Essays Coming

So last year in England I had to write a lot of essays. Seriously, a lot. The system at Oxford cuts out most of the time we spend in class in the states, instead focusing hugely on independent study. The result, one tutorial for one hour, one on one with a professor every week, and another one that meets in the same format every other week on a different subject. Sounds awesome right - max two hours of class time a week? There's a catch: every time you meet with a professor you have to hand in an essay, generally a 2,500 worder. So anyway, I have a bunch of essays on my computer thaty I would like to organize, and I've decided to make part of that process putting some of the essays online. Keep an eye on the right hand column of this page under the book list to see an upcoming list of links to some essays I wrote while cracked out on 10 redbulls at 4:00 AM.

Argument With Chay

Last night - while enjoying a cold beverage - I was having a conversation with my friend Eric Chase (Aliases: Uncle Oogie, The Unc, Uncle, Chay, Chay-money), and I mentioned that I thought it was annoying that so many people held this unfounded assumption that going to a private school instead of a public one is necessarily an advantage in terms of college admission. It turned out that Chay felt this way as well, and an intense argument insued in which I mercilessly destroyed the Unc. I thought it would be a good idea to recap the argument here. (No offense to you if you went to private school - like probably 80% of my BC friends - I just want to argue that it doesn't make it easier for you to get into colleges.)

Chay's argument: I know a lot more kids in my class at school (Penn State) from Scranton Prep than from Scraton High School.

OK, granted. Thats a fact, sure, and lets also admit that Scranton is significantly larger than prep, too, so there should be a bigger pool of eligible applicants, but for some reason there's not. BUT the question you really have to ask is this: are those 10 (or whatever #) kids from Prep at PSU - compared to Scranton's 4 - because they went to private high school?

I say definitely not. First, the disparity can obviously be attributed to economic factors: probably at least twice as many Prep students apply to Penn State in any given year than Scranton students, but I would say that is largely because a huge percentage of our school, and even a large percentage of qualified students at Scranton (Honors Track, Sports, Clubs, Suck-ups, Dorks etc.), don't even apply to Penn State on the basis that they won't be able to afford it even if they did get in. Having more people accepted to a school means nothing if you have a large number of qualified students from Scranton who didn't apply. The difference here is economic, not educational.

Secondly, I can see that maybe there's a good case for Catholic school students having an easier time getting into Catholic schools, but I see this as a very specific, limited advantage. That means that maybe a marginal Prep applicant will get the edge over a marginal Scranton at a Jesuit school, especially the University of Scranton, but I would argue that that has nothing to do with the quality of the education at the high school, but rather the fact that the Jesuit community tends to be rather tight knit and a recomendation from a Jesuit goes a long way at those schools. Still, this has nothing to do with getting into 95% of the good colleges out there, of which only a handful are Jesuit, and certainly nothing to do with getting into a huge Public institution like Penn State.

Consider: why would a PSU admissions officer favor a private school applicant over a public? He certainly feels no particular allegiance to the old established network of private education. And, lets be honest, we're not talking about Choate or Hotchkiss here. At schools of that nature you're talking about an appreciable difference in educational quality, one has to admit, so its a different story all together. Andover applicants don't have an easier time getting into colleges because Andover is a private school, but because admissions counselors - and everyone else - knows that Andover is a bad ass school and that kid has been academically challenged since he was 13. Unfortunately Scranton does not possess a high school of national name recognition to speak of, unless perhaps you're a member of the Jesuit Community.

Another thing thats important to remember is that we are talking about whether or not equally qualified applicants have a disparity based on a public private divide. That means you take the same kid (hypothetically) and have him apply from a public school standing and then from a private school standing and see if there is a difference in result. I would dare say that for a number of the best Universities in the US, the public school applicant is actually at an advantage in the US. Today at traditionally liberal Northeastern institutions like the Ivy League schools one sometimes gets the sense that there is almost an institutional bias against the old establishment. For a lot of schools its all about having a diverse demographic for politically correct marketing purposes.

I think the prevalence of the "private" means "better" attitude is a symptom of a general feeling of social malaise in this country, in which a loss of faith in broad minded public policy and in public life itself has engendered a desire to insulate: private schools, private communities, private clubs, private beaches, privitize social institutions etc. If this is at all interesting to you I recomend checking out this book, called "For Common Things" by the unfortunately named Jedediah Purdy. This guy is actually not much older than us, and I think he wrote the book as a junior or senior at Harvard. Anyway, he is the man and the book is money.

OK, I could go on about this longer, but I am running short on the lunch hour here, so I'll have to save some for another post. I hope that this generates some comments though, I know out of the few sad individuals that actually read this there is probably a Private High School majority. Please, leave an argument and I would be happy to bring the pain so to speak.

Lackawanna Bar Association Golf Outing

It's official. Unless you're doing an oil application apprenticeship with Hawaiian Tropics, my summer job is better than yours. Yesterday (Monday) morning I was at my desk just getting into my daily morning ritual of pounding 5-10 cups of coffee when I was called up to a managing partner's office. "Are you a golfer, John?" I have played golf less than ten times in my entire life. Miraculously, each time I played I was worse than the time before. "Sure." Oh God. I had responded confidently.

At noon we left for the Lackawanna Bar Association's annual golf outing at the Glen Oak Country Club in Clark Summit. Thank God it was captain and crew. Attorney O'Malley's son in law was an ace. The Attorney and his daughter, the other 2 in our foursome were ... unremarkable, but having fun. I was horrific. I think Todd had thought I was actually a ringer and just being modest until I sliced my first drive it was almost going backwards. I really sealed the deal by missing the ball on my first swing on the fairway.

Amazingly, though, my sucking in no way put a damper on the day. I actually had a great time. Around the 8th hole I was offered a cigar. "Stogies? Why not?" After the round there was a reception and a dinner. All in all a hard and satisfying days work.

Atlantic City/Avalon NJ Trip

Any normal college student from Pennsylvania likes to make fun of New Jersey, and I am no exception. But while I enjoy a good jab to the Dirty Jerz as much as the next man I have to admit that the state is not without a few gems here and there. I spent my last weekend between Atlantic City and Avalon, New Jersey, and it was a blast. Myself and five friends went down to AC for a belated celebration of our friend Brian's 21st birthday.

Needless to say we all lost money. I probably lost mine faster than everyone else, which was definitely a low point. There is probably little worse than watching your friends gamble after you've lost everything you planned to spend (obviously I had to hit up the ATM a couple of times to get back in a game.) The highlight of the trip was when five of us made a $100 bet on red - roulette is the worst game in the casino - with the last of our chips that we were depending on for money to get a hotel room the next night. We won. The low point was definitely doing the same thing the next day with $300 and losing it all right before leaving the city. Still, loosing money with friends is alot more fun than losing it by yourself.

Atlantic City was fun, but I can only take so much time in a Casino. At first its sort of glamorous, throwing money around rolling dice, etc. but after a couple of hours the haggard old women chain smoking and staring like zombies at slot machines started to get to me. After AC we headed down to Avalon and had two decent beach days. I have been going to Avalon since I was born, but being 21 this time made the experience a little different. Sweet.

Not Just Shameless Self Promotion?

Are blogs actually good for anything other than shameless self promotion? Well, certainly not this blog, but it looks like there may be an exception.

I was emailing back and forth with Rich the other day and suggested that he start writing a blog. It makes alot more sense for him than it does for me, really. He is actually doing something interesting (see this previous post), he's a good writer, and it is going to be particularly hard for him to keep in touch with people while he is gone since he will be so far north. Also, with a blog he could make his happenings available to anyone who was interested without shoving one of those awful "I'm Doing So Great! Here's Ten Thousand Words About My Life!" mass emails down people's throats. Keep your eyes open for a weekly Rich update on the web sometime soon. (The Arctic Archive? I suck.)

Change in Career Path

Prompted by a recent conversation with my friend Alexa, I plan on shortly making a drastic life change. Alexa is an intern for Polo in NYC. She took this pic of me during a night out in Oxford. Apparently her boss at Polo wants to "use the image in an ad campaign." Basically, I'm expecting a call from Ralph any day now. If any BC people actually read this, keep the spot in my room reserved, I will probably be in Milan for most of the fall but will definitely be around for a few football games. My only real concern now is whether or not the Green Ridge Branch of Penn Security will be able to handle the enormous wire transfers.

No. But seriously, they want to use the pic. Which is sweet.

Great Website

As I was looking for a legal blog to model something I want to put on the O&L Blog (a sidebar blog for books) I stumbled across this site that has hilarious stuff. It's called "the Striaght Dope" and offers the opportunity to pose questions to the worlds smartest human being, Cecil Adams. It clarifies that we know Cecil Adams to be the worlds smartest human being because: 1. He knows everything, and 2. He's never been wrong. How do we know Cecil Adams knows everything and has never been wrong? "Because Cecil told us, and he would never lie."

Here is a list of questions Cecil Refuses to Answer:

Why do we need a hot water heater? If it's hot it doesn't need to be heated.
How can we have jumbo shrimp?
Why isn't phonetic spelled the way it sounds?
Why do our noses run and our feet smell?
Why does quicksand work slowly?
Why are boxing rings square?
Why, when lights are out, they are invisible, but when the stars are out, they are visible?
Why do we call them apartments when they are all together?
If cows laughed, would milk come out of their noses?
Why does Denny's have locks on the door if it's open 24 hours?
Why do ships carry cargoes and cars carry shipments?
When will a building actually become a built?

Because I am a huge dork I will admit that these question remind me of reading Wittgenstein, who illustrates his points on philosophy by pulling up all sorts of funny examples of strange word uses. For a hysterical Straight Dope answer read this one: How come a woman shaving her legs wears out a man's razor so fast?

Oxford Room Picture Collages

I thought it would be pretty sweet to put up these two pictures I put together with my digital camera and Microsoft Paint during an intense bout of procrastination in Oxford. My room was in the Isis Hotel on Iffley Road in Oxford. Anyone familiar with "Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Wagh may remember Iffley Road as the place where the protagonist's loser friends move after their fresher year. The two main characters in that book, by the way, are straight (whatever Mary Greene and Matt Moore say about them.)