October 15, 2003 Archives

For the past 1½ years, I've been a student at Mississippi State University. OK, I don't drive down to Starkville, but I work online and from DVDs, videocassettes and textbooks. So far, so good.

Last night was midterm time in this my fourth semester. I had two exams to take, Statistical Climatology and Severe Weather.

Climo went very well. Severe Weather - ouch - 77.5%. This is my low point so far at MSU. I looked at the class statistics and saw this was a particularly brutal exam for everyone.

I had taken quizzes and homework tests earlier this semester and had this instructor last year, but this test was more than trying. What made it worse was being able to read others on the class bulletin board, complaining about how tough it was... and then taking it myself, already in full panic.

This is so different from my first college experience when I cared not.

I have spoken to other adults who are enrolled in college courses or have taken college courses and I find the drive to excel is unreal and probably unhealthy. No one but me will care if I graduate with a 2.0 or 4.0, yet I am physically affected when my grades are below the standard I have set.

I am also coming to the conclusion that, to many, college is wasted on the young. Maybe it would be better to let people out in the job market for a while before making them commit to a course of study.

This afternoon, a friend called and said I needed to look at the website of Gambler's Anonymous. If you'll click on the image on the right, you'll see the full sized screen capture.

What a screw-up - it was plastered with ads for online casinos!

But it's not a screw-up and though the site looks like it should be GA's, it isn't. These ads are here by design in what I consider one of the biggest displays of bad taste on the Internet.

Who owns the site:

So, it seems, these folks have put a site up to sell gambling to people looking for Gambler's Anonymous. Is there no limit? This is despicable.