What better way to begin a conversation about sophomoric speculation than with a few sample panels from the newest installment of Existential Comics, which teams Camus, Sartre and de Beauvoir in a deeply meaningful, utterly ridiculous conversation about the futility of existence?
The ongoing running gag in Existential Comics is a lampoon of those serious discussions college students have deep into the night, sometimes fueled by smoking dope or dropping Dexedrine but mostly fueled by the experience of stepping outside the parental shell at the age of 19 or so and having your first look around.
I think I truly am becoming a grumpy old man, because there was a time when listening to some youngster who had just stumbled over Rousseau or DesCartes for the first time was fun and refreshing, but I'm starting to respond with an impatient shrug.
Though it could be the difference between someone excitedly telling you what they've just been learning in school and someone triumphantly announcing a great discovery they have personally had and are now condescending to share with you, the latter coming under the ancient category of "teaching your grandmother to suck eggs."
It does give me that reinvigorated feeling of hearing someone discover this stuff for the first time, particularly since it not only allows, but expects, me to snicker.
Meanwhile, Joel Pett departs from the traditional graduation cartoon about how much debt people amass in the course of earning a bachelor's degree to raise, instead, a discussion of why they are there in the first place.
I laughed because the people who find themselves in the position she dreams of out didn't intend it, or, at least, they didn't show it back in school.
There was, and perhaps still is, a saying among college adminstrators, "Be nice to your A student and he'll say something nice about you at graduation. Be nice to your C student and he'll build you a dormitory."
Coloring outside the lines does not inevitably lead to greatness, but, then again, neither does coloring within them, and planning for greatness is pretty much a fool's game.
I doubt, for instance, that Gibbons envisioned writing "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" and having it turn into one of the great classic histories of all times when he grew fed up with the pace of learning and dropped out of Oxford.
To the university of Oxford I acknowledge no obligation; and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College; they proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life.
But there's something else going on now with that graduate-in-debt whom the Democrats offered to help in the last elections but the Republicans are now throwing to the wolves.
College was once the province of the elite, and collegiate novels -- starting in 1861 with "Tom Brown at Oxford," which was copied a half century later in "Stover at Yale" -- focused on rich, spoiled spendthrifts who contrasted with a small group of serious students who had genuinely shown up to learn.
One of the things I noted, in going from being a student at a private college to living among students at the University of Colorado, was that there were far more students at CU who were blue collar, minorities and Vietnam vets, which I ascribe to a practical need to get the sheepskin and get to work, which was okay because not only could you still have those long nighttime conversations about reality, but they were often grounded in a little more pragmatic experience.
But I'm seeing now kids whom I know, and kids I hear about on NPR, rushing to finish their degrees in three years in order to minimize the cost.
That's not how education works, and it's not okay.
I've worked trade shows where, in an attempt to get attendees to visit the various booths in the exhibit hall, they issue a "passport" which, if stamped by X-number of exhibitors, entitles you to a discount or a prize or a ticket in a drawing.
The result is not more conversations but, rather, a lot of people rushing from booth to booth asking to have their passports stamped.
Now here we are, with students rushing to get their tickets punched so they can get the hell out of college as soon as possible.
I do not think the point of a university education is met by either the Tom Brown or the Ticket-Punching model, but, then, I'm just a grumpy old man.
Steve Benson is one of several people to mark the 100th anniversary of JFK's birth, and I like this piece, but I'm not sure about the implications.
Even without Lee Harvey Oswald, it's unlikely he would still be around, in part because of the medals Benson has placed on his sweater, a reminder of the days fathers intervened to help their sons join the service rather than avoid it.
Still, Vietnam was JFK's war, and while only a few young men enrolled in college to avoid the draft, it kept a lot of people who might have benefited by dropping out from doing so.
It's a bit like talking about Camus and Sartre: Highly speculative at best.
There are fewer and fewer of us who remember those days and yet no shortage of theories about what it was like.
This grumpy old man doubts the world would be markedly different had Kennedy not died young.
Much of what LBJ did had been set in motion by Kennedy, and perhaps by 1968, we'd have heard chants of "Hey, Hey, JFK: How many kids did you kill today?"
In any case, Bill Sanders was there then and is here now and has posted several of his pieces from those days.
Kennedy liked his work, but Sanders didn't give him a free ride.
I guess you had to be there.
JFK was, when Phil wrote this:
I think that I have always been a 'Grumpy Old Man'. But now my age has caught up to my attitude and I am old enough to justify the title.
Posted by: parnellnelson | 05/31/2017 at 02:43 PM