
College is a joke - ryanmarsh
https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/dear-parents-everything-you-need-to-know-about-your-son-and-daughters-university-but-dont
======
theWold
The general take of college, yes, is a joke. But for me I was able to find
some diamonds in the rough at the University I went to. Sure there were
pointless classes I had to take, professors whom I would learn what they
liked/disliked and regurgitated it back to them, but all of it was worth it
for just one professor and the affect he had upon me (and all his other
students for that matter).

He was the 'Hard' Professor of our CS program. The one where if you could walk
out of a test with a 50/100 you felt like you just won the lottery. He was
ruthless, iron clad, and never made a mistake with his grading. He would never
assign a textbook in which he wouldn't use every chapter to lecture from. He
would run through a red pen for each class writing notes back to us and giving
us different ways of studying and writing down exercises from the book or his
mind to help us understand. We would learn the material. Getting out of his
class with a 'B' or even rarer an 'A' was considered a very high honor (and
jokingly, the stuff of legend) at our University.

But when he recently announce his retirement, students from years gone by came
back, almost like a pilgrimage, to reach back out to him in some way. His
ruthless tests, his wise teaching, his fatherly advice for all things in our
initial careers in whichever direction we went with them, that is a reason I
was glad I went to college and had the honor and privilege to learn from him.
Jokes of how many people had to extend their stays at university because he
'failed' them, but then again each person whom hated him at that point, still
made the trek back and regarded him one of their lives best mentors.

Are there crappy people in college (students, instructors, professors, admins,
etc.) ... heck yeah. But then again there are those who instill values and
education in their peers. You just need to find them.

