I always am in a state of semi-annoyance in February, because there are so many things demanding my attention at once: faculty meetings, committee proceedings(graduate admissions committee has to read all the applicant files and pass judgment on them), classes, exams, correcting exams, trying to fill out grant applications. Students have a similar set of concerns, especially those at our school, since almost everybody works in addition to going to school. February just is not a very good time, and the weather is awful, compounding everyone's feelings of gloom.
Well, I think I have the just the thing for your bad mood. Go read this post from the father of a Baghdad college student and get a sense of what students and faculty face there, during their round of midterm exams--yes, they are taking them, too, right now.
I'm stunned and sobered. You really don't think very much about people giving and taking exams under constant threat not of FAILURE, or a BAD GRADE, or TOO MANY TESTS TO GRADE, but DEATH!!
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2 comments:
that is true but i wonder how safe the american campuses were in actuality during the vietnam war. On some shows you always hear about blowing up the science department or building. how many students were lost during all of that or did any bombs actually go off?
i think several people did die when the extremists dynamited the mathematics bldg at wisconsin in the late sixties, and you had the casualties at kent state and jackson state in l970s. but these were isolated incidents...the objective in baghdad is to end all civil and purposeful activity, and it's quite deliberate on the part of the insurgents. i think this is particularly outrageous in the land of outrage...campuses ought to be neutral zones, like churches. it's unconscionable, what these students and faculty have been subjected to.
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