supercollegelife: funny facts, rant, photos, help, stuff...

[ojjairus]

dino you're a freshman?

[dino might]

^yezzzzzzzzir

[tyang]

GE's suck. My schedule is killing me! On tuesdays and thursday i have class from 8 in the morning till 6 at night. Wednesday i have one four hour class and all the rest of my spare time is spent working

[Guest Methimphibian]

someone on here mentioned having some type of trust/hedge fund at USC, I think it was in this thread a while ago

holla if you read this

[LoganL]

That gives me a bad vibe, especially considering the fact that I'm probably going to Rutgers.

Are you at the New Brunswick campus? Studying business?

Yeah Rutgers New Brunswick.

Yeah im going for business. This was the first year where they allowed 1st yr students to directly apply to the business school, though there were only 300seats for the freshman class. I didn't get one of those seats. And now, i have to wait till the end of fall 09 to apply to the business school. Im doing Management and the gpa needed is around 3.2 depending on the stiff competition of applicants for the management program solely. Each program has different levels of selectiveness to get into.

If you are planning to get into Finance program, then u better have a 3.5gpa or higher to have a decent chance.

Personally, Rutgers is a decent institute, the partying is good, the campus is pretty nice facilities are good. The bads are its a huge school, and alot of people (40% i heard from alot of people iono if its true though) drop out within the first year because they just can't handle themselves properly with the time management, hard school work and parties held on college ave basically every night. If i knew it was going to be like this, I probably would have took a good & look at other alternative colleges on my list that i got accepted into during my senior year.

If you do decide to attend Rutgers, do not do not pick Busch. Select your campus in this order- College Ave - Cook - Busch - Livingston. Plus all the business classes are either on cook or college ave, Busch is for pharmacy, engineers, and science.

[zzzboy]

whats a good way to just meet more people in general.

the people on my floor are alright. i hang with a few people mostly that i really like, but when theyre not there im pretty bored. most of the people on my floor are nice but i just dont really wanna hang with em. i have a lot of high school friends that i hang out with too sometimes..theyre chill of course.

where can i meet people that arent lame but arent crazy (eg frat status)? i mean, i just wanna hang with normal people that wear normal clothes (not people who wear running shoes everyday like a lot of people on my floor do) and dont have to party all the time to have fun.

any suggestions? types of clubs that have these kinds of people?

[branespload]

^ sounds like you and i could be friends

[jeepster]

man, you two are made for each other. Meeting people is easy, i.e. don't be a wiener and you'll make friends, regardless of their interests.

[zzzboy]

no shit. i can meet people obviously. but do i WANT to hang out with these people? no. i cant change who i am...im not going to force myself to like people that im not interested in knowing.

[Guest No Handclaps Please]

are you worried they will ruin your well dressed college steez

where do you go

[Fycus]

I'm having the same problem too, partly because I was in a frat. I think it comes down to making some kind of compromise in order to enjoy yourself. Maybe you won't have the most fun hanging out with running shoe wearing party people, but it helps to stay busy and hang out with them until you find somebody worthwhile.

[zzzboy]

i go to ucla if it matters.

ill try just having fun with random people i guess. aint gonna hurt.

[Guest Airjamie]

i go to ucla if it matters.

This explains everything.

[geekbonchic]

I have an F in class that I had dropped. And now I will have to spend the first part of my semester explaining to the administration that they've fucked up. Oh, and I need a lazy-ass professor from the Rhetoric department to mail me the old syllabus to claim it for my degree otherwise I can't graduate on time.

Fuckers.

[zzzboy]

This explains everything.

in a good way or a bad way? in a good way, it could mean that there are a lot of geeks/nerds so its hard to find some normal people. in a bad way you could be calling me a social failure due to the caliber of the school.

[branespload]

I have an F in class that I had dropped. And now I will have to spend the first part of my semester explaining to the administration that they've fucked up. Oh, and I need a lazy-ass professor from the Rhetoric department to mail me the old syllabus to claim it for my degree otherwise I can't graduate on time.

Fuckers.

that's what you get for dropping classes, pussy.

[ProfMonnitoff]

ha yea i figured but whenever i think of nokias i think of the tiny simple rectangle ones that everyone had in middle school

they were all jockin

fuck the haters, this is the best phone ever

no shit. i can meet people obviously. but do i WANT to hang out with these people? no. i cant change who i am...im not going to force myself to like people that im not interested in knowing.

classes? clubs? just go out and meet as many people as possible and while most of them won't be interesting, a few will

[Gouf]

in a good way or a bad way? in a good way, it could mean that there are a lot of geeks/nerds so its hard to find some normal people. in a bad way you could be calling me a social failure due to the caliber of the school.

friend of mine dropped out of ucla cause she hated the kids that went there.

I don't even hang out with people from my school that much anymore. Kicking it at a dorm was like a very small fraction of my college career anyway.

[dino might]

whats a good way to just meet more people in general.

the people on my floor are alright. i hang with a few people mostly that i really like, but when theyre not there im pretty bored. most of the people on my floor are nice but i just dont really wanna hang with em. i have a lot of high school friends that i hang out with too sometimes..theyre chill of course.

where can i meet people that arent lame but arent crazy (eg frat status)? i mean, i just wanna hang with normal people that wear normal clothes (not people who wear running shoes everyday like a lot of people on my floor do) and dont have to party all the time to have fun.

any suggestions? types of clubs that have these kinds of people?

you can always try pulling a dino fav and get so shitty you accidently walk into the wrong room time and time again. eventually SOMEONE will let you stay.. rest is history

[dino might]

in all seriousness though

if youre having THAT much trouble meeting people its either:

-your fault for being a self-conscious hermit

-or their faults for being shitty people not worth meeting which in turn means its your fault for picking the wrong school

seriously though, how can it be that tough? its almost like i want to STOP meeting people, i cant keep up with shit

[ProfMonnitoff]

yeah seriously there are thousands of strangers and nobody will ever get mad at you for striking up a conversation how could you not meet people

[zzzboy]

i guess its my fault then. all of my high school friends are chill ass NORMAL kids that i fuckin love to kick it with. the problem is that i was basically the one of the smartest kids at my school, yet i hung out with normal kids (many of them non-honors kids GASP) because they were way cooler than most smart kids.

here at ucla its pretty different. more smart people = more lame o's = less people that i like.

thats right im fucking judging people.

fuck its only gonna get harder to meet people now...more hw recently plus i gotta do activities for shitty med school = less time.

[fndmybetterhalf]

you sound like a egotistical fuckin loser

you can judge all you want but you the one with no fwends

[Jimbo69]

Everyone i know that has gone to ucla is pretty cool. You suck.

[zzzboy]

calm sons. sorry i posted that after my mom made me mad.

everything is fine.

[jeepster]

yo, I guarantee I'm smarter than 3/4ths of the people I went to high school with, but I never made honor roll save for the last quarter of my last year in HS.

street smarts v. book smarts, yo.

[dino might]

street smarts for the win.

little brother is in ap bio, ap chem, ap english blah blah blah 4.5 gpa blah blah

stupid cocksucker doesnt have enough sense to know that when hes cutting out his lame as shit skate crew stencils, with an xacto, on the mahogany coffee table, with no cutting board or newspaper, anything under it that its going to fuck of the table..

his peter-pan-never-wanna-get-old-egotistical ass is going to get chewed up in the real world

[jeepster]

street smarts for the win.

little brother is in ap bio, ap chem, ap english blah blah blah 4.5 gpa blah blah

stupid cocksucker doesnt have enough sense to know that when hes cutting out his lame as shit skate crew stencils, with an xacto, on the mahogany coffee table, with no cutting board or newspaper, anything under it that its going to fuck of the table..

his peter-pan-never-wanna-get-old-egotistical ass is going to get chewed up in the real world

I wrote a whole essay on it. I can post it if anyone's interested. Sup education class.

[mpcec]

Post/ PM it, I'm bored as shit.

[jeepster]

Post/ PM it, I'm bored as shit.

When the question was posed to us during class, “What constitutes book smarts and what constitutes street smarts?â€, many of us were at a loss. After reading “Street Smarts vs. Book Smarts: The Figured World of Smartness in the Lives of Marginalized, Urban Youth†by Beth Hatt, the reality of the question became illuminated and fleshed out in the debate that took place in class. We were extremely divisive on the issue and no one person could come up with a proper definition or a true answer to the question. We all talked about the importance of both, but there was no specific truth that could be derived from pitching both of the debated forms of “smartness†at each other. But this is essentially the point of Mrs. Hatt’s article – “street smarts†and “book smarts†are both tangible applications of education, but which is preferred by the marginalized urban youth that Hatt writes about is still in question. By focusing on the forces that apply to both types of intelligences, we can hope to derive a pattern and definition of both in a way that helps us understand the benefits as well as the pitfalls of the two.

First we have to look at what the term “Street Smarts†even means. In Mrs. Hatt’s article, she interviews a group of 18 youths, all whom “had to be low income and had to be at a particular turning point in their lives, which means that many of the students were struggling to get out of poverty, with drug addiction, and trying to get their lives on a more positive track.†(Hatt, 2007, p. 149) All these youths have one thing in common – they’ve been marginalized by the educational system, therefore they have put conventional “book smarts†on a pedestal and treat it as something of an unattainable feat that is only reserved for those of a higher socio-economic class. But why is this? Hatt argues that it is due to the nature of educational institutions reinforcing the belief in these youths that they are “educable mentally retarded†(Hatt, 2007, p. 148), meaning that they are of low academic ability, which is not necessarily true. When asked by Mrs. Hatt about their reaction to these classifications, they all seemed resigned to the fact that conventional “book smarts†are unattainable due to the simple fact that they were put in that classification during their formative education. In the stead of ordinary book smarts, these youths substitute “street smarts†where their teachers begin to fail them. “Street smarts,†according to these youths can be derived from actual life rather than a book and hold a higher quantitative value in the real world (the one that they are most in tune with – i.e. relating to their socio- and ethno- economic backgrounds) than book smarts. Hatt believes that “street smarts were connected with being able to maneuver through the structures in their lives such as poverty, the police, street culture, and abusive ‘‘others.’’†(Hatt, 2007, p. 154), thereby enabling these youths to effectively deal with very real and very pertinent issues in their lives without having to classify it within the context of book learning. But once it boils down, street smarts seem to be the ability of these kids to get through their daily lives intact without having to worry about the convoluted and moralistic approach that book learning encourages.

“Book smarts†on the other hand is very simple. The youths interviewed were very adamant and blunt in their understanding of what conventional “book smarts†are. Some of the interviewee’s classified them as simply “Grades. A’s and B’s.†or “Test scores like on the standardized tests that they give... If you score high enough you get in honors class, and gifted classes.†(Hatt, 2007, p. 151), and gave the values of book smarts a very simple and qualitative value. But an important distinction, as highlighted by Mrs. Hatt, was that book smarts only give a very one sided view on the way things can be done, while street smarts was entirely more tangible and could be viewed in many different ways. The ways in which the youths describe book smarts is a filled with “figured†language taken from an entirely “figured†world – “Figured worlds represent the ‘‘rules,’’ ‘‘guidelines,’’ or social forces that inuence (but do not completely dictate), the ways people speak, behave, and ‘‘practice’’ within social spaces.†(Hatt, 2007, p. 149-150). The figured term to describe book smarts is “artifactsâ€, and many of the youths interviewed reference artifacts at an extremely frequent interval. Hatt identifies the standard conventions of the educational system – grades, standardized test scores, honors courses, accelerated learning – as these artifacts that are so easily recognized by the youths but so inconsistently achieved. Because the youths were marginalized by the system, these artifacts of “book smarts†come to represent the unachievable and something to be placed in high esteem, despite the fact that all of these youths are incredibly capable of learning, expressing themselves, and getting by on a day to day basis. This then brings up the issue of who can and cannot achieve the status of an educated person. How are we able to judge who is and who is not educated? To simplify things, we must take into account the very real fact that without a high school GED, many of these youths are considered far from intelligent. But then again, even with a GED, access to certain higher educational institutions is still limited due to their socio-, ethno-, and gender economic limitations.

So where does that leave us? After trying to define both street smarts and book smarts, we are still left with the issue of how all the outside factors of social, ethnic, gender and class can affect which type of learning and ability holds a higher place. To many of the disenfranchised, street smarts are given priority over book smarts. “A street smart person would know not to let a cop search their car without probable cause. Someone without that knowledge, maybe someone with school smarts because they don’t know about the law...the police can get over on, and

It’s just not going to happen to someone that has street smarts.†(Hatt, 2007, p. 154) - Sheena, one of the interviewed youths, gives street smarts the solid definition of being able to know what to do in a situation that would more commonly arise due to her or any of her peers decisions outside the classroom, whether it be dealing drugs or theft – she believes that it is not something that could be learned in the classroom but something that would be inherently known by anyone who considers themselves “street smartâ€. On the other hand, you have an example like Nickili who knew he was academic, but chose to drop out, and now is faced with the choice of continuing his extremely lucrative business despite its illegality: “If you can make ends meet, whether you’re educated or not... like in school I was a book smart type person, but when I dropped out I had to learn the street smarts part of it. And yeah, I was 19 years old, 20 years old, and I had $30,000 and I could do anything I wanted with it, but yet it was illegal.†(Hatt, 2007, p. 154). He is faced with the notion that despite all he was taught, and despite his decision to drop out, he cannot say that he is successful past his socioeconomic surroundings because he cannot legal declare himself as such. It becomes very clear as the article progresses that there is only so much that these youths can do when faced with the looming reality that they are born into. Many critics would argue that it takes book smarts to escape that reality, but many of those who are living that life would argue that street smarts could get them by just as well.

It is hard for us to even imagine the lives of others, let alone empathize with someone who has lived a life full of hardship that is unfathomable to us, who come from means, but it is important to look at the factors that contribute to these discrepancies. Social, ethnic, gender, and class background can adversely effect how one lives their life and especially how one can learn, and it becomes more and more clear each day when observing the world around us how this plays out in the real world. We are lucky to be given the chance to indulge in “book smarts†and become educated at such a high level, but simultaneously, we do not get the experience of someone who has been educated in the ways of “street smartsâ€. Both hold an incredibly high value in my mind, but it is hard to say which one beats out the other. The pattern that emerges is one that cannot be fit into any mathematical formula and cannot be bought and sold on the corner of a street in some ghetto, but rather, it is one that we must look at from the perspective of another who knows its intricacies and strengths, as well as the weaknesses. We can only hope that our life experiences help to enlighten us in the ways of street smarts by using our book smarts in a fashion that cannot be taught in the classroom.