Yet another thing to waste time with...

I've tried doing one of these things before, but they always turn into extremely depressing missives about my lack of social graces and dreary posts about how I miss this that or the other. Why I think this will be different, I have no idea... but I never really had a ready made audience the way I do now... presto, change-o, biome becomes my own personal sounding board. Not that it wasn't already.


But yes. I do admit to scrolling through Noaman, Deepayan, and Shankar's blogs... and wanting to do some writing of my own because of the inspiration that I've drawn from them. As well, there are very few people I can talk to about what my life has been like over the past 4 months who could even hope to have a modicum of understanding, so this may be a more productive outlet.

Some stuff:

1. Why, when people ask about getting into medschool, do they very rarely (I've never witnessed it myself) ask what the make up of the people who are there is? This is what drives me crazy with curiosity: do most of them come from families with doctors? Are most of them rich? Do any of them have life experiences not relating to tailoring themselves for the most ivory of the ivory towers? Are those things valued in the slightest? The answers are probably hard to find out (privilege rarely flaps its lips about itself) and I'm suspicious that I already know them.... or at least have preconceived notions that may need tearing down.

2. I think I've figured out why UT is so tough. It's something I've turned around in my head trying to come to an understanding about it more than, perhaps, I've spent on my schoolwork this semester... It comes, not to a "Survival of the Fittest" conclusion (like most first years seem to immediately want to apply) but one of simple economics: UT gets 4 times the amount of tuition money from an international student as from a domestic one. The federal funding has been cut drastically to higher education in recent years, so they don't get as much from the government, either. They are a well known school internationally, so they can afford to market themselves to an international audience, and must keep to a certain standard so they continue to be attractive to international applicants. International schooling standards are higher than Canadian ones, hence, UT's educational standards have to be higher than your average Canadian Postsecondary in order not to be considered a joke school. All of this is extrapolated (rather without basis, I must admit) from a conversation that I had with a friend of mine from mat135 that went something like this:

M: our mathclass is a bit of an odd mix of people, don't you think?
A: Yeah... it's like there's no middle ground at all
M: Half of them look like they're bored to tears and the other half look like they're completely out of their depth... I'm glad I took the basic math in Switzerland, otherwise I would look completely bored to tears myself...

and that got it stirring... Then I looked back at some of the posts I took so much offense to in early bioming days... and they all said similar things (though not in very nice terms) about India's school system.

So, the question is... why is our educational system treating us like morons?

I have an answer, too (shortly: because it serves them well to do so) but that will have to be for another day.