“I love SF but hated Stanford. deeply incurious, entitled, conformist place”
1) Nobody leaves campus. Caltrained to SF once every 1-2 mos, which was unusual + hard to get ppl to join. Kids are totally disconnected from / uninterested in the real world.
2) Stanford ships incoming freshmen 3 books over the summer and organizes a panel of the authors your first week on campus. Still remember turning to my dormmate to ask what they thought. Reply: “You actually read the books?”
3) Reflexive disrespect for humanities. Was told regularly “Why would you study IR?” and “Everyone smart enough to study CS does.” My freshman dorm was 75% eng. Eng is cool but so is interdisciplinarity.
4) Meanwhile humanities grade-inflate like crazy to retain anyone at all. Profs gave me 0 critical comments on my essays until I did an Oxford tutorial abroad and realized how little I knew. Nobody does readings or psets, ppl believe the focus is networking not learning.
