First Year Physics…And All That Jazz!
The First Year Class Has Needed Time to Find Its Way
Selorm Klaye, '08
Issue date: 2/8/07 Section: GSB Life
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In response to recent comments surfacing about the conduct of first year students, one feels it is time to offer our [first-year] perspective.
It is laudable to want to change people for the better but before one can persuade this change it is desirable and indeed necessary to try to understand the cause, the current situation in order to ascertain whether a change is, in fact, warranted.
So to the first part of this piece and I borrow from a couple of laws of physics to help us understand the class of 2008.
Newton's 3rd Law states that to every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. So if we observe that 1st year students are rather unengaged, we can assume that this state of affairs is ultimately a result of competing forces (of course it could be that the class of 2008 suddenly became disengaged on entering the school but I'm happy to forgo the GSB way and reject this hypothesis without further ado, if you are).
Fortunately, my erstwhile colleague Eric Poupier has already performed the pre-requisite analysis (last issue). That this is a result of admission policies horribly gone wrong seems somewhat implausible and I wholeheartedly agree with Mr Poupier that this cannot be the main cause…although we can't completely exonerate admission without further cross-examination.
Mr Poupier also postulates and then instantly rejects the possibility that we're having it so good that we're taking things for granted - there might be something in this and I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it!
Finally the kind gentleman settles on what is given as the most plausible cause - that we have been scared sh*tless by the second years and are running around like headless chickens (or words to that effect).
As a first-year student as yet untouched by the recruitment furore and hitherto engaged in nothing but the most peripheral of activities, I would like to offer a slightly different perspective - that the character of the class is the result of Brownian Motion.
It is laudable to want to change people for the better but before one can persuade this change it is desirable and indeed necessary to try to understand the cause, the current situation in order to ascertain whether a change is, in fact, warranted.
So to the first part of this piece and I borrow from a couple of laws of physics to help us understand the class of 2008.
Newton's 3rd Law states that to every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. So if we observe that 1st year students are rather unengaged, we can assume that this state of affairs is ultimately a result of competing forces (of course it could be that the class of 2008 suddenly became disengaged on entering the school but I'm happy to forgo the GSB way and reject this hypothesis without further ado, if you are).
Fortunately, my erstwhile colleague Eric Poupier has already performed the pre-requisite analysis (last issue). That this is a result of admission policies horribly gone wrong seems somewhat implausible and I wholeheartedly agree with Mr Poupier that this cannot be the main cause…although we can't completely exonerate admission without further cross-examination.
Mr Poupier also postulates and then instantly rejects the possibility that we're having it so good that we're taking things for granted - there might be something in this and I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it!
Finally the kind gentleman settles on what is given as the most plausible cause - that we have been scared sh*tless by the second years and are running around like headless chickens (or words to that effect).
As a first-year student as yet untouched by the recruitment furore and hitherto engaged in nothing but the most peripheral of activities, I would like to offer a slightly different perspective - that the character of the class is the result of Brownian Motion.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Ritesh
posted 2/14/07 @ 1:21 AM CST
Wow..!!! Understanding both sides in a debate sure is importnant...!!! ....Enjoyed reading your article..
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