Dead White Male – shakespeard

01/26/2014 by Pat Shiplett Leave a Comment

Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman

I’m about a close to being a Dead White Male as you can get without being—you know—dead. Actuarial tables will eventually have their way with all of us.

You won’t see a lot of DWMs walking the halls here. Those darlings of West-Civ literature, philosophy and human affairs are hiding out in the English, history and philosophy departments. They’ve taken a real hit over these four decades and it’s partly their own fault. They insist on using dated syntax, they don’t show up for sensitivity training.

During the Decade When Everything Changed, women, ethnic groups, the conquered and exploited, and the merely forgotten rose up in unison to ask the question, “What are we, chopped liver?” The answer is not anymore, at least not in the world of higher education.

You can still study the old white dead guys but you have to look carefully to find them. They may be wearing disguises.

Kids smarter than me

01/23/2014 by Pat Shiplett Leave a Comment

Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman

These kids are smarter than me. Much smarter. There’s been a large and measurable rise in IQ scores over the past half century—if the Flynn effect is to be believed. This generation grew up in a world that manages and digests knowledge in more productive ways.

So you can imagine how wapperjawed I was when a bright young student yelled for the attention of her professor using only his last name. Kimberly, nooooooo!

Maybe book smarts aren’t enough. Maybe a gap year spent in any kind of employment involving cooking fat would helpful.

Foreign kids dating

01/22/2014 by Pat Shiplett Leave a Comment

Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman

This hallway is a lovers lane.

Many mornings before classes, young couples sit on couches in the nooks that stretch down the hallway. There’s just enough room for two people. There is an illusion of privacy.

While working with the immigrant parents of kids like these, I’ve learned that their cultures have very different ideas about courtship and marriage. It’s possible that the half hour or so young people steal together here is one of the few private moments they enjoy without supervision.

Ghetto Kids Baggy Pants

01/20/2014 by Pat Shiplett Leave a Comment

Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman

There are kids here who spent years rushing home from high school before the evenings turned dangerous. Parents got home too late for schoolwork. They’ve never been to Awards Night.

They look through a fence built around them and wonder if life on the other side is only for kids richer and luckier than them.

Community colleges provide acetylene and oxygen, and when students get the mixture just right, they burn through metal. Tuition is relatively inexpensive by 4-year college standards. With hard work and luck, they’ll finally transfer to a university. They’ll need those goggles every step of the way.

Rich kids at community college

01/17/2014 by Pat Shiplett Leave a Comment

Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman.

There is a group of nicely turned-out kids you would expect to find at prestigious universities rather than at a community college.

Some of them have confided to me (a safe uncle that won’t lecture them) that they had botched high school; others have limped home after a semester or two at college. This is way traumatic for the children of high-expectation zip codes. Community colleges offer a path to redemption—and older students particularly embrace the gift of a do-over.

You and I will meet these kids again. One of them may stabilize our vital signs on the way to an emergency room, another may ping the OS that allows us to control a car when we are deep into our dotage.