No More Highschool FOREVER

[Ne'er]

Grats, and lucky!

Still got two more years of highschool before I'm "free"

Enjoy though

[lonnarin]

I'd like to say that one day you'll look back and miss the highschool days, but truthfully every day afterwards, no matter how unlucky or depressed I've been, has been significatly better to the dehumanizing, brainwashing tactics of high-school education.  Once you can declare a major, set your own schedule and choose what you want to wear, how to wear your hair, what to eat, drink, do between classes, etc etc...  that sense of freedom is so so sweet.  I honestly think that the aims of the public education system in my country is geared more towards producing obedient soldiers and illiterate voters than good citizens.

Is not enough that we must march in uniform to the sound of a bell, eat from plastic-divider trays and cut our hair in short, immasculating manners, that we too must go strip down in front of PE coaches and undergo regimented team-work training of the alpha-pack social strata?  Does not Dodgeball and Football remind one of the trappings of simulated warfare and dependance on the Team Captain/Commanding Officer godly figurehead of authority?  Can a society in which the lowest common denominator predicts popularity, where intelligence is stygmatized and athletic aggression glorified be trusted with such aims as education and personal development?

I think not, hence the construction of my super-sonic soviet mechanical tentacle monsters deep below the Earth's crust.  If they will not take reform, then so shall rise electric revolution! *salutes with steeled all-seeing eyes like the mad-scientist visionary he is*

Seriously though, you'll enjoy choosing your classes and studying what you WANT to study far more than the classes you've taken so far.  The fun part is there's a class literally for ANYTHING...  my friend Scotty got 3 credit hours each for bowling and lifting weights, I took Paranormal Psychology, Native American religions, Existentialism and a theory-based intro course on Quantum Physics for electives which rocked.  My roommate just took a Game Designs class where they were graded entirely upon making a NWN module to work correctly, heheh. There's something there for everybody.  Also keep an eye out for guest speakers... so far I've heard Jello Biafra (REAL fat now), Lewis Black, Steven Hawking (sadly just via teleconferance for him due to his condition), at least half the most  respected psychological researchers of our era, Ralph Nadar (even MORE boring with -4 cha in person, heh), pre-Gov. Jesse Ventura (incredible speaker),  and even got to heckle and boo el Presidente GW with about 2000 other people (there were like, 15 soldiers in the front row, RIGHT in front of the camera that clapped enthusiastically and glared at the rest of the room that night, nobody else clapped for ANYTHING he said )

Fun, fun times!

[Acacea]

Lewis Black and Steven Hawking in the same class, maybe? I'd take that.

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Wow, Lonn. You sound like the field you're going into is something related to the buzzworded Parapsychology, which some days can border interestingly on Thaumaturgy.

I've sent a PM.

[lonnarin]

Sent one back.  I also happen to conduct parapsych experiments by the way.  One of my favorites is called "Ghostreader".

Ghostreader required at least 2 subjects, a researcher to conduct the experiment and a Ouija Board.  (though for any actual study, you need a sample size of at minimum around 30 subject-pairs)  The researcher then writes on a series of notecards each a random letter, number or name of a city, and it is the job of the subjects to ask the board for the answers on the cards.  

The hypothesis is that the Ouija board will predict answers to the random questions better than people asked who don't use the board.  This could either be due to a helpful ghost peaking at the cards invisibly, or perhaps the board itself being able to help them focus into knowing what they cannot physically see... ie: clairsentience  The researcher asks them these questions and notes how many they got right or wrong.... they SHOULD be showing very minimal accuracy, considering the odds are of predicting these questions by sheer luck are remotely slim. (1-100 with d100 was our range).  When we ran this study for my paranormal psych class I had a HUGE amount of volunteers due to the very nature of it, we wound up with over 130 samples to randomly select from for data.  We also had a control group who answered without the board, randomly selected from those and calculated the data between the groups of the study....  The mean of our control group was around 3-4 percent accuracy, very pitiful, the board itself went up to around 12 percent accurate.....  pogo-sticking above several standard deviations... in other words, the board bloody worked! That right there is why I love college... no where else in the world are there so many bored scientists who idolize Egon Spengler.  Our parapsych professor is updating the design a bit, but continuing to run this study now with some good regularity.

Another favorite professor is Micheal Dunn, who taught my Psychological Aspects of Drugs and Clinical Psychology courses.  He runs a lot of alcohol-related studies, particularly driving performance, observation of social interactions under the influence, placebo affects and physiological "faking" despite the lack of actual inebriation, beer pong tournies... heheh.  In the lower left wing of our Psychology department there's a swank bachelor-pad wetbar complete with crystal-ware and a fully stocked selection of poison... all for research's sake!

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

I think that the statistical studies done over the past hundred years or so would've proven by now that there's at least some correlation between "psychic abilities" and actual results. Your ouija board example, for one. That's a pretty significant jump, and it's an experiment that's been done time and again...

You'd figure it'd be accepted by now, instead of discounted.

[Dorganath]

Congratulations!