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Love and Tolerance.
It's about 10 years exactly since I completed my studies.
Those were strange days. 2001 was a pretty awful year for me, on many counts. I graduated by a narrow margin with one hand while battling all kinds of demons with the other hand, and then found myself staring into the face of adult life and not really knowing what to do with it.
Ten years later, adult life is not turning out so bad after all, a nice little life in a nice little house and a nice job that's an unexpectedly great fit for me; and on top of that, PONIES. That last bit matters. I used to think adult life had to be a dreary affair with no place for whimsy. (And now there's a whole subculture of pony-oriented adult males. Goes to show what I know.)
For that matter, in retrospect, although we students riled a lot against it at the time, I've got to admit that my engineering school trained us pretty well. Even the bits we were least pleased with, like law and accounting (oh God, accounting), turned out to be useful. It's a slice of humble pie I'm not unhappy to chew.
Nevertheless, let's be honest, it was just a small, not very well known school. Early on, when some tech news surfaced that originated locally, I liked to keep an eye on the sources to see if perchance someone from my school was involved, maybe someone I knew. It was a silly affectation, but what can I say? I'm a silly creature. Not that anything ever came up, on Slashdot or elsewhere; numbers alone made the odds too low. For comparison, a place like the MIT sees far more students in one single year than we've had alumni in the entire history of ever.
Besides, these days I read tech news and pony news. The latter make me happier.
... Especially when the news making the rounds is a student research paper about the memetic effects of love and tolerance in the My Little Pony - Friendship Is Magic community. And it originates locally. From a small engineering school. Yes. You guessed where.
Ponies make everything unexpected and awesome. It's a proven fact of science.
Those were strange days. 2001 was a pretty awful year for me, on many counts. I graduated by a narrow margin with one hand while battling all kinds of demons with the other hand, and then found myself staring into the face of adult life and not really knowing what to do with it.
Ten years later, adult life is not turning out so bad after all, a nice little life in a nice little house and a nice job that's an unexpectedly great fit for me; and on top of that, PONIES. That last bit matters. I used to think adult life had to be a dreary affair with no place for whimsy. (And now there's a whole subculture of pony-oriented adult males. Goes to show what I know.)
For that matter, in retrospect, although we students riled a lot against it at the time, I've got to admit that my engineering school trained us pretty well. Even the bits we were least pleased with, like law and accounting (oh God, accounting), turned out to be useful. It's a slice of humble pie I'm not unhappy to chew.
Nevertheless, let's be honest, it was just a small, not very well known school. Early on, when some tech news surfaced that originated locally, I liked to keep an eye on the sources to see if perchance someone from my school was involved, maybe someone I knew. It was a silly affectation, but what can I say? I'm a silly creature. Not that anything ever came up, on Slashdot or elsewhere; numbers alone made the odds too low. For comparison, a place like the MIT sees far more students in one single year than we've had alumni in the entire history of ever.
Besides, these days I read tech news and pony news. The latter make me happier.
... Especially when the news making the rounds is a student research paper about the memetic effects of love and tolerance in the My Little Pony - Friendship Is Magic community. And it originates locally. From a small engineering school. Yes. You guessed where.
Ponies make everything unexpected and awesome. It's a proven fact of science.