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| Earlier this evening, I studied in Huntsman Hall, the conglomerate business classes/meetings/study areas building, where the computers limit access to students of the Wharton School (yes, it excludes students at Penn in the other schools) and printing is generally a little bureaucratic. As I walked out of a computer-equipped study room to find some water, this guy stops me and says he can't log on to a computer, asks if he can use the one I'm logged on to in the room to print some stuff, and I, a little confused, consent and successfully locate a water fountain. He seemed a little frustrated and I felt bad.
Then I noticed that he was having problems with the printers, and I realized that the documents would be printing under my account, meaning that I would have to authorize and pay for the printout. Since I received about $40 of free printing from the school at the beginning of the semester (of which I've used $10 so far), I offered to just print out the papers for him. He seemed reluctant initially but ended up grateful, and offered to buy me some food or something, which I rejected and suggested that he instead do something nice for someone else in the future for a price of $4 or so. He also seemed extremely surprised that I would offer to do this, citing (maybe jokingly) that most people here would rather ignore him for the sake of the grading curve.
And so my resulting thoughts are:
1. Was I just conned into printing stuff for someone not in the business school? I looked up his name and he turned out to be a senior in the College. So it's reasonable that he wouldn't know about the printing policies in the building, not being in the Wharton School, but is it likely that someone would be here for four years and not realize this? Also, he printed out anthropology notes to read for a class this week, and that certainly doesn't deserve the exhibited level of frustration... but I sense he would have given me $4 in cash if he had it, and what if I'd said that a bagel and some coffee would be nice? That would certainly be annoying.
2. Assuming he was genuinely appreciative, what does it say about the Wharton School, Penn in general, society in general, that people find it strange to give someone else $4 in printing? Students graduating from the Wharton School make an average of $130,000 their first year (salary + bonuses, according to wikipedia), and people at this college certainly overspend on everything else... isn't $4 minimal?
And if $4 is minimal, what justifies me giving $4 to this person, and not every homeless person I see around Philadelphia? Well, the homeless people do scare me a little more, and I don't carry cash much. Also, I don't relate to their problems, while I certainly understand printing problems through personal experience.
Besides the issue of charity (which I have been thinking about, but I can't decide what organizations to donate money to, and whether that would even be the best thing to do)... I suppose the more important issue is the true nature of competitive people, especially students. I most often think that competitive people are like me, in that we'll want to do better than everyone else, but that we'll help others if they would benefit and we would also benefit (at least from the feelings of altruism). However, is it possible that there are a lot of truly competitive people who are unwilling to help others? Why is altruism so difficult? Because it doesn't really exist? And to what extent are perceptions important? Most importantly, why am I concerned about this rather than the East Asian Crisis in the 1990s? | | |
| BTW, I'm most likely concentrating in marketing for my business degree. It's interesting in ways I can't yet describe, and I've lately enjoyed thinking about which companies own which brands and how ideas are transmitted through the strange stuff of human desires. | | |
| My philosophy towards life is to disregard possible tenets for a philosophy towards life, possibly, or at least to be unsure about all of them.
Yesterday I found a frog on a lily pad (neither real) at a flea market.
I haven't been keeping up with my leisurely reading (ironic?), but I do think that Hegel is interesting and pleasant to read, and that Percy Shelley's "A Defence of Poetry" contains too many words with antient spellings. | | |
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Ignoring e-mails from a group member is not the best way to communicate occupation with other tasks
Ignoring communications in general is despicable
The little things that are easily noticeable contribute more to a person's overall impression than any sort of deep competence.
Also, I haven't use html coding in years, and it's nice that I remember how to make bullet points. Hopefully they show up on the page.
I have a funny thing for people and especially musical artists with the initials "JM." And after years, nearly a decade of listening to John Mayer, appreciating the tunes and eventually the lyrics, I finally, finally can say that I like his voice and that his songs would not be improved by replacing his voice with another. Quite a breakthrough.
Computer programming is something I can do, I decided. Someday, after I come back to college to study many other subjects in depth, I'll also try to understand computer science.
It's funny that I was sixteen four years ago; that's the length of a conventional college education. Lately I feel that I've lost some things, and it's a little threatening. I'll think about it later. | | |
| If you're ever assigned a 10-15 page group paper and feel bad for slacking off on the group presentation, DO NOT offer to write the entire paper for the sake of cohesive style and assume that your teammates will understand how to provide a "detailed outline" for a portion the paper, even if (maybe especially if) they are seniors in engineering. | | |
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