The real question: why would the editorial staff ever publish this rant?

There's a lot of sad things about this column, most of all that it took you four years to realize that you weren't happy with your education at UNH. But I can't help wondering, how much of it is actually your fault (and also have a nagging feeling that you're going to pop up again in the near future and say, "Surprise! This was just 'satire', and all you plebes were too dumb to realize it.")

You say you want your intellectual curiosity stimulated, Chris, but at the same time, you admit to skipping class, sleeping in class and taking a 400-level course when you're in your senior year. In my experience, classes at UNH — especially survey courses — move at the pace of the most talkative people in the class. Sometimes those people make points that seem obvious to you, others seem idiotic, but if you don't actually speak up in class whatever you think truly doesn't matter. Some of the best discussions I had in school were started by saying, in one form or another, "I think you're wrong, and here's why".

And I'm right there with you on attendance and participation grades. They're stupid ways to grade, and not a measure of intelligence or ability. But the reason they exist is people like you. People who pay to take a course, and then don't show up or don't talk. Who think they're playing the system by doing as little work as possible to get a degree and who then turn around and say "this diploma isn't worth anything". The professors who require participation are forced to use the threat of a bad grade to get students to care, and they end up being resented for it

At one point, you say "many of our greatest, most original writers and thinkers never began a college education", which may be true to some extent. Of course, you don't give any examples to back up your point, so we'll just have to take your word for it.

Get over yourself and drop out now, while there's still time. You said it yourself, you don't need college to be great, so why keep doing some that obviously makes you unhappy, why do you continue to keep yourself in the self-important system that must approve of you so you can pass?

Probably because you relaize "Dropped out of college because everybody there was fake" isn't going to look great on your resume. (Neither will the fact that you have whispered conversations with Madame Bovary. I'd leave that out if I were you, there's still a bit of a stigma against schizophrenia.)

I feel bad for you, Chris, and am saddened that this has been your college experience. I just hope that no one actually listens to your advice and gets dragged down into the resentful pit of self-grandeur that you occupy.

Have a nice nap,
Clark

P.S. You never did say if you knew what ontological meant...

That being said, I would like to point out this incident as the reason why we need more police presence on campus at night. Students, you can't complain about there being "too many f***ing cops" around while you're trying to get (illegally) drunk, and then turn around and criticize the campus police for not being there when something like this happens. The UNH police do their jobs admirably, so rather than shouting insults at them from across the street or whining about how unfair it is that you got busted for drinking underage (which, I hate to tell you, is not unfair at all), let's step up and help them out. The police are here to protect us from events such as this, but because they were too busy dealing with the stupidity of underage drinkers and attending to the people being taken out of bars on stretchers, they couldn't be there to help prevent this assault. If each individual person on this campus assumes the responsibility for their own actions, then the police will be able to turn their attention to other, more serious matters such as this.