Reading Response 7: Dave Barry on College

First of all, this is my favorite article I have read so far. It has so much voice and humor that it made me feel like I was talking to one of my friends.
This wonderful article starts out with

"Basically, you learn two kinds of things in college:
1. Things you will need to know in later life (two hours).
2. Things you will not need to know in later life (1,998 hours). These are the things you learn in classes whose names end in -ology, -osophy, -istry, -ics, and so on. The idea is, you memorize these things, then write them down in little exam books, then forget them. If you fail to forget them, you become a professor and have to stay in college for the rest of your life."

This is the perfect description of our education system today. It is more about memorizing and knowing instead of understanding. It is hard to enjoy these classes because it is more with defining and memorizing terms instead of hands-on work. But, I did like the shade he threw about becoming a professor forever if you fail.

Later on in the article, Dave Barry gave the breakdown of some majors. With English, I loved how he described the use of not doing what everyone else is doing by stating the obvious.

"Moby-Dick is a big white whale, since the characters in the book refer to it as a big white whale roughly eleven thousand times. So in your paper, you say Moby-Dick is actually the Republic of Ireland."

This quote will stick with me and I will try to use this method. Being original will not only make it more enjoyable for the reader, but for the writer as well because their creativity will be put to the test.