Our administration announced this huge event for Friday before the start of classes. Every department was going to host large groups of students, prepare food, activities, guided tours, celebrations.
Other departments put a lot of time, effort, and money into preparing. Some invited alumni who took a day off work to be there. Food was purchased. Rooms were decorated.
Students didn’t show up.
I prepared nothing, spent no money, gathered no people, decorated no rooms. So when students didn’t show up, there was no disappointment or waste.
I don’t want to be a cynical, jaded bastard but I can’t afford the wide-eyed hopefulness of other people who, against all evidence, still believe our administration can organize a large event without fucking up massively.
“But how did you know it wasn’t going to work?” people ask. “What would you have done if students had shown up?”
When you know that the sum of the angles in a triangle always runs to 180°, you don’t need to measure them manually every time. People keep measuring the triangle and feeling shocked when the result doesn’t vary.
Clarissa's Blog 
“still believe our administration can organize a large event without fucking up massively”
Cynical me wonders if the fuck up wasn’t on purpose as an excuse to cut student services (if any are left): “Students clearly don’t need/want X, just look at how they didn’t show up the event we timed horribly and didn’t publicize at alll….”
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The goal of these activities is to change our sky-high drop-out numbers. The idea is that if you do enough gimmicky stuff, the students will not drop out. But they drop out not because of a lack of gimmicks but because we accept absolutely everybody who applies and many simply can’t cut it.
But we can’t accept the truth so we keep fussing stupidly.
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Yes, and now they’ll start talking about cost cutting and eliminating positions, because who could have seen that coming?
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I can see a person who really knows how it works. 🙂
Yes, budget cutting was announced immediately after.
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I’ve been reading your blog too long 😀
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