Re: Doonesbury (9-10)


Sherwood Harrington wrote:
peterson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <racsspam@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Antonio E. Gonzalez wrote:
Walden-bound Alex after all?:

<http://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2006/09/10/>


No, just the common experience of going from being Class Genius to
being One More Freshman.

Common only for those with the uncommon experience of having been Class
Genius to begin with.

Oh, I was 40-something-th in a class of 90-something. But I did manage
to get into the College of My Choice, only to realize that getting into
the college of your choice isn't really much of a goal. It's a little
like those football teams that set a goal of "making it to the Super
Bowl" instead of "winning the Super Bowl."

You end up like Robert Redford in "The Candidate" -- now what do we do?

The big difference for the college student is exactly what is depicted
in Doonesbury today -- when you stretch for the toughest school that
will admit you, you find yourself sitting in a classroom with 25 other
kids who also made it. In a building with 400 other kids who also made
it. On a campus with 9,000 other kids who also made it. Each one of
whom, you are convinced, got in without any effort whatsoever because
they deserved to be there, unlike you, you useless fraud.

For someone like me who really never gave a rat's ass about grades, it
was only a momentary twinge. But I've known some hard chargers who
really came down a few pegs when they got their first-ever C's. In
fact, a friend of my son's got into an engineering school with flying
colors, got caught up in the frat scene and then totally flamed out. As
my son, the relentless underachiever and keeper of the family
tradition, explained, those pink slips you get at mid-term are just a
reminder that it's time to buckle down and start doing the work. But
for someone who's never seen one, they can be very disorienting. His
buddy didn't know how to deal with it, and he didn't make it through
freshman year.

Presumably, Alex will deal with it all and let's hope she doesn't have
to throw up very often to get through college.

Mike Peterson
Glens Falls NY

.

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