34 CommentsOverheard in Butler:
Woman A, shaking an empty Red Bull can, to random stranger at our table: “Excuse me, how many of these can I drink before I die?”
Woman B: “I don’t know, three or four?”
Woman A, still holding Red Bull can, to man next to woman B “Hey, how many of these can I drink?”
Man: “Umm, there’s no limit, it’s just like coffee…your hands may start shaking and your heart will beat a little faster…”
Woman A: “It’s not working!”
Man: “So drink more.”
Man, after Woman A’s departure to buy another can, to Woman B: “Alternatively you could go home and sleep…”
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34 Comments
@GPA Actually, on SSOL our GPAs are calculated to 4 decimal points. So 0.4000 would be correct.
@red bull Anyway, Red Bull is absolutely disgusting. And even if it won’t kill you, it will, no doubt, burn a gaping hole through your wallet before you turn a blind eye.
@I feel like I’m the only one here who actually loves his major enough to study not because I need the grades (I DO need the grades), but because I am truly interested in the topics I’m expected to learn. Maybe I’m just really nerdy.
Still, you can’t classify people’s social skills based on their GPAs. I know mine is lower than people who are significantly more social. I know a few people with lower GPAs than me, who are still less social than me. I don’t think taking fewer classes would make me attend more parties; if it’s not in your personality, it doesn’t matter how many credits you take. All this being said, I’m still really surprised that no one else seems to feel the dedication and maybe even obligation I feel toward my field of study. Perhaps you would not be freaking out so much if you found that one subject that you were truly interested in, instead of studying something that seems cool or that appears to have the best job potential.
@nerd most of the people i know with 4.0s (including me, heh heh) have time to be social because school is easy for them and they like it. not drunk on a monday social, but well-balanced and happy. i always just presumed that the girls in sweatpants poring over chem textbooks freaking out aren’t the ones getting good grades. because if they were getting good grades, why would they be freaking out?
@are you kidding me? it’s kind of disgusting how much insecurity is in this thread. college is where people around you really start making vastly different life choices…just deal with it. some people choose to try to be in charge of every club. some people try to get a 4.3. some people do a ton of drugs. whatever everyone’s different, this isn’t high school little bitches
@but reading week is not a week. at other schools, it is. at columbia, it is three days
@uh, can’t we all just agree that the best would be a 4.0 and a life? hey, we can dream…
@twentyfour But the thing is, to get the 4.0, you don’t necessarily need time, but you need to CARE in a way that exceeds preferring it and wanting to care. That’s what it’s hard to do sometimes.
@Number 17 By the .4, I meant not only that .4 difference in GPA. I meant to say that with a 3.5, there is more time to do extracurriculars and distinguish one’s self than by merely having a 3.9. Let’s just say when you apply to an IBank or a top Law School, if you have good standardized scores and essays of course, a 3.5 with an interesting personality and experiences is better than a bland 3.9 with nothing else.
Don’t study up. Go outside the walls of Columbia and do something.
The .4 doesn’t mean the difference between a scholarship. It’s about distinguishing yourself that matters.
@hello peoples or the .4 can mean the difference between getting a scholarship to go to graduate school or paying out of your own pocket. study up undergrads.
@Success Success is its own reward, my self-justifying friends. Just as we learn for the sake of learning, we wish to do our best because to do otherwise would be unthinkable. Rationalize not studying hard away all you like, but depending on one’s future aspirations, constant striving may well be the ticket not to a boring life in the suburbs, but the opportunity to excel and do something truly remarkable in the world.
The most impressive Columbians I have met are not the ones who are highly involved and earning a 3.5, nor are they the ones who earn a 4.0 by avoiding socializing. Rather, it is those who manage to balance their many interests and still put forth maximum effort when it matters who are truly worthy of admiration.
I study intensely for my finals not because I care about the numbers on my transcript, but because I want to prove to myself that I have gained the knowledge I have sought.
@yeah? I don’t know. It just seems easy to get disillusioned with goals like getting grades when you see that unimpressive people are doing the same thing. It just don’t mean nothing, and for me there’s not the same sort of internal satisfaction you can get from other goals; even just working on a simple job and accomplishing something concrete, where your work has a function other than trying to prove something it can’t truly show anyway.
I do understand that if you can really feel like you’re into all your work, that it can be a rewarding experience. But sometimes it gets so hard to care, and without the fear that lots of people here seem to live under, I don’t force myself to do so. I guess I never really understood that that was what this school was about.
@i really don't care about my average, but i imagine those applying to med/law school or trying to get a job at a bank think the .4 is important.
@... Stress is a state of mind.
You can be doing a lot of stuff and just not stress about it by letting it not get the best of it.
And I also find that sleeping and exercising sufficiently during reading week is important even if it means you are studying less…… I think it’s more about the quality of the time you spend studying than the quantity of time spend grinding……
Thos are my worthless 2 cents… I guess at the end of the day it’s all about what works best for you…
@Number 17 Walpole is absolutely right. College is about having fun, meeting new people AND learning. You can do all of that and have an insanely high GPA. I’ve met people who have high GPAs, are super social and get sleep.
Then there are people who take 40 credits a semester, have no social skills, have never been with partners of the opposite sex by the time they graduate, and so forth.
Have some fun, damn it! What’s the difference between 3.5 and 3.9, if with a 3.5 you are in many clubs, having fun, growing socially and intellectually…[/end rant]
@Technically The difference between 3.5 and 3.9 is 0.4.
@i just checked the calculations for this and yeah, it’s 0.4. More exactly it’s 0.4000, or 0.40000000.
@sig figs! If you have 3.5 and 3.9 you can’t go and say the difference is 0.400000. The best you can do is 0.4.
Given that our GPAs are actually calculated to two decimal points, we could assume the author meant 3.50 and 3.90, the difference then being 0.40. However, the sample size and representativeness of the population within the sample is still questionable. More research needs to be performed.
@i suppose... then i also suppose it’s also worth noting that some of columbia’s most notable alumni are those who never finished.
@Robert Walpole Well the problem is that the students who do become obsessed with finals, red bull, all nighters, and Butler Library are not the ones who obtain 4.0 GPAs.
Indeed, these students will soon drift into complete anonymity after graduation. They will spend their lives toiling through unremarkable career paths, while attending black tie benefits for organizations like the Red Cross once a year.
Their social lives will also be lacking, after they missed the opportunity to learn acceptable forms of social interaction at University since they were too busy discussing things like red bull and Senior Fund. In a library.
These students will invariably move to the leafy suburbs of New England and have children named things like “Karin” and “Rick”.
@33 beep beep Number 9 and 11 are correct. Stop fucking aiming for 4.0 you grade whores!!
@overheardinbutler Thumbs down
@Bethmann-Hollweg I’m not sure I understand the paranoia associated with Final Exams.
They really are not all that difficult. You casually read material without he hassle of going to class for a few days, and then sit down to a three hour exam.
I suspect that the only people who get really worked up about finals are First Years.
This is particularly interesting given that First Years are enrolled in the easiest, most basic classes Columbia has to offer.
@chill out I’m with number 9. I find reading week pretty relaxing.
@yea... I’m not so sure over 60 pages of writing qualifies as “casually read”ing…
@getting a job “casually read”….?
you’re obviously not a science/SEAS major.
@Emperor Palpatine Just a clarification; a heart palpitation is an awareness of the heartbeat, so from what you described he WAS having heart palpitations, whether or not his heart was in any danger.
@empirical evidence My roommate, a man about 6′ 2″ and 230 pounds, once had roughly 1000 mg of caffeine over a five-hour period (caffeine’s half-life in the body is about six hours). He started throwing up and felt like he was having heart palpitations. I don’t think there was any terrible medical danger at that dose, but he said he felt awful for most of the day.
Check out this Wikipedia link for more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine#Caffeine_intoxication
@penisaur Contrary to popular imagination, Redbull not only gives you wings, but 10 penises as well.
@fact I have two red bulls a day minimum and I live strong.
@X.J. http://www.energyfiend.com/death-by-caffeine/
According to the online calculator, a 140-lb person would need to consume about 120 cans of Red Bull before they died. For comparison, a cup of coffee has about twice as much caffeine as a can of Red Bull. That woman is probably safe, since it’s unlikely Blue Java even stocks enough RB there to kill her, and she would likely start vomiting long before the caffeine would actually poison her.
@umm this isn’t funny…aren’t overheards usually supposed to be funny?
@Doctor D. Sobe Energy Drink – 300+ mg of Caffeine versus Red Bull’s measly 80 mg.
@now/know plz.