Women in College

Goodness, this one's a gem. The whole thing is worth reading. I've included a few excerpts as well as my subsequent replies to them.

Women work harder in school, Mr. Kohn believes. "The girls care more about their G.P.A. and the way they look on paper," he said.

A quarter-century after women became the majority on college campuses, men are trailing them in more than just enrollment.

Department of Education statistics show that men, whatever their race or socioeconomic group, are less likely than women to get bachelor's degrees — and among those who do, fewer complete their degrees in four or five years. Men also get worse grades than women.

I've noticed that, in my limited experience, this gives all appearances of being true. While grades do matter to an extent, stellar grades are a poor substitute for being able to actually do whatever job one's courses are preparing one for. Men--certainly the engineering types I mingle with--understand this. Women are far more serious about school and seem to believe that the next test is crucial in the context of one's academic and professional career, even if mastery of information for said test will in no way produce tangible benefit to one's future occupation. It seems to me that one ought to study for the joy of learning as well as preparation for a way to make money--so long as making money is neccessary for one to eat; I'm thinking of a way around this.

Since men continue to dominate fields wherein graduates actually make money--see: engineering, physics, math and computer science--all this seems much ado about nothing, save as an insight into the strange mind called female.

High school boys score higher than girls on the SAT, particularly on the math section. Experts say that is both because the timed multiple-choice questions play to boys' strengths and because more middling female students take the test. Boys also score slightly better on the math and science sections of national assessment tests. On the same assessments, 12th-grade boys, even those with college-educated parents, do far worse than girls on reading and writing.

Goodness I hate the "experts say" facade to hide a glaringly embarrassing interpretation of facts. The reason men score higher on math and science sections of the SAT is because men are better than women when it comes to math and sciences. Notice that the "experts" had nothing to say about women's scores in reading and writing. Such an egregious double standard is what now passes for journalism.

Ms. Smyers, also at American, said she recently ended a relationship with another student, in part out of frustration over his playing video games four hours a day.

"He said he was thinking of trying to cut back to 15 hours a week," she said. "I said, 'Fifteen hours is what I spend on my internship, and I get paid $1,300 a month.' That's my litmus test now: I won't date anyone who plays video games. It means they're choosing to do something that wastes their time and sucks the life out of them."

Now this one is just funny. First, if she will take me up on my offer, I will gladly introduce Ms. Smyers to some of my academic compatriots who would opine that playing fifteen hours a week must have meant a very rigorous work week to allow so little time for gaming. Second, as almost every American man in her age bracket plays some amount of video games, she might be lacking in dates. It's a good thing she has an internship that allows her to make money, though I might add that economic success is not a surefire indicator of a life well lived.

I could go on, but I've other reading and writing to do. The modern American female is a peculiar creature indeed. I wish the best of luck to those that are intent on the course of partaking fully in the corporate rat race. Meanwhile, I'll be waiting for a charming lass that attaches the proper significance to an internship, and isn't so drunk on ambition as to mind staying home and raising our children.

Sometimes the wait seems like it might take a while.