Originally I wanted to write deeply and personally about that decision for this last column, and include my joke about how I always used to tell people that I’d drop out of Stanford after two years and go make a million dollars, and hey, it’s coming halfway true, ha ha.
Two weeks before Christmas, Bill O’Reilly called Wikileaks “a threat to our way of life.” And I thought, “So what?” Our way of life is a threat to us. We’ve got record rates of obesity, two wars, an energy crisis, nationwide neurosis, blah blah blah. Mr. O’Reilly, I think a threat to “our way of life” is exactly what we need.
It does to all the elite university students like you who have commented on and forwarded the letter, thanking the nameless author, saying, “Holy cow, I thought I was the only one feeling this way.” What a goofy society we’ve made for ourselves. We’ve got all these people walking around feeling lonely and depressed, thinking they’re the only ones feeling lonely and depressed.
You’re reading this post. It’s buried inconspicuously in one of the more obscure regions of the Daily’s website along with the other Daily Banter posts. Since you went to all the trouble to get here, that probably means you’re already aware of the fantastic conversations that happen in the “comments” on Daily articles.
How many “Projects” do we have on campus now that are dedicated to mental wellness? We’ve got Project Love, Project Compassion, Project Happiness, the Resilience Project…and those are just the ones I can name off the top of my head. That’s four projects dedicated to very similar causes.
What makes my day, more than anything else?
When people say, “You know, Robin, you really just need to get laid.”
At the start of last week, I sent a few e-mail lists an invitation for students to anonymously vent their biggest Stanford-related frustrations by listing them on a Google Doc. There were over 100 individual responses (over 120 if you include the trolls). From what I read, students’ complaints seem to have fallen into a few big categories.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about whether or not IHUM should be replaced, and if so, how.
I’ve also been made aware of several conversations about how Stanford students don’t know how to deal with failure. I’m surprised no one asked my opinion about either of these issues, because I’ve got the perfect idea to deal with both at once