Making College Happier

Yale junior Geng Ngarmboonanant argues for lowering the drinking age to 18:

The merits of lowering the drinking age are relatively clear. We know that college students drink. But the current law drives college students “underground” to consume alcohol, like when students take shots in quick succession in dorm rooms. The current drinking age also edges students toward other illegal activities, such as purchasing fake IDs in order to enter bars and clubs. [snip]

In fact, we would be joining a group of 136 colleges, including Dartmouth and Duke, who are signatories of the Amethyst Initiative. Amethyst — which means “not intoxicated” in Greek — is a coalition of college presidents who urge a reconsideration of the national drinking age.

As with other risky human behaviors, 18-to-21 drinking would be made safer if it came out of the shadows.

Personal note: I imbibed at 18 when it was legal to do so, and college was a happy time for me. I just wish I could remember it better.....

Old Friends

My Agatha Christie
phase lasted 20 years

Parting with books that we own is somewhat like parting with old friends. They were once important, and giving them up acknowledges that they won't be as important in the future. Our mortality concentrates the mind.

We took six boxes of mystery and sci-fi novels and college humanities texts to the library used book store. Most social and natural science books were obsolete and put in the paper recycling unless they were historically significant, e.g., the Origin of Species or the Wealth of Nations. As with old friends, we hope that some will find a new life bringing enjoyment (and edification) to others. © 2013 Stephen Yuen

They Just Won't Do

A college-admissions consultant advises authenticity:

In my years handling applications to elite schools, from Harvard to Haverford, Davidson to Dickinson and everything in between, I was often surprised by where students did gain acceptance. But in every case it was a student who wrote a fabulously independent essay. Not necessarily hyper-sophisticated. But true. [snip]

I have had successful students write about the virtues of napping (Middlebury), failing a course (Harvard), and having to shoot a farm dog because it couldn't work stock (Princeton). Once a student came out to me in his fifth (and best) draft. His parents probably still don't know; but they got the Ivy Leaguer they wanted (Penn).

College applicants, write about what moves you, not about what you think they want to hear (admissions officers must be sick of reading about climate change, cultural diversity, and economic inequality, especially from students who have very little first-hand experience about these matters).

In addition to passion--which is probably not conveyed via ALL CAPS with !!!!!--one's thoughts still have to be organized, facts should be marshaled in support of the main argument, and the basic rules of grammar need to be followed. Sorry, a collection of your best text messages just won't do. © 2013 Stephen Yuen

IKEA Weekend

30310 Whipple Road, Union City

I went to the IKEA warehouse in Union City to pick up a dresser, thereby avoiding the $60 delivery charge. (I happened to be in the area on another errand, and, by the way, I hope that I never reach the point where I'm totally indifferent to saving sixty bucks.)

While we're on the subject of watching one's pennies, a family member thought the dresser was a good value at $299, but that's only if you don't consider the four hours assembling the thing on Saturday and the three additional hours on Sunday tweaking it so that the drawers slid in and out just like they did in the showroom.

Next time, however, I'll probably pay for delivery and assembly. I may be cheap but I'm not crazy. © 2013 Stephen Yuen

Take Math

Like many people, even very smart ones, Chief Financial Officers have difficulty seeing the value of new technologies; the costs are high and the benefits often unclear. That's one reason organizations have been slow to adopt big data.

Many chief financial officers say big-data technologies—which use high-performance computing to organize and analyze impossibly large volumes of information—would make their jobs more complicated and might not be worth the extra cost. They say their existing tools, mainly sophisticated financial dashboards that can crunch an organization's numbers in real time, are adequate for their financial-planning needs.

The WSJ article goes on to cite a couple of examples of big-data implementation, Chevron's accounts payable audits and IBM's risk scorecard for international expansion. But CFO's will need more than those to justify the out-of-pocket costs, not to mention the disruption, of installing new data collection and analytic systems.

However quickly the technology is adopted, companies of medium size or larger will need to have at least a few "quants" on their staff to keep up with developments, if only for defensive reasons. When deciding how to make your expensive college degree pay off, kids, do the math and take math.

Education Bubble(heads)

A new app shows how to play and win the college game. It's all about throwing awesome parties and wearing the hottest clothes.

No job prospects and a hundred thousand dollars in debt? Just press "restart" and try again.  Who said the app was real life?

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Another Commencement Address

A good commencement address by Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, filled with wisdom (no, really!). A sampling:

It is true that as an economist, I know precisely what the future holds. But union rules prevent me from sharing that knowledge with the general public.

Communities matter. Communities influence your behavior and shape who you will become. So choose your communities wisely. What is the right community for one person is not necessarily the right community for another. Find a place that will support you and push you to be a better person, as this school has. So far in life, your parents have often chosen the communities for you. But going forward, this is going to be more of your responsibility.

Your niche in life—your comparative advantage [blogger's note: he's an economics professor and can't help himself]—is out there waiting for you. You may not find it immediately. It may present itself to you at an unexpected time and an unexpected place. Be sure to be ready with an open mind.

There Will Be Cramming

At the Auto Body School the students are wrapping up this year's projects. The school is part of San Mateo County's Regional Occupational Program (ROP), which teaches skills that local employers seem to want.

Students bring in their own cars to work on. They also sand and repaint cars that other owners have left as training vehicles (finally I get to use that term literally). The cost is reasonable--less than $1,000, basically for materials but not labor.

VW rear carpet

Owners must be patient, because the project spans one (sometimes two) school years. The exterior of my beetle was more or less finished in March, and an upholsterer has been contracted to do the interior work. It will be a close call whether he can finish the work this week, when the facility will be closing for the summer. (Due to funding cutbacks the Auto Body School may be closing for good; ABS programs are no longer showing for the ROP fall semester.)

It's an educational axiom that, no matter the level or type of school, there will be cramming. © 2013 Stephen Yuen

News from New Haven - 2

A term that did not exist when I was going to school---SWUG - Senior Washed-up Girl:

SWUGs are women who don’t bother dressing up for class, or even for fancy parties (though they might still attend them), don’t seek out meaningful (or even just sexual) relationships, spend weekends at their shared homes drinking in the company of other self-identified SWUGs, and feel utter apathy about their personal lives — all at the age of 21.

Confused? A Yale senior who "dabble[s] in being categorized as a SWUG" tries to explain:

Facebook bores her. She uses Facebook to find out different football players’ birthdays and plugs them into an astrology website to test their compatibility. She is compatible with no one.

She’s the girl who promised she would never hook up with someone younger than her but now finds herself texting sophomore boys who unavoidably turn her down. She thinks this is funny. She thinks about getting a vibrator; she may already have a vibrator. It may be better than that sophomore boy.

She doesn’t need to walk home late at night and chance getting mugged by a New Haven local because she will just sleep on a couch in one of the frats. The late night crew at G-Heav knows to start making her an egg and cheese when they see her stumble through the door, and sometimes they will allow her to dance behind the counter and crack an egg herself. Again, they don’t do this for the young, hot, freshman girls — only SWUGs.

She’s the girl who tells her friends she is going to have a “friendship night.” When they ask what this means she explains she is going to make a guy want her and then turn him down. She gets drunk and wakes up next to the guy she was going to turn down. She knows this will go nowhere, as she has already plugged his birthday into the compatibility website, and their score was a two. She makes up a short lie about a meeting and asks him to leave her room and then goes back to bed. She doesn’t return his texts. She’s a SWUG.

It's too easy to snark that this wasn't the experience that Yale envisioned for its women when they entered the Old Campus in 1969, but a senior letdown is to be expected. Many SWUGs will go on to great achievements, but they suspect--or fear--these are the best years of their lives. In the words of the poet:

For I have known them all already, known them all;
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.

© 2013 Stephen Yuen

We Don't Know Anything

Manti Te'o (SI photo)

This is the age of instant analysis, snap judgments, and speaking before thinking. Manti Te'o's fictional girlfriend-who-died-of-leukemia is one of those juicy stories that deserves but won't get silent circumspection.

There is no urgency to solve this mystery. There is no apparent crime involved, nor does "justice need to be served."

We're eager to explain nearly every situation through a moral prism, but our judgment is paralyzed over the uncertainty about whether Manti Te'o is victim or hoaxer. We would do well to acknowledge that we're in the same spot as Sports Illustrated writer Michael Rosenberg: "I don't know anything."

Let's not waste any more brain cells on the saga of Manti and Lennay. Wake me when there's some new, solid information, not speculation.

Aloha, Senator Dan

Two war heroes

After my college graduation ceremonies were over, we took a car trip along the Eastern seaboard to the nation's capital. We gaped at the monuments and spent days walking about the Smithsonian. We toured the Capitol and took a peek at the offices of Daniel Inouye, our home state's then-junior senator. To our surprise, his secretary told us to come right in.

Senator Dan recognized my father as a fellow graduate of McKinley High and reminisced about the McCully neighborhood. They shot the breeze about old times and old friends. We had arrived unannounced, and he spoke to us as if he didn't have anything else on his calendar. (It was the summer of 1973, and the national spotlight was beginning to focus on him and other members of the Senate Watergate Committee.)

When he died earlier today, Senator Dan, as president pro tempore, was third in line to the Presidency. He had acquired enormous influence in the "world's most exclusive club", yet one never got the sense that he was owned by Washington. A staunch Democrat, Senator Dan had close Republican friends. He refrained from extreme partisanship, possibly costing himself a party leadership position in the Senate.

"A remarkable American life," said Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky). Amen. © 2012 Stephen Yuen