#click read more to see my extra-long rant about the university system and toxic academia

[brothed]

just thinking, after seeing people getting back their midterm marks and just watching midterm season as a whole - and i’m not trying to be pseudo-intellectual here but. the culture is so toxic?

i can’t speak for other programs or schools but like, in the science program at my university. it is rough. 

the week of midterms itself was Horrible and it ma have paid off for me, but not for everyone? like, almost everyone i spoke too was running on extremely low amounts of sleep, studying for hours on end, not eating properly/often and like. breaking down because of the stress? i saw at least 6 people crying during the midterms and that was only in two of them. 

not to mention probably half of the kids were on some sort of drugs. the two guys i know who sell adderall and ritalin were literally almost out of full prescription from midterms week alone,,, and i just find that so fucked?

and then this past weekend, after most midterms were done - there was probably double the normal amount of drunk people. and even my friends and i - we were absolutely wasted for two days to celebrate midterms finally ending and to have some fun before we had to figure out our grades. 

the worse part is that it is completely normalized here? if you ask any upper years, they’re like, “yeah, that’s midterms - exams are worse and a lot of people fail anyways.” like?? completely destroying yourself for a week should not be normal??? for tests that you are almost expected to fail?? 

like. i was told by one of my profs that the university likes to keep grades above the pass mark, but under 70%. why?? why on earth would you want kids to get 70s? i am not saying that’s a bad mark but. should you not want kids to do as well as they possibly can? should the goal not be just. as well as each person can do?? not to try to stump everyone so they fall below a 70%???

and the aftermath is. so bad.

in the science program here, you need to have at least a 75% high school average to get in - and that’s final. all of the kids in the science program are used to getting a 75% or above in high school - but the science program average is a 65%. i Understand that university isn’t easy and we shouldn’t expect the same grades we get in high school - but the professors are quite literally instructed to build exams on which kids would struggle to score higher than 70%. i Refuse to believe that the 65% department average isn’t constructed at least in part.

aside from that, the aftermath has been so bad with the people around me because, most of them had at least an 80% hs average - many with much higher averages - and that standard has been so ingrained into our education? like. that’s whats rewarded and expected. and so many kids are taking this shit so hard? i have friends who are going through SO Much emotional turmoil right now, just because they have lower marks than expected on exams crafted to be that way?

it is not in any way a representation of how “smart” these people are or what they know about a topic? it is quite literally a representation of how well they can recite information while working against every possible barrier - and doing this for five courses at once.

i know people considering dropping out, almost everyone seems to be questioning their intelligence, some people are so effected by these grade drops that they are borderline suicidal - and it’s all because of ridiculous expectations from hs, paired with exams you are expected to nearly fail - which write while you are completely exhausted and overworked. the cherry on top is that many people have scholarships, granted by this university, which depend on obscenely high averages. 

i don’t know if i am looking too far into this, but from my point of view, as someone who’s still done very well - this is fucking ridiculous. none of us should be expected to put our mental and physical well being on the line to play their stupid losing-game.  they’ve stacked the deck and they do not care what lengths you go to in your frivolous attempt at winning. 

and everyone just accepts it - so fucked.