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GreenRock
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Postby GreenRock » Tue Jun 19, 2012 5:16 am

What the other freshman and I experienced:

-Met up at 7:30 (that's really early for me) on one side of the campus for check-in
-Walked to other side of the campus where the auditorium is located.
-Sat through the cheesy-themed welcoming they had set up for us (Game board theme? wtf?) in said auditorium.
-Sat some more
-More sitting
-We sat there for damn near four hours
-oh, how we freshmen sat in those chairs
-lunch
-They put all pre-engies in a preparatory math class for the rest of the day. They said we need to try and place into Cal 1.

Then I went home. Three more days..... Three more days.... Three more days... Three more days...
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Xarlaxas
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Postby Xarlaxas » Tue Jun 19, 2012 11:29 am

Ahh, you're doing an engineering course? It'll be just like High School then, but a bit harder.
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Xocrates
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Postby Xocrates » Tue Jun 19, 2012 2:11 pm

GreenRock wrote:-Sat through the cheesy-themed welcoming they had set up for us (Game board theme? wtf?) in said auditorium.

lolwut?

Anyway, personally, I hate college, mostly because it's such an unorganized mess. Courses have the minimum coordination between them so workload varies between swamped and little to do, there is only the most basic of standards on what you're taught/required to do so many courses depend as much of the teachers as of your abilities, the concept of free time vanishes (not because you have none, but because most work will be done on your own time. So most free time is simply time during which you're supposed to be working but aren't).

And 90% of what you're taught is useless.
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Feud
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Postby Feud » Tue Jun 19, 2012 4:39 pm

Xocrates wrote:And 90% of what you're taught is useless.


I think that depends on why you're going to school in the first place.
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Xocrates
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Postby Xocrates » Tue Jun 19, 2012 5:01 pm

It might depend on the degree you're taking and in which college, but in my case 90% is useless regardless of why I went there.

Granted what the 90% comprises may vary between individuals.
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xander
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Postby xander » Tue Jun 19, 2012 5:48 pm

Xocrates wrote:It might depend on the degree you're taking and in which college, but in my case 90% is useless regardless of why I went there.

Granted what the 90% comprises may vary between individuals.

It also depends on what you consider to be useful.

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Xocrates
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Postby Xocrates » Tue Jun 19, 2012 6:31 pm

xander wrote:It also depends on what you consider to be useful.


On my first degree, I learned anything between algebra, calculus (multiple courses), statistics, programing, Newtonian physics, an introduction to relativity, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, optics, fluids, heat transfer, management, chemical reactions, chemical bonding, reactors, biochemistry, fermenters, analytical chemistry, microbiology, molecular biology, bioinformatics, enzymes, organic chemistry among (many) others.

In total I took over 50 courses, several were redundant, plenty were useless (how much use do you think I had for quantum chemistry?), plenty that weren't I had essentially forgotten before completing my degree.

This isn't a question of what I consider "useful", there's already a definition attached to the word. Sure, the 90% value is hyperbole, and like I said the part that's useless varies depending on what you do afterwards, doesn't change the fact that most of what I was taught was effectively a waste of time.
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xander
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Postby xander » Tue Jun 19, 2012 7:38 pm

I disagree that "useful" comes with an already attached definition. Context is important. How do you define what is useful and what is not?

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Xocrates
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Postby Xocrates » Tue Jun 19, 2012 9:08 pm

Something that proves to be relevant and of use at some point.
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Feud
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Postby Feud » Tue Jun 19, 2012 9:19 pm

Xocrates wrote:It might depend on the degree you're taking and in which college, but in my case 90% is useless regardless of why I went there.


I disagree.

If you went to school to get a certain degree in order to get a speciic job or go into a particualr field, then maybe. But education, and earning degrees, can be about more than just getting a career or pursuing a particualr interest. There's other things that might be gained or learned there, such as working on deadlines, socialization (not politically, or maybe so), broadening one's ideas understanding and interests, etc.

It may not be of use to you now, and it may not be of use to you later. But I don't think that makes the information useless. Rather, you've chosen not to have a use for it. That's fine, it's your education and choice, but that doesn't mean that it was by nature a waste of time.
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Xocrates
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Postby Xocrates » Tue Jun 19, 2012 9:40 pm

Feud wrote:There's other things that might be gained or learned there, such as working on deadlines, socialization (not politically, or maybe so), broadening one's ideas understanding and interests, etc.

None of which is taught, all of those are things I had to figure out myself.

As such, my point stands.
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Postby NeatNit » Tue Jun 19, 2012 9:54 pm

Xocrates wrote:
Feud wrote:There's other things that might be gained or learned there, such as working on deadlines, socialization (not politically, or maybe so), broadening one's ideas understanding and interests, etc.

None of which is taught, all of those are things I had to figure out myself.

As such, my point stands.
I think the point was that it forces you to figure those things out.
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xander
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Postby xander » Tue Jun 19, 2012 10:21 pm

Xocrates wrote:Something that proves to be relevant and of use at some point.

Your definition has two parts: (1) relevant and (2) of use. The first part is ambiguous---relevant to what? The second part is a tautology---you have defined something to be useful when it is useful.

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Xocrates
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Postby Xocrates » Tue Jun 19, 2012 10:55 pm

NeatNit wrote:I think the point was that it forces you to figure those things out.

Feud's argument was a response to me saying that "90% of what you're taught is useless". If you have to figure it out by yourself, then you weren't taught.

xander wrote:Your definition has two parts: (1) relevant and (2) of use. The first part is ambiguous---relevant to what? The second part is a tautology---you have defined something to be useful when it is useful.

(1) the reason it's ambiguous is because the situation for which it's relevant is undefined. The only condition here is that the situation in question is one you're likely to come across.

(2) No, because having a use and being useful aren't the same thing. Furthermore, I defined it as having a relevant use. A fork is pretty useless for eating soup after all.

However I think the problem here is that I did not made clear enough that when I said useful/useless, I meant to a single person, not in general.

100% of what I was taught in college has a use, 90% of it is useless to me.
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Postby Ace Rimmer » Wed Jun 20, 2012 4:28 pm

Needs more random ...
Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast...

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