bad for people that are eleventh and twelfth because not only do they not have any classes, but they will be at the bottom of every single waitlist they apply for. And to think that the rise in tuition would be used for the benefit of students…what complete and utter bullshit. I understand that the university has more to pay for than just professors and equipment and that administrative jobs require money, but the $823M stimulus designated through the California State University system goes towards administration salary, not even towards academic purposes. (Pringle). More money is being funneled in, but students and professors are still getting the blunt end of things. Professors have to work harder, students have to wait longer for the classes they need and consequently have to pay money to an institution that is constantly raising the tuition fee.

While this makes me mad, what makes me even more mad is how the government and Board of Trustees, the sponsors and heads of the public school systems, think that making such drastic cuts is in any way acceptable. If anything, the tuition prices are hurting them. In a broad general idea, more tuition equals less students (to a broad degree). If a student is unable to get an education because of costs, how is this country going to progress? This country has been fueled by innovation and imagination, products of education. So why extinguish the match before it has even started a fire?

In another sense, the government is ever-more-hurt by the loans that students cannot pay back. Apparently, eight percent of loans that students start to repay end up in default (Pringle). I don’t need to explain why debt is bad. Debt ruins lives. Education should ruin lives. It should enhance them. If tuition costs weren’t so high, defaulting on loans would be less of a problem for not only the individual, the family, and a government which is already experiencing fiscal problems of it’s own.

It’s time to do something. And no, I will not be #occupying anything. That movement is lost. It’s time to think beyond that. It’s time to move beyond Democrats, Republicans, and party politics. It’s time to unite as one student body. It’s time to unite as one collective body to stop raising tuition and increase the quality of education in proportion to the number of students.

“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn …
and change.” ~ Carl Rogers

“As long as our social order regards the good of institutions rather than the good of men, so long will there be a vocation for the rebel.” – Richard Roberts

“The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything” ~ Albert Einstein

Time

Today was a horribly dreadful day. Not dreadful as in horrible things happened, but dreadful in terms  of weather. It rained. It poured. It dumped. And it was so gray. That is one thing I highly dislike about rainy days – the unavoidable overcast that seems to shadow my surroundings with gloom and inactivity. One would think that a Washington native would not only be used to the rain, but would embrace it. Not the case with this kid. I moved to California to find the sun, to basque in it’s deliciously warm glory all day, everyday. Except that didn’t really happen. It stopped being as hot as I wanted it to about a month ago. But hey, one can’t have everything.

Coinciding with the rain, I feel like I realized how horribly I wasted my time today. I woke up, worked on a project, ate lunch, and then spent a few hours trying to watch a 45 minute clip because of my not-so-fast internet. I stayed inside and did nothing pretty much all day, mostly because I was felt that the gloom looming outside my window prompted a reaction towards laziness. And then I realized, ‘wow, where has my day gone?’ I spent pretty much the entirety of my day being absolutely unproductive. I’m kicking myself in the face because I realize that dreams do not just come about by wishing, they come about by action. I have dreams, and they will only come about by action. My wasted day has been a roadblock to achieving greatness, not to mention a drain on the little time that I spend on Earth.

I guess this is a realization that I need to not only live everyday to the fullest, but I need to USE everyday to the fullest. I need to BE productive, I need to DO something and be ACTIVE. I’m going to try and make a goal to be productive and on top of things for now on.

Settled In

Two weeks have gone by since my last post. My-oh-my how things have changed. I’ve settled into my dorm room, gone through my first week of class, and met new people.

Whoa.

Not gonna lie, my first few days here were really challenging for me as far as the social aspect of college goes. I seem outgoing when I’m around people I am comfortable with. When I am around people I am unfamiliar with, I close up, which describes how I was for the first couple of days. Luckily I was able to move past that with our school orientation, which lasted five days! I was able to get to know my surroundings, my community, and people within my university, making me a lot more comfortable.

Classes have been generally decent. I have a theatre lecture and an introduction to chemistry class which are painstakingly boring, but my intro to engineering and calculus class are wonderful.

I’ve declared that this is probably the most boring blog post ever. My future goal – prevent boring posts.

Stay tuned boys and girls.

Transitions

My uncle told me a few weeks ago that never in your life will you turn more pages in the book of life than by going to college. I guess he was right. I moved in a few days ago and my world has turned upside down.