Chris' Article

Hi Chris, thanks for sending along the article. I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about all the opportunities i will be loosing by going to an institution like Stanford. Definitely puts things in a different perspective.

Living in China i feel so incredibly stupid most of the time, which is both a little frustrating and wonderful. For a while, i didn't know the adress of my apartment because i couln't read my contract. This made getting home by taxi a little difficult. It took me two days to figure out how to connect to the internet because the installation was all in chinese, and my computer would just show it as seemingly random symbols. I still haven't figured out my washing machine. that's next on the to-do list haha here i have to spend so much more time thinking about the little things in life, like how to buy a small clothesline. right now, my extra ipod cord is acting as a nice subsitute.

I think just about every high school student has full-heartedly criticized the college admission process. I know I hated it when kids signed up for ap courses and extra curriculars just to bulk up their resumes. But although we all complain about the inherent unfairness of the system, and the way we end up playing it in order to be sucessful (well sucessful by general society's standards), can you think of a better solution? obviously a random selection would not be pleasing to our ssense of meritocracy. Did any of you recieve the books stanford sent out to this year's freshman? i was taken off the list a little late, so i stilll got them. I found The Outlier's especially interesting and would love to talk to someone about it.

it's so true that it's too easy to loose sight of the fact that our education can be so much more than a platform for college or a profession. the professor writing the article probably justly criticizes the complacency of students, and universities' lack of encouragement on education as an intellecutal journey. looking back to my experience in what could probably be described as a mediorcre public highschool, i think that although most kids had no interest in doing so, if you wanted to explore different academic passions, it was possible. Although i found many of my teacher's lack of interest in this frustrating, there were also a few teachers who helped me study their subject beyond the curriculum independently simply because i wanted to. So, i definitely think that no matter what the institution, or lack there of, your education is entirely what you make of it.

Meredith, i too would love to hear more about egypt! Chris, that's amazing that your mom dogsleds. maybe it just seems amazing to me because in ct, i can't say we have many dogsled races around haha.

Alright, i'm off to buy a bicycle. wish me luck