[Saga]

(02-26-2015 12:49 PM)Kamikaze Wrote:  

Introverts have trouble with game because it requires actively seeking out and creat-ing social experiences. In college, social experiences are creat-ed for you. When else are you going to live in the same building as an 8 you can run into as you wash your clothes a few washing machines apart? When are you ever going to be paired up on a project with a nubile 19 year old you are forced to talk to? Not to mention the logistical advantages of having a high concentration of bitches living at walking distance from you. Proximity engenders familiarity, and in especially provincial places, there is a psychological safety net in talking to one of your peers, as opposed to one of your same-aged locals who *gasp* aren't going to school.

The problem isn't seeking out experiences, the problem is being obliged to partake in a certain type of experience. The vast majority of lays are initiated at parties, not study halls. That means being loud over a beer pong table is a far more relevant skill than chatting up a girl in a cafe. Student activities can be one alternative but they're almost always inferior in participation and possibility to their real-world equivalents (I can't count the number of moribund to nonexistent "student groups" I've encountered, but of course they're all officially active to trick prospectives into thinking it's a dynamic campus).

You're forgetting that proximity hurts game in many ways. In a city, if a guy cold approaches a dozen girls over a few days it's no problem. However, if he does that on a campus, he will develop a rather unenviable reputation fairly quickly because it's a self-contained population. This is especially the case when most students' "psychological safety net" extends only so far as their particular social circle. Even at small schools, students won't identify with the whole student body but rather with a specific sub-demographic...it's harder to cross those lines on campus than off. In this regard it's more like high school than anything else, only you're always there. If anyone doubts that they can sit in a dining hall for 2 hours and see for themselves.

I'm not basing this on my own experiences as much as observing others and seeing what succeeds and what fails. If that's "rationalization" then so be it.

(02-27-2015 12:35 AM)Osiris Wrote:  

If your humanities professor can't teach you something you couldn't learn just from reading a book, you should probably switch and find a professor that can.

The only appreciable difference between a lecture and a book is the form the information takes...and of course the price tag. In fact, most of what students learn in a humanities course is from the readings, not the lectures (every honest professor will tell you as much), so if you read the book list on your own you'll know roughly as much as someone who got the credits. Don't even get me started on "discussion-based courses" that functionally have no discussion because college students are typically incapable of independent thinking.

I was fortunate in that I had fantastic professors, really brilliant scholars and lecturers. However, was it worth the price tag, the barely marketable degree and the all the attendant aggravation of college? Absolutely not.

To be honest, the liberal arts education is a rather antiquated system that belongs to a bygone age. It's not unlike apprenticing oneself to a shoe cobbler in order to break into the sneaker industry. It's why adjunct professors get paid about as much as janitors after completing a full decade of higher education.