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Cyberland in Maryland

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UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND - AIM triumphs over traditional education.
check out this college application for the University of Maryland: https://was-1.umd.edu/contact/registration/register. For those of you who are too lazy to move your mouse over to the link and click on it, it's an application with little fields that you fill in your informration. The first four fields in order of appearance are as follows: (1) Screen name, (2) email address, (3) First Name, and (4) a little check box markled (i am not making this up) "Check here if you do not have a first name."

Huh?

Answer this question for me - How many people do you know that don't have a first name by the time they graduate high school? Gee, I guess even the un-named high school students of the new millenium have screen names. Who needs a real name when you can have a cyber name!

Alright, alright. I don't know why the university decided to organize their applications that way, but I guess I can kinda understand putting email and screen name at the top of the form. I mean, having an internet savvy student body could greatly benefit the college experience as a whole. For example, without internet the students would lose the ablility to write papers as thoroughly researched and well written as students do today, using the method of pretending to do work but reading AIM profiles instead. It is important not to underestimate the work-avoidance powers of AIM. According to a study conducted at the Uninveresity of California San Diego, in which I asked my friends to guess what % of the time they spend avoiding work using AIM and then fudged the numbers in order to exaggerate as much as possible, it was concluded that the average college student spends as much as 12-99.9% of their school time reading AIM profiles. If that's not evident enough, I once made a trip to the library to check up on a friend that was (supposedly) taking notes from a book before beginning an essay. In order to complete this task, he had actually felt the need to hand draw an AIM buddy list in his notebook. (mind you, that also ALL he had in his notebook after - get this - 5 entire hours.) I think AIM is taking over higher education. But hey, at least we'll have quick typing skills!

Anyway, sorry about the sarcasm... I'll try to be less caustic in the next column. For now, I gotta check up on my profile before the UofM application reviewers do. TTYL ppl!




  ¶ 11:31 PM