American Idiot
No, not that American idiot, though the sooner he goes the better…
Enough politics, this is about a fellow gaijin who shall remain nameless for fear of further inflating his ego - (I bet you think this post is about you, don’t you, don’t you?) He’s a pretty clever guy, (though a little slow in the way the few Californians I’ve met seem to be), and graduated from an Ivy League school, majoring in Linguistics. Recently, he’s been having a think about his future and has decided that he wants instead to pursue a career in physics (if such a thing exists). This I can understand, - after all, I changed my entire career path from Law to Computing pretty much on a whim a few years ago.
Apparently, most of the universities in the US have a rule saying that people with university degrees can’t start a new undergraduate degree. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty certain that there’s no such restriction in England, and a couple of my friends in uni were doing exactly that. My gaijin friend has this great idea to “screw the system”. When taking his undergraduate course, he was incorrectly awarded some course credits that he shouldn’t have been. This, he says, now creates for him a loophole through which he can go back to the very same school to study a second degree.
How will he manage to achieve such a feat? He explained it to me yesterday, in a conversation similar to this:
“So what’s this great idea then?”
“I can’t go back to school because I have a degree? Fine, I’ll voluntarily invalidate my own degree.”
<stunned silence /> “…What?”
“I’m going to ask them to disqualify me because I didn’t get all the required credits.”
“Your degree from an Ivy League university wannabe Ivy League university that took you four years of hard work loafing to get?”
“Yes.”
“Your degree that cost you roughly $40,000 and will probably take you half your life to pay for? cost you and California’s taxpayers around $70,000 and which you will be paying off forever?”
“Yep.”
“You’re going to call them up and tell them to withdraw it?”
“Uh-huh. Well, it’s only a thought… And it probably wouldn’t work.”
“But you’re going to try?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you’re insane. What happens if you don’t get accepted onto the Physics course?”
“Um…”
And there the conversation ended. Not exactly the most positive or supportive I’ve ever been admittedly, but really? So, now a request. If you have any thoughts on how best he can achieve his aims, without removing the single most significant achievement in his life on a technicality, please, be a kind soul and let me know!
Edit: Thankfully, it seems that the situation has been resolved. Hurrah for sanity! And thanks to Said Gaijin for the factual corrections!
October 28th, 2004 at 2:57 am
He could study physics from books. There’s no need to be sitting in lectures for 4 years to learn it. (A lot like Computer Science, then.)
October 28th, 2004 at 11:37 pm
That’s true, but I think he’s kind of counting on some sort of official qualification at the end of it… And besides, there’s no need to spend the 4 years actually in lectures. A few weeks here and there would see him through. (A lot like Computer Science then).
October 29th, 2004 at 10:39 pm
In my defense– not a harsh post at all, but I feel compelled to correct some factually erroneous information.
-I didn’t got to an Ivy League school, it was a great school, but the Ivy League is a sports league that includes Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth College, Harvard, U. Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale. While my school did have lots of ivy, it’s west coast location and public status render it ineligible for the Ivy League.
-I didn’t spend that much money on my education. Although the total cost of my degree was to the tune of about $70,000US, my actual financial burden, in the form of loans, is about $16000 (significantly lower than what most have to pay), which I’ll be paying off forever anyway. The rest was subsidized through grants, scholarships, California taxpayers, whatever.
-I’m lucky to have found other means (two universities in the US, many outside) that would let me pursue the course of study I desire without this above silliness.
-I wouldn’t say university was my single most significant achievement, getting into college was so much more difficult that getting through it.
-Drugs are not the answer. They are the question.
-All your posts are about me.
October 29th, 2004 at 10:53 pm
So you’re part of the reason California is technically bankrupt! And then you escaped to the other side of the world…
Anyway, I stand corrected
And you’re right about the posts - if you take the third letter from every fifth word from the posts in August through September a mysterious message appears. I was wondering how long it would take you to discover that…
October 30th, 2004 at 1:23 am
Said Gaijin — Could you elaborate on your reasons for wanting a career in physics? I’m interested in physics myself, but have never taken any kind of course in it, partly because my sixth-form college told me that it would be a bad idea to take more than 3 A-levels(!)
Incidentally, I’m off to Japan in March/April! Hurrah!
November 6th, 2004 at 3:25 am
I’ve thought a lot about why I want to go into Physics, but I first should say something about why I originally didn’t go into physics, namely:
Bad teachers (math).
Poor quality (read: public) secondary education in the states.
Bad teachers (science).
Good teachers (history/English).
I also had this idea that I wanted to go into politics because I was arrogant enough to think that I would better society or some garbage like that.
I always tested really well in math, science, whatever. I was losing interest in it though for several reasons, which would take forever to explain here. Suffice it to say I had some horrible, under qualified, unprepared “teachers” in physics and math that made me really dislike the subject. Uni is the states doesn’t require you to be tracked in the same way as in the UK, but I felt for sure I was going to be in the humanities, and did not pursue science or math at all, though the requirement courses that I did take were quite successful.
Now, why physics:
I’ve always had a natural interest in astronomy and I’m driven to know how everything works. My personal library consists of a number of technical and nontechnical science books alike. Starting at a young age: Telescope for my birthday, begging my mom to let me stay up late for meteor showers, I’d spend summers with my glow in the dark constellation book, I knew what a pulsar was before I could write in cursive letters. I’d have mom drive me to the mountains to check out a comet. Countless books on the subject. I even took a date out to the Mojave desert to go see the milky way for the first time instead of our Jr. Prom (I was also a poor cheapskate and apparently a nerdy loser). I would say that if I had had no interaction with other people from the time of being a child, and just had been left to my own, I’d be astronomer right now. But I had people trying to mold me as their own. As was convinced that I had to do something “meaningful.” How that became linguistics I don’t know. I read “Catcher in the Rye,” something about childhood dreams (my mom’d think me a hypocrite if I didn’t pursue what would make me truly happy when I’m always on her case about the same) and me being tired of begging profs for letters of rec for ling graduate school (number of issue there) and here I am, on the brink of starting something completely new. Boldly going where many have gone before, or whatever. I don’t want to do something by default. I want it in sight and I want to go after it.
How beautiful and amazing is it, to ponder our origins, to see back into time, to describe, discover, explain objects at incomprehensible distances and times. The visual beauty, finding meaning in what’s around us. Following Descartes-style search for truth and meaning by what can be verified. I think it’s my religion. Physics being so fundamental to our being, it is the science of all science.
November 7th, 2004 at 11:35 pm
Atheist!