Academic Darwinism
My family calls them "momilies and dadages," * those short, sometimes witty, usually self-evident life lessons that moms and dads and other elders pass along to the younger generation ... which promptly ignores them.
Several of these bits of wisdom might be relevant to your academic experience … if you are willing to listen. You likely have heard them before, but several of your classmates have recently suffered some painful and expensive consequences by ignoring these lessons. Maybe you can learn from a rehash of their poor judgment and experience.
"THE RACE GOES TO THE SWIFT."
This should be a corollary of Darwin's Theory of Evolution and his "survival of the fittest" thesis. In the evolutional competition for food, domain and propagation rights, the fastest, strongest and smartest survive and prosper. Those with lesser attributes are eliminated from the gene pool. It is a cruel world.
We have a similar resource competition here at Georgia Tech. For you, the scare resource is the number of seats in the courses you want or need to graduate. Over the past few years, the number of students at Tech has slowly increased every year. Similarly, the number of programs and courses has increased.
The numbers of classrooms and faculty, however, have not changed anywhere near in line with this demand growth. During the Spring 2010 registration cycle, some students could not get into classes they wanted because the classroom was filled to its legal limit, and we could not work in "an extra seat or two" without risking fines for violating OSHA and other regulations.We cannot afford that.
"THE SEATS GO TO THE SMART."
This is one I made up — it's Darwinism in your academic world. Just as the individual animals and entire species that Darwin witnessed surviving and prospering in the jungle, forest or plains through superior speed, strength and cunning, so too can the students who use their intellectual "strength" and speed succeed in the campus-wide struggle for scarce resources.
“THOSE WHO IGNORE THE LESSONS OF HISTORY ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT THEM” - GEORGE SANTAYNA, 1905
"IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE GOING, IT DOESN'T MATTER WHERE YOU WIND UP."
In this jungle, you need a map. Your curriculum is complicated. Throw in co-op or internships, a study abroad semester, maybe a minor or certificate, the fact that not every course is offered every semester, and you have a challenging path to graduation … unless you don’t care when you finish. Even if you or your parents have hit the lottery, there usually are limits to how long you can afford to stay here, so you need to pick a date when you would like to graduate.
Then, using the 8-semester plan for your program, the course offering plan, and other resources on the College’s Website (Education => Current Students), use a spreadsheet to lay out every course and other activity you want to accomplish to complete your education. I suggest making the spreadsheet three semesters across don’t forget summers – and as many years down as you will need. Knowing what courses you need every semester, you are ready to compete from the head of the pack.
"LEAD OR BE LUNCH"
It is said that to survive, a zebra only needs to be faster than the slowest member of the herd. It is a bit more complicated in the campus herd. There are many more competitors unknowingly vying for the honors of providing lunch at the rear of the academic pack, but there also are tools within the system to allow the savvy student zebra to safely move on to the next water hole. The time ticket system is designed to give the graduating senior access to classes before other seniors and underclassmen, but you have to use this ticket as soon as it opens, or you have lost your advantage and fall to the back of the pack. With a semester requirements plan in hand, the academic
survivor needs to be ready to hit the first ENTER button as soon as their time ticket opens.
"EVERY NOW AND THEN YOU NEED TO SHOOT A GENERAL TO KEEP THE OTHERS FOCUSED." - NAPOLEON I OF FRANCE
No, we don't have firing squads here, but every semester we have several students suffer self-inflicted serious damage to their finances and/or careers through some combination of laziness, irresponsibility or cluelessness. Through a lot of extra effort on the part of our dedicated advisors and staff, we fortunately have been able
to find work-arounds in most cases. Had these stories played out, however, and the students not graduated, news of these tragedies likely would have caused some increased focus on graduation planning, at least for some of you.
These stories tend to follow a similarpattern:
A senior is looking at their last semester at Tech. Hopefully they’ve submitted a degree petition (the minimumsurvival criteria!) and know what courses they need. Then, for whatever reason, they wait until the last day or two of Phase I to register. By then, all the seats in courses they need have been taken by the smart seniors and juniors (and in some cases, even sophomores), and they have to sweat it out until Phase II in the hope that a seat will open.
Even worse is the situation where a graduating senior waits until Phase II to begin the registration process. Typically the course needed is one that should have been taken as a junior, and all the seats are filled. If we cannot find a larger room (an increasingly more difficult proposition because of the student population growth), they arenot going to walk that semester.
“NOTHING IS TOTALLY USELESS.IT CAN ALWAYS BE USED AS A BAD EXAMPLE.”
This actually happened to a graduating senior last spring. He was going to graduate with highest honors (GPA >3.55) and had a job with a top computing company. He had it made ... except he forgot to register for his final semester until the last two days of Phase II! Sadly, several of the courses were physically full, and he was out of luck. Because these courses were not offered in the summer, he had to wait until fall to graduate -- a seven month delay and probably $50,000 (plus tuition) penalty for a terminal case of the dumbs. His story made the Advisor'sVault of Horror (see Firewall, Oct 09).
