>Got into a top 10 Uni>After years of online discourse, expect the worst>First day, first conversation, major discussion with a group of girls about Homer vs Virgil>Later that same day, a different discussion about Tchaikovsky vs Mozart>Also entertained some poetry discourse about Shelley and Byron (I was out of my depth)>Everyone is nice, friendly, clean, and clever>Caught one girl reading St. Augustin for fun>Politics never came up, and the one time it did, people were accepting of my opinionsWhat the hell, guys? I thought this was supposed to be a pozzed hellscape. Have I been lied to this whole time? Seems more like everyone is just excited to be around other people with similar interests.
Assuming you're telling the truth, I am very jealous. I'm a Junior and my classmates still write "to" instead of "too" and "your" instead of "you're". Also, while it isn't unbearable, my classes are very liberal. Whenever we read a book we do so from a feminist perspective or a postcolonial perspective or some other nonsense. It gets old after a while.
>>24749101>>24749019I had both experiences. And it wasn't even in a top university. (Top 100 in south america)Academic life is much, much better than people make it out to be on this forum. Everyone, and I mean everyone, agrees that university was a bit inquisitorial and now tolerate each other better. You can have discussions that criticise postcolonialism and whatnot freely, and nobody will care.
>>24749101I'm being 100% serious. It's like intellectual heaven. There's one troon in my class, but she hardly even brings it up. I didn't even know about it until someone else mentioned it to me a few days ago. Ah, it's so good, bros... It's so good. Tell us more horror stories, anon.
Can I go back to uni at 30 or will I be a weird old man
>>24749143>she
>>24749150And?
>>24749019Then tell us what school it was then.>>24749101That's sad to see. The only years that I really enjoyed university were the higher-level 400 classes as many of the weak minded people were filtered out. The first two years is basically high-schoolers without adult supervision and no teachers to babysit them. There were so many times in class faggots were yapping and the professor would do nothing about it.
>>24749152She's "ftm", so yes, she
>serious>stock photo of Harvard>stock photo of Oxford
>>24749019This NEVER happened
>>24749150Do you look old? I enrolled in uni at 26 and nobody cared
I actually DID go to an ivy for Literature and it is mostly like what OP says. The focus in class is on the work, and people discuss the text. Where you find wrongthink is mostly in the social science studies programs, anthropology, sociology, gender studies, African Diaspora studies etc, as well as outside the classroom like clubs and societies.
>>24749019You are either lying or are completely brainwashed and incapable of seeing the obvious
Whoa, I did not expect this amount of seething from you guys. In hindsight, I don't know why I didn't, but here we are. All I wanted was to deliver some hopium about the way the world actually works when you're outside this board.>>24749259Let's say I did take some pictures myself, would you not just say, "Anyone can go and visit the buildings, jackass", or something similar?>>24749299Could I not also just be a part of the 15.3%? Someone has to.>>24749295Based, good to know that I'm among my peers ;)
>>24749346>would you not just sayI would not>stock photo of UCLA>top tenYou don't know what you're talking about. UCLA isn't even top ten in the US
>>24749346I made the mistake of studying prison LIT and the class was full of data hunting grad students writing their prison abolitionist thesis by bulking up on black panther materials, one girl even did a land acknowledgement lol. The opposite demographic than my Ancient Rhetoric 2 class, where we studied how MA'AT Egypt influenced the Greeks.
>>24749019first time going outside?
>>24749299wtf is this data from?The data released by the College on Wednesday revealed moderate, but notable changes in the demographic composition of the Class of 2028. The share of Black students declined to 14 percent from 18 percent. The proportion of Hispanic students in the Class of 2028 increased by 2 percentage points to 16 percent from 14 percent in the Class of 2027, while the proportion of students who identified as Asian American remained fixed at 37 percent.https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/9/11/harvard-black-enrollment-drops/
>>24749375>admission rates>enrollment numbersThanks for demonstrating why you did not go to an ivy
>>24749019Phoniness everywhere
>>24749365The joke is that it's blatantly a stock image, anon. I was making fun.>>24749370At least you got a good spread of people, I suppose. Not sure what you expected from prison Lit, however. The Rhetoric sounds interesting. Never looked into Egypt much myself.
>>24749019Its a top 10 uni. Of course it would be. For plebs like the rest of its not like that.
>>24749019>Get into a mid-tier uni>After years of online discourse, expect the worst>First day, first conversation, get stoned with a bunch of chill people>Later that same day, meet someone who sells LSD for cheap>Also went to a kegger and had a ball>Everyone is nice, friendly, clean, and clever, and drinks and gets high all the time>Caught one guy doing methoxetamine>No one is a dick, everyone is chill, good times are had by allWhat the hell guys? I thought this was supposed to be a pozzed hellscape. Have I been lied to this whole time? Seems more like everyone is just excited to be around other people with similar interests.
>>24749433>The Rhetoric sounds interesting. Never looked into Egypt much myself.It is forgotten as Muslims discount everything before Islam as Jāhiliyyah, Age of Ignorance. If you are interested in ancient lit it's interesting but the wisdom can be found in more relevant sources. For any anon interested:If you come up against an aggressive adversary,A man of low standing, one who is not your equal,Do not assail him in accordance with his lowly estate.Leave him be, and he will confound himself.Do not answer him in order to vent your frustration;Do not alleviate your anger at the expense of your adversary.Great is Ma'at, and its foundation is firmly established;It has not been shaken since the time of Osiris,And he who violates the laws must be punished.In the eyes of the covetous man it goes unnoticedThat wealth can be lost through dishonesty,And that wrongdoing does not result in success.https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/literature/ptahhotep.html
I went to top universities, but I studied STEM subjects and graduated so long ago that my experiences are probably irrelevant to current conditions.
>>24749019I didn't go to a top university or anything and I still loved it. Even at the height of idpol i would could still have amazing classes. I wish culturally we valued the humanities more.
My political science program at a state university was very free and open minded, even if it was still liberal centered with critical theory. Conservative thought was widely taught and accepted, and think looking back some level of reactionarism would have been acceptable given some tack to its presentation. It was nowhere as toxic and idpol as many make university out to be. There were still some third rails though, like race and europes decision to commit suicide by 10 million Muslim cuts.
>>24749261He's actually right, demonstrations at campus still occur (in Europe), even some really suspiciously fascist ones and all people do is chant mottos. I have never seen it turned to violence, let alone the fact that there are conservative anti abortion profs, some students that are vocal about it etc. it is a very civil space.
>>24749514That is quite interesting, the only people whom I've read in regards to rhetoric are the big ones like Cicero and Aristotle, then some more modern interpretations. Do you think there's much value in going back to those times? Or is it sort of a Sun Tzu thing at this point?>>24749490Sounds fucking horrible to be honest, anon.
>>24749101Are you attending an HBCU?
>>24749019How old are you anon?
>>24750228A little older than most of the people here, but it's alright because they're so locked in and intelligent that they're easily giving me a run for my money. The only thing I have over these whippersnappers is discipline.
>>24749150I reckon somewhere between a third and a half of my coursemates were 30+ so no. Although, perhaps you should avoid the societies if you're self-conscious about that kind of thing
>>24749101>Assuming you're telling the truthhe is not
>>24749019YOU ARE AN UNDERGRADUATE UNIVERSITY RANKINGS DO NOT APPLY
>>24752148I thought rankings only mattered for undergraduate? Postgrad is all about how good individual research teams/labs/supervisors are
All the shit about universities is exaggerated or made up. The real threat to universities is how they have been infiltrated and distorted by the interests of the business schools. Also, at least a plurality of the student bodies of American universities are sociopath LinkedIn zombies looking for a paycheck, who cheat regularly with AI, and have forced whole departments to acquiesce to their behavior to retain “rankings”. The uni admins are corporate HR hacks that used to work for BlackRock and Biglaw and want nothing more than to reduce universities to the business school, the law school, and whatever science departments will still be able to get federal grants after they finish looting the HHS. That’s the real threat and the financial gutting that’s coming is using a short term fucking fad that had a brief golden age from 2015-2024 that maybe ideologically captured 1% of a given university’s faculty at best as a scapegoat to forever destroy humanities education in this country and even the federal-university partnership which is/was the pillar of the post-ww2 American empire. I loathe, I despise, I want to physically beat to a pulp every retard that lost their tiny brains because of gamergate and opened Pandora’s box to let the austerity sharks out. You defeated an ephemeral enemy only to destroy western culture. No one will know who Homer, Virgil, Dante or Christ himself is. Just whatever the AI spits out.
>>24749346>Let's say I did take some pictures myself, would you not just say, "Anyone can go and visit the buildings, jackass", or something similar?Write a timestamp note to /lit/ idiot
>>24749150you WILL feel a disconnection from 18 year old undergrads and a lot will avoid talking to you purely because of the age difference. most classes have a few older people though, especially masters and PHD's.it's only bad when you have to walk around campus alone because you are the only "old" person on your course.
>>24752188>The uni admins are corporate HR hacks that used to work for BlackRock and Biglaw and want nothing more than to reduce universities to the business school, the law school, and whatever science departments will still be able to get federal grants after they finish looting the HHS. I would have called you a conspiracy theorist if not for the fact that im pretty sure i recently heard that University of Toronto cut a bunch of its humanities PHDs or something. They really dont care about anything that isnt bringing in da big bucks
>>24752188the worst thing affecting universities is the simple plain fact that their are genuine retarded mongholes attending it.my country made it so everyone must go to uni, must have a degree to work some entry jobs anyone could really do.most undergrads do exactly this and still end up working minimum wage customer service or manual labour jobs.it's a mess and Bachelor's really dont mean shit anymore. yet somehow nearly every university here is in financial trouble and needs to cater to foreign students who pay more in tuition fee's to stay afloat despite most young people now going to university.
>>24749019The day you described sounds like hell to me. Then again I studied chem eng. We'd just you know hang out and not larp old world intellectuals. The only time we'd discuss subject is when you'd have to school someone the year below you on what fugacity was or solve some equations for a mouthbreather. I had a great time though and managed to not become a fag.
stupid zoomer
TREMENDOUS amount of seethe going on in this thread, wowie!>>24752443>He comes to a board to talk about literature>Discussing literature irl is hell
>>24749299There's no way those numbers are accurate. Just calculate the average admission rate based on those figures and it's way over Harvard's actual overall admission rate which is just a few percent.
>>24752188>>24752420Maybe the universities shouldn't have abandoned their original purpose of serving God then
>>24752582I enjoy discussing matters on 4chan because it is anonymous, we clown on reddit for this very reason of stroking egos by conversing with a handles, a name or a faces attached to the subject matter.Comparing Homer and Virgil, Tchaikovsky and Mozart, Shelley and Byron.. Why are these all comparative cases? It sounds less like discussions of literature and more so debates. Intellectual cockfighting, affirmation seeking. If you would like to discuss literature I am more than willing but if you want to compare which classical musicians over wine and cheese I'm out.
>>24752725Look, retard, they’re using “woke” to destroy classical education. The story isn’t “universities used to teach real things and then woke came” it’s universities are being infiltrated and targeted under the fig leaf of woke to gut the very thing you think they abandoned. This society thinks not just Marxist education but humanist and classical Christian education is a superfluity. From now on, if you want a “Christian” education you’ll go to Charlie Kirk University soon and hear Charlie Kirk AI lectures, but never a word of St Augustine or even Christ himself.Idk how to make this more clear, the woke scare is being used AGAINST YOU TOO
>>24752775I know a number of Marxist academics and we've retreated into cantonment inside working class movements, usually across a series of pathetic toy parties. We come out to raid the libraries. And by retreated into cantonment I mean working 13 hour days as a manual labourer.
>>24752750We can't compare Virgil and Homer now? Why not? They're the two classical titans. We can't compare Shelley and Byron now? When they were friendly rivals irl, and worked in the same genre. I think you just see yourself as above it, which is cowardly in my eyes.
>>24752431>every university here is in financial troubleJamie, bring up that chart showing administrative budgets and staff numbers
>>24752828I've never been concerned with comparing things. If that makes me above it, sure, I don't really care.
>>24749019>a pozzed hellscape.Oh it still is, but ull understand once u get more mature
>>24749019>After years of online discourse, expect the worstIt really depends in which sector you go study. From experience, law was relatively okay, but "humanities" faculties (top tier schools here teach the whole array) are exactly like >>24749101 described. I would tend to believe that scientific sectors are more apolitical.>Caught one girl reading St. Augustin for fun>Politics never came up, and the one time it did, people were accepting of my opinionsokay this is bait
>>24752805Yea this is my impression, I think the old marxists got really isolated by the postmoderns over the last decades, poor old Fredric Jameson was supposedly the last at Duke before he died. Every time I hear something called “Marxist” these days I just feel hopeless and depressed.
>>24753086>Every time I hear something called “Marxist” these days I just feel hopeless and depressed.If it is a workers' self inquiry finding you shouldn't but we try to keep all this shit hidden from bourgeois academia. It has kind of ended up being transmitted via the social equivalent of deer hunting. This is back to 1850s transmission of ideas. You get the book club started, you try to stop the toy parties having a hissy fit over whatever left liberal protest movement they're trying to seduce, and boot-start a new generation of self-learners who'll be able to get this moving.People who read Marx at university are fucking useless unless they go into blue collar work almost immediately.Anyway, do you know how fun it is to spend 3 hours debating after a 12 hour shift?
>Go to uni>Expect either constant politics sperging or vigorous intellectual discussion>Get neither>People barely talk in class>Maybe one or two people actually act like they did the readings>Lecturer asks a pointed question and there's an awkward silence while nobody answers>Even though I'm an introvert I usually end up answering because nobody else willAm I just really unlucky with my units? This has happened consistently for the past few years.
>>24753177>>People barely talk in classThis is really my experience, honestly dont even know how the opportunity would present itself during a lecture unless the point of the lecture is debate or discussionTBF we do have this sort of post lecture thing called tutorials in my school to discuss about the lecture with others i guess
>>24749019personally, I can't stand a lot of university students. They have a habit of speaking at length on topics they simply rote-learned without really understanding. with that said, University is important if you're looking to advance your career and become a somebody.
>>24749019>Have I been lied to this whole time? Basically, yes. A bunch of low IQ and uneducated rednecks convinced you that it's a den of leftist indoctrination, when in reality it's a necessary and important rite of passage for anyone that's anybody.
>>24752775The original "woke" was the Social Gospel which was a colossal mistakein less than half a century it turned Methodism from strict disciplinarians to the biggest cat lady and fag dens
>>24753177>>24753368>STEMfag>take humanties courses out of interest>everyone who's there out of necessity is bored out of their minds>I do the readings and spend all class sperging outI'm sure the rest of the class hated me but those were some of my favourite courses. I also imagine that most did do the readings but were just too burnt out or single-minded to want to talk in class; if every course is like that for you, then it drags.Bonus: a girl (pbuh) emphatically called out circumcision as genital mutilation in a politcal philosohphy course and zero cutfags had the balls to speak up (though I don't think any dude is really willing to chime in publicly since he's effectively describing his junk in the process, or else designating his dick as mutilated).Now I'm a PhD student and my only interaction with others is once every two weeks when I drag an undergrad into the side room to kick his ass in Super Smash Bros. Melee.
>>24753606>when I drag an undergrad into the side room to kick his ass in Super Smash Bros. Melee.cringe and sounds like a euphenism for gay sex
>>24753177>>Even though I'm an introvert I usually end up answering because nobody else willThe teacher must love you
>>24753612>cringe and sounds like a euphenism for gay sexYes thank you for noticing. Thoroughly gaped.
>>24753612Gay sex would be cool and wouldn't require a euphemism. He's being honest: as a PhD candidate he is incapable of sex, sand SSBM is the closest he can get not to human intimacy, but to masturbation.
>>24753622Fuck you, nigger. I have as much sex as I want, which is never.
>>24753177No one wants to get the vitriol of the teacher for an unsatisfactory answer. Alternatively, no one wants the entire class to generate contempt and scorned from always getting the right answer.
>>24753654So in other words, what youre saying is that nobody wants to BE anything.Me=GawdlikeYou=Cringelikemy philosophy readings have been opening my eyes to deeper understandings of human beings that most arent even self aware of
>>24753657Students who arent millionaires are just trying to get the piece of paper that says they should be granted the same privileges and benefits that any police officer gets. Just to be able to provide the minimum required for a decent life. Majority of classes are just busy work unless it is your major in school. Poor people partly dont read because of their intelligence but also because they dont have the time or guidance to know what to read.
>>24753657You sound conceited and are very mistaken if you think anyone in the workforce cares about your high fulutin education. Unless your dad owns a dealership, you are going to be in trouble. You are going to be the most learned barista/bartender. Not either but both, just to make a living with all your philosophy.
>>24753663>but also because they dont have the time or guidance to know what to read.Stupid and a lie, a Just So Story.People talk about poor people today like how peasants were in the medieval ages. Do you know how much fucking free time our modern society has? If it didnt, the entirr consumerist economy would crumble. You guys seriously need to read Baudrilliard. Most people are unironic NPCs. I dont even mean that in a self aggrandizing way, just pure matter of fact. Its not that peoplr dont have the time to read, its that people care about other things more socially. The products one buys, the movies one watches, the tv shows they binge, the youtubers and streamers they idolize. All of these are hollow symbols for one to base as a "core" for "identity" to formulate around, because there is nothing there naturally emergent. Nothing there that affects the symbols, just reflects.>>24753669>if you think anyone in the workforce cares about your high fulutin education."You see meaning and society is contingent on what the workforce cares about. Its a good thing the workforce was thoroughly enamored in following closely the development and proof of the theory of relativity you see. We needed the workforce for that. Also for the development of modern medicine, their interest was of high value."Honestly you got me there. I agree. And I say this as somebody who already considers science to be incredibly flawed in its own way
>>24749143>but she hardly even brings it up>she
>>24752188>ideologically captured 1% of a given university’s facultyAsk any professor or admin if trans women are women.BONUS: Point your phone's camera at their face while doing so.
>>24749019When I was a labourer one of the other labourers was reading Enquiry into the sublime and beautiful by Burke, had a lot of great convos with him. The both of us would BTFO your uni lot, it helps when you've got some life experience. Some works take on new meanings, possibly their true meanings.
