First Time

The overall effect of this plan will be to ensure that all reports of the university are overwhelmingly positive. Compliant students will select satisfied replies whether or not the stated criteria have been met. The average student is lazy and unintelligent and will not meditate over their responses, choosing benign to ambivalent options. This docility is beneficial to the institution’s image. I can think of not one objection that will possibly be raised against this proposal considering that the impact of unhappy students will thereby be much lessened in the university. I desire the reader will observe that I calculate my remedy for York University alone, and for no other that ever was, is, or, I think, ever can be upon Earth. Therefore, let no one talk to me of other expedients. Of making tenured professors who rest on their ego and laurels accountable for teaching effectively; of recognizing that students do not wish to follow in the path of their professors, pursuing knowledge for knowledge's sake so that after a lifetime of living on the university dime they can claim with ironic authority that they are an expert in the field because they wrote articles for peer-reviewed journals on the subject; of teaching practical skills and assigning relevant projects, no longer trusting that an academic, theoretical approach will benefit their students; of acknowledging that students today do not live in the blissful, responsibility-free learning their professors enjoyed and instead work multiple jobs to support them

BY MICHAEL KARPATI

He was uncertain. Why had he come to her apartment? He didn’t know what to do. He never did. He felt strange.

Afterwards, everything felt the same. And he wondered why he had done it. MM

selves; of understanding that a degree alone is no longer sufficient for employment and that resumes must be stacked with relevant experience; of therefore offering that experience in the coursework; and of questioning students as to the resources they feel are important instead of wasting funds on departments, buildings and programs that no one but theoretical research enthusiasts asked for

Therefore I repeat, let no one talk to me of these and the like expedients until they have at least some glimpse of hope that there will ever be a sincere attempt to put them into practice. But as for myself, having been wearied out for many years of reading theory and doing assignments on the topic of my future career instead of practicing the career itself, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal of ignoring my needs entirely, so that I will incur no danger to university funding and professor employment with my complaints.

I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion as to reject any offer, proposed by those esteemed career academics, which shall be found equally effective and beneficial to the future of the university as a center of learning and growth. But before ideas of that kind shall be advanced in contradiction to my scheme, I desire the author or authors to consider this: real, foundational change takes so much time, commitment and humility, and it is simpler by far to feel secure in the belief in your academic superiority, and that you know what is best. MM

SHOSHANA SHERRINGTON is a fourthyear English and professional writing major and an executive member of MacMedia Magazine. Find her on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/shoshana-sherrington/