Changing My Tune: NYU Sucks
Thanks to Nicholas Patten (who, by the way, is looking for work), it came to my attention that the estrogen-intolerant Alana Taylor responded to my recent post with a thoughtful and well-written rebuttal.
Her response has convinced me that I was wrong. Taylor was right: NYU definitely sucks.
Why the reversal of opinion? Taylor apparently graduates soon yet she cannot construct a proper sentence. In particular, she appears to have a real problem using personal pronouns correctly. In the six “paragraphs” of her post (all but one containing a single sentence), I count no less than three instances of Taylor demonstrating an inability to use the correct personal pronouns.
While I can’t help Taylor with her poor reading comprehension and inability to identify sarcasm, I feel bad that somebody clearly wasted money paying for Taylor’s NYU education. It’s disappointing to learn that NYU will apparently allow someone to graduate without basic writing skills.
While I can’t do anything about that, I figured the least I could do is edit Taylor’s post:
Read the post here and tell me if he actually makes any legitimate arguments other than “blah blah blah she thinks she knows everything…” Keep in mind that the whole thing is written by a person who refers to himself as a:
Businessman, technology pioneer, media mogul, marketing visionary, scientist, artist, philosopher, diplomat, mentor, confidant, connoisseur, adventurer, lover, fighter, womanizer, son, father (currently under dispute), friend. Drama 2.0 is the Internet’s version of Keyser Söze.
This is a person who, according to his “about me” page, has made a career out of posting comments on TechCrunch.
The best part of his post is: “After all, if she had spent less time tweeting, ‘managing’ her blog, singing songs about Twitter and generally serving as a ’social media maven,’ it’s possible that she would have spent more time investigating the curriculum of the universities she was interested in attending.”
This comes from a person who refers to himself as Drama 2.0 and makes a living “as the internet’s version of Keyser Soze.”
Very entertaining, I must say.
Note the proper sentence structure and use of the correct personal pronouns. I suppose editors do serve a purpose after all (i.e. they make sure the brilliance of individuals like Taylor stands out when their words convey ignorance instead).
As for NYU, the university’s faculty and administration should be ashamed of themselves. How could they let such a talented but unpolished writer go four years without sending her to a remedial writing course?
All sarcasm aside, there is something awfully disturbing about the fact that a school charging tuition of $37,372 and calling itself “highly-selective” would graduate a student who is incapable of constructing well-written sentences by habit.
Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins just might have been right when he wrote “institutions for higher learning will simply become obsolete.” He’d be wrong, of course, about the reasons.
Note to Taylor: as for having too much time, you’d be amazed how quickly one can write posts when one has basic writing skills and is capable of transforming coherent thoughts into coherent words. Total time taken to write this post: about 11 minutes. 11 minutes too many, but I won’t bill you for them seeing that SKF was very good to me today.
I guess one could say that she has been schooled.
Perhaps she will need a tweetup to get over this.
What on earth would be the point of teaching her to write properly? What would she write about if she could? The woman can’t even recognise irony. She has as much use for a remedial writing class as I do for opera lessons or a fish does for a bicycle. I can’t sing, fish have no legs, she has no interesting thoughts to share and there is no point in giving us tools we can’t use.
As for NYU, I think we all know universities are dumbing down. Around a decade or so ago secondary schools (ages 13-18) started complaining that kids were coming in unable to read or write. A few years ago universities started complaining that students were coming in with three A-levels (the UK examination “gold standard”) unable to read or write. Now employers are complaining that students are coming in with 2:2s and up, unable to read or write. http://snipurl.com/48jsf Anyone noticing a trend here? It won’t be long until the retirement homes will be complaining that neither the retirees nor their children can sign their forms. And why not? Intelligence is a liability in this world anyway.
It takes a big man to repeatedly bash a journalism student.
NYU should be ashamed for having such a pathetic course on new media or whatever the hell they want it to be out. This is 2008. J schools should be giving students relevant skills.
Maybe over at the JI we’ll have a little fun with you apparent self esteem issues.
Patrick: you don’t need to pay $30,000+ in tuition to learn how to set up a blog, create a Twitter account, etc.
A good journalism school provides value in the form of an education that emphasizes fundamental writing skills, critical thinking and ethics.
Journalism, like most professions, is constantly evolving. Blogging and social media are not the be all and end all. Tweeting is not a “relevant skill” when an aspiring journalist cannot construct a proper sentence.
The best education teaches students how to think for themselves and how to adapt. It doesn’t teach them how to use the equipment of the 21st century’s information economy assembly line.
That said, I look forward to reading what you have to say about me almost as much as I look forward to seeing how your “plans on changing the face of journalism” pan out.
By the way, you might want to double check your speeling and grammor before posting comments:
I hope that you were just in a rush (or that you’re hung over). I’d hate to think that a Lehigh education is as worthless as an NYU education.
I don’t agree with the character smearing but here was the main point from Drama’s original post…
“It’s not about the medium – it’s about the message.
Instead of focusing on developing the skills of a good journalist and becoming a good writer, Taylor concerns herself with the mechanics of delivering a message.”
Can anyone give a clear answer as to why they disagree with this or are you going to continue to sling mud at Drama?
Graham: they’ll continue to sling mud. Doesn’t bother me as it’s par for the course in the tech blogosphere.
I’ve found that trying to get someone to coherently and intelligently refute an argument in the tech blogosphere is about as easy as finding a profitable Web 2.0 startup.