ann arbor is overrated. » Blog Archive

Take Back South U

The South U area has been taken over by the students and it’s time to take it back, the South University Area Association says. We’re all for the density increases they propose, but we’re curious about what “restaurants that attract from across the city” and “shops that drew customers from multiple age groups” used to be there.

56 Responses to “Take Back South U”

Tower Records.
posted by colleen on February 26th, 2004 at 1:13 pm
Pinball Pete’s closed??
posted by Anna on February 26th, 2004 at 6:11 pm
The Original Ann Arbor Street Art Fair.

The greedy South U merchants and slumlords are greenmailing the best (read the most artistic, creative and original) part of the A2 Art Fair to get a piece of the action and strip what remains the most creative part of the “Art Fair”.

If they have their way, the original Street Art Fair (where it all began) will become just another outdoor summer strip mall of wallets, candles and stuff on a stick.
posted by mucho gusto on February 26th, 2004 at 7:02 pm
Pinball Pete’s is there… in the basement of the Galleria mall. If you ask me, the charm of South U is that it is so unabashedly an undergrad-centric college business district, without the more gentrified feel of State Street. It’s all crappy frat bars, cheap food, and drunk-ass kids in Northface jackets at 3 AM. I think someone is forgetting that Ann Arbor does like to think of itself as a quintessential college town… South U is the perfect embodiment of that spirit, for better or worse. It’s about the only part of town students really do seem to have the run of. We don’t need another State Street, Main Street, or Kerrytown. Bless you South U and your ugly vinyl awnings and shitty architecture.
posted by Brandon on February 26th, 2004 at 10:03 pm
Wow, there used to be a movie theater on state street when I first moved here, and a ground level arcade that was rather large. Pete was origanaly on williams and maynard diagnally across from the big apartment building, upstairs. It was good and you could smoke a joint up there most of the time. Very seedy and dark, no toilet (public). There was also a packard and state petes, now ABreadCo and then the SU location that is for sale that they spoke of.

As far as the art fair, the state street merchants wanted to expand and get some $$$$. See state street merchants get space, and main street merchants association gets paid off by the fair on thier street, so SouthU ‘wanted a peice of the action’. Well the two visions collided and the original ann arbor fair is not on North U and that area, was pretty quiet there last year.

The SouthU merchants association SUCK A$$ BIG TIME. I was tyring to get a sidewalk permit to use there many a year ago, and you needed to tell the business your in front off and the two next door, I was setting up right in front of the bank. Well the rules to get the permit said that the business could only object for a certain listed reasons. Well the SU policy was to object to all permits, no matter what!! Well the city would still issue the permits, but still I was tyring to hard just to get them to say yes. I mean the bank manager, I said “but your closed on Saturday, why object?” but still did, so screw them.
posted by Just a Voice on February 26th, 2004 at 10:15 pm
hey that was supposed to read (now not not)

the original ann arbor fair is now on North U and that area
posted by Just a Voice on February 26th, 2004 at 10:17 pm
I visit PJ’s Records, if I remember the name right, on South U. now and then. PJ himself is a cool guy, fun to chat about music with, and runs a good local business to support.
posted by Laura on February 26th, 2004 at 10:41 pm
The artilce said they “want it to be a University area, rather than a student area.” WHAT DOES THAT MEAN??? Does anyone have any idea?
posted by Lucky Jackson on February 27th, 2004 at 7:22 am
I think they mean that they want others from the university (i.e. faculty and staff) to be attracted to the area, too.
posted by Anna on February 27th, 2004 at 9:45 am
I think it means they want to turn it into another main street.
posted by James on February 27th, 2004 at 10:58 am
Laura, PJ’s is on Packard, unless they moved.
posted by Brandon on February 27th, 2004 at 12:15 pm
Then where are the undergrads supposed to go to have fun? I feel sorry for today’s undergrads. It seems that the show has passed them by, even (perhaps especially) in universities and college towns themselves.
posted by Lucky Jackson on February 27th, 2004 at 12:56 pm
>

Ypsi?
posted by James on February 27th, 2004 at 1:38 pm
I have to agree with Brandon and Lucky on this one. For all its downsides, South U to me is the one part of AA with genuine energy, where you can go eat cheap crappy food, drink cheap beer, and listen to crappy bands play for a small cover - which is an invaluable part of the college experience. It can be kind of annoying (especially when you’re driving down it at 1am on a Friday night), but AA needs it. And besides, our police dept. has made it very clear that they don’t want undergrads drinking in the privacy of their homes - where else are they supposed to go?
posted by Nick on February 27th, 2004 at 3:03 pm
The South U Merchants Association is being disingenuous, to put it nicely. In plainer speak, they’re lying.

The SUMA members claim that they want a more “inclusive” and “university-friendly” atmosphere that’s not just entirely awful, horrible undergrads (whose manners they may despise, but whose money builds their mansions).

Except they already have a pretty inclusive clientele base. Walk into the Brown Jug on any weekday late afternoon/evening (esp. Friday) and there will be lots of UM staff, maintenance crew, guys from the Life Center construction project, etc. all eating and drinking and spending their hard-earned money. You can barely get a table at Saigon Garden during the week, b/c there are so many UM staff and faculty there (esp. from the Social work building, school of ed., etc.). You could go on and on. People from all over town make special trips to Village Corner to buy wine. The Korean restaurants, Charlie’s, and Rendezvous — all these places bring in diverse crowds too (during the day at least).

The SUMA members claim they want “inclusiveness” and “diversity” but they already have it. What they really want is to gentrify one of the few remaining parts of town where local resident, undergrads, grad students, staff, and faculty all frequent, jack up the prices and force out “undesirables” like students and (gasp!) UM staff and facilities employees, and turn the whole strip into some bo-bo wasteland stuffed with candle shops and crap art on a stick. You know, just like State St., Liberty, Main St., etc etc etc.
posted by Boris on February 27th, 2004 at 4:39 pm
I love you, Boris.
posted by Brandon on February 27th, 2004 at 5:18 pm
I’m tired of blatant grad student NIMBYism. The Burns Park brie-and-chardonnay set needs someplace to buy aromatherapy candles.
posted by Anna on February 27th, 2004 at 5:19 pm
They have it. It’s called every other part of Ann Arbor.
posted by Nick on February 27th, 2004 at 5:53 pm
Amen, Boris!
posted by Rob on February 27th, 2004 at 5:59 pm
We missed you, Boris!

The part of this article I really liked was, “Those businesses tend to be successful, Ladd said, but their limitations become obvious when the university shuts down and sales dry up.” Completely glossing over the fact that student support is enough to make these businesses successful.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on February 27th, 2004 at 6:13 pm
I think too much is being read into what kinds of people/businesses the area supposedly wants to attract. Businesses in the area simply want more business which would come from more residents. But I think most people realize the residents who fill in these new spots will be students. With even more students there, we may seen the opening of new stores which cater to them which wouldn’t have been sustainable before. The area definitely needs more housing. That area’s zoning is out-dated, I have to agree.
posted by tomo on February 27th, 2004 at 7:19 pm
You’re right Brandon, I misspoke; PJ’s is indeed on Packard, sorry.
posted by Laura on February 27th, 2004 at 10:00 pm
What undergrads need is someone (preferably a lawyer) to look out for their interests, both to the University and to the city of Ann Arbor. In four or five years, their population turns over, and by the time they figure out how to represent themselves, it is time to move on.
posted by Lucky Jackson on February 28th, 2004 at 3:36 pm
I nominate Larry
posted by Lucky Jackson on February 28th, 2004 at 3:36 pm
What the undergrads need to do is to get shut out from local culture enough that they revolt and aren’t placated by kitch consumer goods and pitcher specials. Like ‘em or hate ‘em, undergrads are the money drivers of college town nightlife, and they should be doing a hell of a lot better than South U. But hell, maybe that’s just because I think of South U. as where high schoolers buy drugs.
js
posted by js on February 28th, 2004 at 10:02 pm
Thanks, Lucky, but right now I’m pretty busy running for county clerk, working at UM, updating my web sites, etc.

MSU students do have such a person as you describe: Mark Grebner. Not only does he consistently advocate for student interests in the political realm, but he publishes “Grading the Profs”, which rates MSU faculty based on student surveys.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on February 29th, 2004 at 12:53 am
We really need a guide like that at Michigan. When I was an undergrad, I used to work on the course evaluation guide. It was a student activity that got student activity funding, and it was extremely useful. Despite arguments I’ve heard about student ratings encouraging the treatment of “education as a consumer product,” I don’t remember hard classes getting worse ratings. Quite the opposite.

I could go on a rant about that guy from Michigan who had that book about how these ratings contribute to grade inflation…maybe another time.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on February 29th, 2004 at 1:03 am
The ratings issue is pretty complicated. I’m on a committee in which we spent two years trying to figure out a good balance between giving students info about courses and hurting the careers of people unfairly.

Once ratings exist, they are treated as gospel and used in tenure and promotions. Differences that aren’t significant (e.g. between an average rating of 4.9 and 5.1) are taken seriously by those who don’t know better and can impact promotions. Also, if a person gets a bad rep and then improves, it’s really hard for the person to be evaluated fairly because people then enter the courses with expectations and don’t adjust them accordingly (we know this through literally thousands of studies on the influence of peoples’ expectations on social evaluation).

More disturbingly, ratings are significantly impacted by gender (women consistently are rated less highly by male students, whereas men are rated more highly by men; women rate female and male instructors equally highly). Perhaps men are better teachers, but perhaps there’s something else going on, too (some have hypothesized that it’s because peoples’ ideas of the good qualities of women — nuturing, supportive, blah blah blah — aren’t very congruent with authority, whereas peoples’ ideas of mens’ strengths — leadership, strength, blah blah — are pretty congruent with the professor role). Furthermore, physical attractiveness also predicts a significant portion of the variance on evaluations.

Finally, a significant proportion of the variance in peoples’ ratings can be predicted by peoples’ viewing of five-second silent clips of those instructors in action — in optimistic terms that means that people are extremely good at quick decisions based on non-verbal cues about whether someone is or isn’t a good teacher, or in less optimistic terms, it could mean that peoples’ snap judgments then bias their views of classroom efficacy, or that peoples’ ideas of whether or not someone was a good teacher are influenced by extraneous variables, like attractiveness and body-language, animacy of facial expressions, etc.

What we decided to do was not give out quantitative data with averages (since bad data isn’t really better than no data), rather histograms showing what proportion rated the person with a 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. We also decided to release the raw comments — so anyone can read an instructor’s evaluations. It doesn’t get around the problem of a person having a hard time improving (i.e. new facutly who get better at teaching in thier first few years) but at least you don’t have people comparing 4.9s and 5.1s.

Ratings do impact grade inflation in some departments at UM. There are people who specifically set the average to B+ or A- to cut down on student friction and raise their ratings. It may not result in the intended effect, but it certainly is done. It’s just not talked about in public.

BTW, you can access all of your professor’s ratings (and GSI ratings) online at Michigan. There’s a website, I think run by MSA. At least there used to be.
posted by Anna on February 29th, 2004 at 10:10 am
ugh… their, not thier.
posted by Anna on February 29th, 2004 at 10:27 am
Hmmm…an arbitrary evaluation of someone that can harm their career and doesn’t reflect a person’s true ability. professors give things like that to students all the time. They are called “grades.” Like the prof you mentioned, students often pander to professors to get good grades. And, like those profs, this damages the educational process. Turnabout ti fair play, I say.
posted by Lucky Jackson on February 29th, 2004 at 11:00 am
You’re right, they do still have that website. But it does just have the quantitative ratings. I agree that those aren’t that helpful. My job as an undergrad was to write summaries of comments - if ten people say the same specific thing, it’s a lot more significant than if they all fill in the circle for 4.

I’m sure that the students at the top of the class are going to give better evaluations - they’re probably doing better because they like the class. But I can’t see how the center grade, usually decided after evaluations, could make a difference.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on February 29th, 2004 at 11:58 am
Lucky, Professors give students grades taking the full responsibility for it (i.e. they are not anonymous) and with the requirements of the class clearly described (in the syllabus). Students evaluate anonymously with no clear reference points (they probably haven’t had that same class by a different professor, whereas professors give the same exact class to a large sample of students). Professors typically don’t teach the number of classes that students take, either, whereas grades are an average over four years of a variety of courses of differing difficulty. Furthermore, they are also not analogous because with grade inflation, the average student (at Harvard and at most schools, including UM — excluding, maybe, the school of Engineering) has a GPA in the A to A- range, so professors aren’t really helping or hurting students in the grading process — it’s more or less totally meaningless, but still gives potential employers the idea that every student is a “great” student unless they are a truly horrible student and have, say, a 3.0.

AAIO, grades are “determined” after evaluations in that final exam scores aren’t in yet, but most students still know approximately how they will do based on their performance to date, unless the final accounts for a lot of the grade and is very difficult (probably not difficult at schools where the average is A-, which is most of them, some, of course, differ). I agree that if you have students publish a book, the ratings problem isn’t such a problem, but unless you’re at a school where the reviews are done well , they are usually awful (Harvard and some others are notable exceptions, but they are exceptions). For example, here someone in my department got reviewed for a class he never taught. They said nice things, but it called into question the accuracy of the report that the students were putting out. When we started talking about how to evaluate teaching (and do we want to rely just on one piece of data — how much students like the course? What about other criteria? What would those be?) the students came to us and asked us for the student ratings instead of their own surveys because they were obviously not getting great information. Anyway, the students here are still free to take the raw evaluations and write a book if they want to. I don’t think anyone is stopping anyone at UM from doing that — but given the quality of the writing at the Daily, I would be pretty untrusting of any publication like that.
posted by Anna on February 29th, 2004 at 2:46 pm
I stand corrected. Is grade inflation really that bad at U-M? At Harvard, I can sort of understand - if you are postulating the most highly qualified student body in the U.S. (as at Harvard) then it stands to reason that “A”s and “B”s will be the primary grade.But I had no idea that grade inflation was that bad at U-M. (I do know that 45% of all entering freshmen, nationwide, had a 3.7 gpa or higher last year.)
posted by Lucky Jackson on February 29th, 2004 at 2:57 pm
Lucky — Yep. I only have numbers for one department at the UM (but one of the largest undergrad majors), and it’s at least anecdotally true across LSA. General, quiet agreement among colleges is that the median is somewhere around a 3.6 or 3.7 everywhere, but most don’t make their numbers public for PR reasons. My current school doesn’t make them public, but I have seen the data and it’s consistent. To my knowledge, there’s only one school in the US that strives to make the grades bell-shaped with “C” being average and I think it’s Reed (though that contradicts everything else I know about Reed, so maybe I’m misremembering which one — some school out there). They send out a little pamphlet with students’ grades for grad school admissions purposes.

Dartmouth and many Canadian universities list the range or the mean and standard deviation for the class, along with the student’s grade. That’s what I think every school should do.
posted by Anna on February 29th, 2004 at 3:20 pm
I don’t think I’ve ever been in a class where I was told what the median grade would be before the grades were given out. I should point out that this is in the sciences, where instead of being given an A on a paper, a student will be given an 84 on an exam and told that the average is 70. The student has no idea whether that 84 will turn out to be an A or a B+, so it can’t influence an evaluation.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on February 29th, 2004 at 6:49 pm
Maybe some schools do some things differently. I know that when I took stats, for example, I knew exactly how I was doing going into the final, (even though we were given 84s, not As) and I knew what I needed to get an A. Maybe it depends on whether the classes you’re taking are curved or not, and whether they tell you what the curve was for each exam as you go along. Most at Michigan announce the curves as you go along (e.g. on exam 1 I got a 70, which was a B+), so you know pretty much how you’re doing unless the final is much more difficult (or easier) than expected.
posted by Anna on February 29th, 2004 at 7:00 pm
Well, maybe they’re more mysterious here and when I was an undergrad. I was in one class where they told us at the beginning that an 83 was usually an A and an 84 ended up being a B. No one complained, as far as I know - it didn’t seem all that unfair to me. Anyway, students are always told that they should be more high-minded than to always think about grades, which is sort of how I feel about evaluations too.

Oh, and my evaluation summaries did not generally read like this weblog!
posted by ann arbor is overrated on February 29th, 2004 at 8:59 pm
I have no doubt that you wrote unusually insightful and accurate reviews…that would be consistent with this blog.
posted by Anna on March 1st, 2004 at 7:18 pm
Wow. A 3.6-3.7 overall curve in LSA would really surprise me. I graduated in ‘89, so my perspective is not contemporary, but I recall that while a few majors were known for easy curves there were a lot of LSA departments where that was not the case — foreign languages, hard sciences, math, and to a lesser extent history and economics. Do all of these departments really set the curve that high? I did take some poli sci and communications courses that were not all that challenging, but generally I thought that a 3.0-3.3 curve was more typical. I think that it would be a mistake for Michigan to adopt an A- average since I think that it would very hard for an undergrad aspiring to graduate or professional school to stand out if everyone has a 3.7.
posted by Pete on March 1st, 2004 at 10:58 pm
I’m stunned at the notion of a 3.7 average undergrad GPA. If that’s the case, then I was way, way, way below average.

At MSU, Mark Grebner takes periodic surveys asking students about the professors they had in the previous term. So, yeah, all the grades and everything else are all settled by then. But one of his survey questions asks how easy or hard the work was in the course. The correlation between the work question and the evaluation questions is very close to zero.

“Grading the Profs” doesn’t give numeric ratings (except to show the n of responses). Rather, each professor gets an automatically-generated verbal description which summarizes the overall rating and the degree of uncertainty. “Average.” “Much better than average.” “Average or below.” “Very slightly below average.” “Probably above average.”

If the other evaluation questions come out significantly different from what might be expected from the overall question, it is mentioned. I forget what the other questions are about, but some specific aspects of teaching. Mostly these come up when the n gets to be pretty large and the professor is quite distinctive.

He has 30 years of ratings, so change over time is also measured and documented. It is also noted when there is an unusually wide range of views about a particular professor.

And finally, the “work” question is mentioned if it is different from average, as in “Work: average or less.” or in clearer cases: “Much more demanding than average.”

In Grebner’s world, there are just as many professors below average as above average. No “Lake Wobegon effect” in his stuff.

From time to time, official student ratings of professors have been published. They are never presented in such an unsentimental and useful form. Hence, Grebner’s Grading the Profs (a private sector enterprise) has become something of an institution at MSU. And despite many threats from aggrieved faculty, Grebner has never actually been sued.

My father was a professor of American history at MSU from 1963 until his death in 1995. As I recall, his rating was “Better than average. Work: average or more.”
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on March 2nd, 2004 at 1:34 am
Re: Pete’s point about inflated GPAs and grad school aspirations, it’s very much the case that applicants to top grad programs aren’t evaluated much on grades - if they’re notably lower than others’ grades, you get tossed into the “No” pile, but as far as the actual admissions offers, there are generally a ton of people with stellar grades and you can only pick a few of them. GRE scores sometimes get treated the same way - if everyone has good scores you can’t really use the scores to distinguish among applications. I’m in a research-oriented field, so for us prior research experience and publications tend to sway admissions more than anything. Actually, my program very rarely admits people right out of college - most people have prior master’s degrees or at least a year of research experience.
posted by Nick on March 2nd, 2004 at 11:22 am
Things work the same way in my department, Nick — for admissions purposes we look at GREs and research experience (publications and experience working in a lab, we flat out never, ever admit anyone without experience or technical skills) and we rely extremely heavily on letters of recommendation (which are also inflated, so we negatively evaluate people because their letters say “very good” instead of “outstandingly, profoundly brilliant!”.)

We sort the applicants by grades, but honestly, there is almost no range. If you have anything below a 3.6 or so, you go straight into the reject pile, unless there is some extremely unusual circumstance (like, you’ve written a well-recieved book, or you already have an M.D.).

We hardly use grades because of grade inflation, i.e. grades are almost totally undiagnostic because there is almost no range.
posted by Anna on March 2nd, 2004 at 12:12 pm
I agree with Boris. I can’t afford to eat a $15 burger every day of the week, or pay $6 for my coffee.

I love S. University simply for how amusing things are when the northface crowd lets out of Touchdown Cafe. Next time you have nothing to do, go sit outside of Touchdown at 3AM, or sit inside of Panchero’s and wait for them to flood in. Drunk people can be funny sometimes. Emphasis on the sometimes.
posted by eston on March 2nd, 2004 at 4:46 pm
Hoping I’m not the spam with which you’re dealing;

When I entered M, the average undergrad GPA was a 2.81.
And Boone’s Farm was $1.49 a bottle.
And, we could take all we wanted to the football games.
Life was grand…

But again, that was before AAWO.
posted by ilya on March 2nd, 2004 at 7:01 pm
I too find it shocking that the average LSA GPA is supposedly 3.7. Not only do I find it shocking, but I don’t even find it anecdotally true! I know enough GSIs for large undergrad lectures, and how they grade, to know that the average student doesn’t make it out of those classes with anywhere near a 3.7

Plus, when I was in the process of interviewing undergrad research assistant, I read 16 transcripts, not one of which had a GPA of higher than 3.5–and this was amongst social science concentrators for a social science research position.

Also, grades and GREs *do* matter in the grad admissions process, if only to serve as a minimum threshold. I know for a fact that my department here at UM looks at each incoming app and if the GPA is below, say, a 3.0 and the GRE scores are below, say, 1800, then they are pretty much a shoe-in for rejection unless there’s something otherwise stellar about them or they have a very good explanation for their poor scores. Then again, more than half of each incoming cohort to my department seems to be fresh out of undergrad, so maybe in those cases there’s not a lot else to go on aside from grades and GREs.
posted by Alex on March 3rd, 2004 at 8:07 am
Admittedly it’s been many years since I took the GRE, but I thought the reported scores were in the 200-800 range, hence, the maximum sum would be 1600. How could someone get 1800?
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on March 3rd, 2004 at 10:28 am
There are 3 sections of the GRE: verbal, math, and analytic. So they’re looking to see a rough average of 600 per section. Which for math barely breaks the 50th percentile, and for verbal is in the 80s.
posted by Alex on March 3rd, 2004 at 11:04 am
Alex, maybe it depends on the department. It is definitely true in some LSA departments that the average grades are above a 3.5 — all you have to do is look at the summary stats. May not be true among all departments, but remember that LSA majors aren’t evenly distributed among majors, so even if it’s not true in some depts, it may still be true college-wide. Also, as students take more classes in their majors, their GPAs tend to go up, so your view of the curve depends on whether you’re teaching 100 level classes or 400 level classes and whether the RAs you were looking to hire were seniors or not. I would be willing to bet that final GPAs after senior year are a good bit higher than GPAs for Freshman and Sophomores (and at least when I was hiring RAs, this seemed to be true from looking at transcripts, and I know it was true of my (popular undergrad) department — grades were better in majors-only classes than in the popular 100-level classes).
posted by Anna on March 3rd, 2004 at 12:07 pm
I am sure you are right, as honestly I haven’t even started GSIing yet, nor have I looked at the LSA summary stats. The RAs I was interviewing were almost entirely seniors however, and I remember being surprised at their low GPAs. One of the students, who seemed quite bright and has been ambitious in terms of seeking out research opportunities and taking challenging classes, was the top of the heap with still only a GPA of about 3.2 or so.

And then for some reason as grad students we have an 8 point GPA. What the hell is up with that?
posted by Alex on March 3rd, 2004 at 1:15 pm
Anedecdotal commentary:
The vast majority of my friends at UM had GPAs below 3.7, and I’d be surprised if more than half the kids in classes with me did, unless grade inflation is really that out of control– there sure were a lot of lazy, irresponsible, dumb kids. Moreover, I actually had a hair lower GPA within my major than outside it– some of those 3-400 level classes were tougher than a lot of the intro. core classes taken in other departments. Then again, I was at U. Colorado for my freshmen and sophomore years, where most of my non-History credits were earned, so the comparison isn’t perfect.
posted by Brandon on March 3rd, 2004 at 5:16 pm
Er, that should have been “more than half the kids in classes with me had above a 3.7″
posted by Brandon on March 3rd, 2004 at 5:18 pm
My concentration advisor told me quite proudly that our department gives the highest grades of any in LSA, and in the class I took with him last semester, he announced that the lowest grade anyone was getting was A-. In talking to others who took it, I found at least three people besides myself had gotten A+… Gotta love that kind of curve…
posted by I hate A2 on March 5th, 2004 at 8:57 pm
Average GPA of 3.7? Toss out grad applications by default with lower than 3.6? Ever been to north campus? Most of us up there worked hard to get in the 3.0-3.4 range. Then again, most of my friends who were psych majors graduated with 3.9s and spent most of their college career at ricks, while I was in the media union studying and working on projects.
posted by asus on March 9th, 2004 at 6:05 am
When I was an undergrad in computer engineering, I was also swinging 3 jobs to pay for it: pizza delivery, apartment manager (ie: slum lord’s lackey), and computer tech support. My grade point was less than thrilling. I never withdrew from classes, like so many of my friends, and took the grade that I received, and payed for. However, because of working and a bad sophomore year and where I received mostly C’s, my gpa never recovered. I think my overall gpa after graduation was 2.975. To add insult to injury, the department placed in public areas the list of students’ SS #’s (even after it was illegal), their GPA’s, and corresponding percentile rankings. It was a bit disenheartening to know that you are in the lower 10th percentile of students. What’s even more disenheartening is that it kept me from being even considered by most of the companies interviewing students on campus. Oddly, most people acknowledge after school that the GPA is not important. So why the hell do we place so much emphasis on it as the make/break number for student? When my younger niece/nephews ask me for college advice, i’ve been telling them that withdrawing is your best course of action, since edu society places more weight on the GPA, not the number of times you took the class. Anyway, my 2 cents worth…
posted by titus on March 12th, 2004 at 1:35 pm
i used to hate ann arbor, but then i moved to middletown, ct. it’s way worse. the ethnic food is even more overpriced, the homeless people are far more crazy, and the bars are strange. count your blessings.
posted by leslie wolf on March 14th, 2004 at 6:04 pm
I have lived in many places and I have never seen so many rude, impatient, down right mean people gathered in one locale. I grew up in the south and for the most part the people there are kind but some on the fake side. I then moved to Chicago and the people there were pretty much the keep to yourself and mind your own business. Then I moved to Los Angeles, where the people there were, well, Mexican, so, not much talking. But outside of the Mexican aspect the other people were well to do had there nose up in there air. Ann Arbor is amazing because even the people that come here from other countries are ass holes. I live in family housing on North Campus and me, along with my family and a handful of other people are the only white people there. And to top it off we get treated like crap because all of the people are Chinese and have a little click going on there. Yes, I agree, Ann Arbor is overrated.
posted by A2Boo on June 11th, 2004 at 9:21 am