39 CommentsNSOP schedules aren’t released till tomorrow, but Bwog’s been tipped that the 2010 Orientation theme is the Odyssey. You know, like the Core Curriculum, the cornerstone of your Columbia education unless you’re in Barnard or SEAS! We cry Columbia-College-centrism, just so you’ll stop accusing Bwog of it.
We wait with bated breath for the activities such a theme will bring– a reenactment of the slaying of the suitors? A rendering of Mt Olympus on the dome of Low? Re-live Odysseus’ journey to Ithaca on the Lerner ramps? Your new Consent Is Sexy coordinators: Circe and Calypso!
Loading …
39 Comments
@Lame If they really wanted to be pretentious, the theme would be Ulysses, and instead of events, the class of 2014 would just wander around New York for a day.
@Not a day 10 days. And then fight the KKK and put out a hit folk record.
@Anonymous i like you
@examples so, yea, discussion is definitely more interesting when people are familiar with the text. but there is a line to draw here, it was certainly vexing when people came into discussion with lots of jargon rather than being able to paraphrase things for themselves and as it turns out, i think non-readers are better at this kind of thing. as for the core being synonymous with bs… well, i think that the trick is to some how relate to your education in a more sincere manner. for example, after reading king lear, i picked up on the concept that many of shakespeare’s “fools” are often the wisest men in his works. and during lit hum, i could probably have written a fine enough essay on that. i could also, however, take that idea and contend with in a more sincere manner and ponder the concept in a broader sense. recently, for example, i realized a lot of my less intelligent contemporaries considered me a fool back in high school because i often pointed out uncomfortable truths. they, I realized, dismissed me as filled with gibberish because I’m sure the content of my thoughts made them uncomfortable. So yea, does that sort of make sense? I’d also highly recommend DFW’s graduation speech at Kenyon wherein he argues the potential benefits of a liberal arts education using a similar tack (interestingly, as a side note: I wonder if the liberal arts strike us as BS because they humble us as to the diversity and strength of the human spirit, making us feel small and unknowing with respect to humanity more generally; thus, could all our attempts to describe, say, the words of Shakespeare feel cheap because they are forced, non-authentic attempts at describing the deeper and more complex aspects of man?)
PS: Are Columbia College Administrators reading this comment thread? Admissions people? They should be interested in the varied things we have to say about the Core– and it would be a travesty if the university decided last fall to pursue Postrcrypt for “underage drinking” but decides not to read some of the relevant thoughts in this thread on the Core Curriculum.
@I'm sad because you probably did very well in University Writing.
That’s my problem with the core.
@hm i think my grad student actually hated me. that class was really lame. i got a b+ overall since she gave me a lot of c’s early on. i’m not standing up for ALL the core. frontiers of science is another level of magnitude of horrible.
@2013 FUCK UNIVERSITY WRITING. I WILL CURSE THAT CLASS UNTIL THE LAST BITTER ICY BREATH ESCAPES FROM THE DEPTHS OF MY TORTURED SOUL. Yeah Fro Sci was a waste of time, but at least it was an easy. laid-back waste of time.
@lol the odyssey has more to it than homer’s odyssey… 2001: a space odyssey, anyone? not to mention, the word odyssey itself lol. clearly the people who immediately associate this to homer’s odyssey have been brainwashed by CC.
@really? “the word odyssey itself”
really?
from dictionary.com (because the oed online is down):
c.1600, “Odyssey,” from L. Odyssea , from Gk. Odysseia , name of the Homeric epic poem of ancient Greece, relating the 10-year wanderings of Odysseus (L. Ulysses ), king of Ithaca, after the Trojan War. Figurative sense of “long, adventurous journey” is first recorded 1889.
@also from dictionary.com 2. ( often lowercase ) a long series of wanderings or adventures, esp. when filled with notable experiences, hardships, etc.
@Hey DUMBASS! How do you suppose “odyssey” took on the meaning of “a long series of wanderings or adventures, esp. when filled with notable experiences, hardships, etc.”? Why, from Homer’s Odyssey!
HURR DURR
@i thumb-upped this comment because i appreciated its snide tenacity
@I'm confused If y’all think the core is such a stupid waste of time, then why on earth did you come to Columbia?
@'11 NYC, duh. The core is a stupid waste of time. Fact.
Also, fun fact of the day: there is no such thing as a triceratops. Truth.
@Hans According to New Scientist, “torosaurus will now be abolished as a species and specimens reassigned to triceratops.”
@CC'11 I did not know about the core until I got here. True fucking story.
@CC Here is a perfect illustration of the problems of the comment hiding feature. No one who reads this page should miss your comment. The fact that everybody probably thinks you’re an idiot and wants to express that sentiment at the click of a button shouldn’t deprive a newcomer of the chance to see your, well, idiocy.
@Angry Upperclassman You know, I fucking hate people like you. The assholes who think they’re holier than thou because they came to Columbia for, guess what, THE CORE. Oh great, once you get your head out of your ass for just a second, and look around (you can put it back afterward), not everyone is interested in Masterpieces of Western Literature, Music, Art and Philosophy. Maybe, just maybe, people could be interested in science and don’t want to be a hard core engineer. Or they like architecture, urban studies, mathematics,, whatever the fuck it just has nothing to do with the Core directly. I think someone telling me I shouldn’t be here because I didn’t appreciate the Core completely soured my freshman year LitHum experience. But don’t let the bastards grind you down! (for any prefrosh that stumbled upon our humble blog)
In sum, get the fuck off your high horse and look around. Diverse interests makes this place tolerable amongst assholes like you.
@Methinks said poster ostensibly wearing his colon as a hat was merely stating that, if you felt before applying that the Core was nothing but a bigoted concept fleshed out into a waste of time and money, then the obvious solution would have been to go to school somewhere else–not that everyone who comes to Columbia needs to do so because of the Core. There are PLENTY of reasons to come in spite of the Core, and plenty of reasons to bitch about a bad section/instructor and all; what’s annoying is when people who hate the very idea of the Core come to Columbia and moan endlessly for their first two, three, or four years about how stupid the program is. My take is that you’re more than welcome to preach the douchiness of the Core faculty and authors. Some students, however, like to imply that they’re a whole lot smarter than the old guys, and could do better themselves by simply killing the program altogether–and that argument is pretty hard to take seriously.
@i totally agree I’ve hated every fucking minute I’ve been at Columbia! All I wanted was a school in a small college town, with students who knew how to throw a fucking frat party and tailgate at football games! But no, all my fellow Columbia students care about is hanging out in the city, joining stupid clubs, studying, and being cynical on the Internet. And since freshmen year, people have been saying, “well you should have gone somewhere like Duke if you don’t like Columbia’s culture” but fuck those elitists! It’s not my fault I didn’t take into account what Columbia is actually like, because Columbia sucks if it doesn’t become exactly the kind of college I want!
@This will Odysseysuck
@2013's theme was “In a New York Minute”
cf the Don Henley song about a murder.
sample lyrics include
“hear the sirens wail/somebody’s goin’ to emergency/somebody’s goin to jail…in a new york minute, everything can change…”
Welcome to Harlem
@Well... It’s 100x better that they theme is The Odyssey. Can you imagine if the theme was “Gateway” or “The Team Developer”?
@Whoops *the…. not they….
@Anonymous Oh, fuck you. I’d suppressed all memories of that horrible “class”. If I was a rich alum, I’d donate money to have them NOT teach Gateway and to fire Jack McGourtey.
@Anonymous ditto
@Remember kiddies, there is no such thing as a mandatory NSOP event. And avoid CUnity or whatever they’re calling it this year. Most of the NSOP leaders are just going through the motions and are only in it for the early move-in.
@HAHA I tried to be a fucking NSOP leader just for that reason, but they wouldn’t permit me because I was on fucking probation.
@Zomg: Well…good? You wouldn’t probably have done a good job anyway.
@Anonymous Sorry you missed out on all the fresh co-eds.
@the point of the college and they say columbia doesn’t prepare its students for wall street: the only thing i learned from the core is the art of bullshit.
\yes, well…anger is sometimes needed to balance out justice….or something. justice, yeah…justice sounds good.\
@... the college is finishing school for the wealthy. contemporary civilization, literature humanities, masterpieces of western art, masterpieces of western literature… the sole purpose of all that bullshit is to ensure that the fine art of wankery shall never disappear from obnoxious old money cocktail parties.
maturity and reason are learned, not taught. frameworks for understanding the world come from early experience during the organic development of self-awareness, not some manufactured and contrived classroom experience involving disinterested graduate students. fine arts and their histories are beautiful elements of humanity, yet somehow columbia manages to completely destroy them by reducing them to mere hurdles that must be jumped over as quickly as possible.
passage ids? whoever thought that one up should be shot in the face.
@i hate big paragraphs so all i read was
passage ids? whoever thought that one up should be shot in the face.
wurd.
@CC I must say I like the sentiment of your comments. But what happened to capital letters? Are they likewise an ornery cocktail party conceit? A symbol of old white male oppression?
@I survived both CC and Lit hum without reading a single book. True story.
@You, sir are a god among men. I stopped reading all together second semester of CC but it has slowly decreased once I realized the class was based more on bullshit then actual theory or literature. So glad to be done. Wish I never bought the books though.
@Don't complain http://www.theonion.com/video/in-the-know-are-tests-biased-against-students-who,17966/
@alum why don’t you quit complaining about the bullshit and *make* the discussion interesting by reading and commenting on the literature itself or some important ideas…I totally buy the value of the core curriculum and as an alum, I wish I’d read everything more carefully than I did
@Anonymous nerd nerd nerd!