09 3 / 2013
This is a summary of college only using two pictures; expensive as hell.
That’s my Sociology “book”. In fact what it is is a piece of paper with codes written on it to allow me to access an electronic version of a book. I was told by my professor that I could not buy any other paperback version, or use another code, so I was left with no option other than buying a piece of paper for over $200. Best part about all this is my professor wrote the books; there’s something hilariously sadistic about that. So I pretty much doled out $200 for a current edition of an online textbook that is no different than an older, paperback edition of the same book for $5; yeah, I checked. My mistake for listening to my professor.
This is why we download.
Alternatives to buying overpriced textbooks
BookFinderSpreading this shit like nutella because goddamn textbooks are so expensive.
not necessarily art related but as someone who couldn’t afford their textbooks this semester this is a godsend
to all my fellow struggling students out there.
Bless
i wish i knew about this before renting a spanish book (used) for 90 bucks and still having to buy the textbook for 120 bucks smh. fuckin’ robbery.
you would think people would be excited we want to learn and give us these stacks of paper for free
reference point for my future self
(via le-kif-kif)
11 2 / 2013
Are you a poor student studying for the GREs?
- 1,014 Practice Questions for the New GRE, 2nd Edition
- Gruber’s Complete GRE Guide 2012
- The GRE Demystified
- Manhattan GRE Set of 8 Strategy Guides, 2nd Edition
- GRE - New Format DVD Collection (these are ISO files that you will need to write to a DVD before you can use them. If you google it, there are easy to follow instructions)
#HAAAY
(via maria-grazia)
17 1 / 2013
3rd year in college
sometimes im just scared of trying so hard and reaching really high in life only to end up failing at the last stage and fall all the way down after struggling so hard to get right at the top
i dont really believe in people “being afraid of success” but maybe there’s a kernel of truth to it
14 12 / 2012
shit white “liberals” say
so i was working yesterday and was invited by my supervisor to get some grub at the reception. the lecture was on some random topic that apparently only white folks between the ages of 29-70 care about
i tried to be a wallflower, but got caught up with an old white guy who was a professor at a nearby university. he seemed liked a cool guy and genuinely knowledgeable about the public school system, then came along a white old women. they started going off on a tangent on how race doesnt matter anymore since there are many Latina/os who are light skinned yet are 1st generation students with “normal” English and there are also dark-skinned Latina/os who are 3rd generation with no Spanish.
i didnt speak up since i didnt wanna ruffle any of our “prestigious” attendants ( i was on the job) and then the white lady started talking about how shes come to believe that its cultures that are responsible for the success of people. in her opinion of being a student in “urban” areas, she sees that Asian parents push their kids to be smart and thats why Asians are smart. She sees Latina/os as being hard workers, and their hard work “ethic” is why they are getting better in school. 1) SHE DIDNT MENTION WHITE STUDENTS (normalizes and makes ‘whiteness’ invisible and hidden to criticism and finally 2) she says that African-American students are not succeeding since the culture doesnt encourage education or “push” kids enough
so many things wrong 1) legimatizes segregation, 2) perpetuates stereotypes around asians and latinos 3) blames the victim 4)ahistorical of minority circumstances 5)cultural deficit theory
and of course, like all racists, she said “I’m not racist…but..”
You know, i read about racism everyday, listen to peoples experiences, have close friends who have been racially profiled, but when you see peoples blatant and sincere prejudice and racism in front of your own eyes, it leaves you shocked. i cant believe it happened to me and of course they felt telling me about this since theyre in a “safe space” with a bunch of white people and a Mexican-American with fair skin who blends in with that kind of crowd.
This is why I am involved with the community and our plans, this is why I’m a Chicana/o Studies major, this is why I bring up race and ethnicity in everything I see, cause folks are racist as folks and it needs to be address. end rant/
26 9 / 2012
that time of the year
It appears school will be more tiring than actually stressful. In other words, my schedule and classes are not that complicated, the environment is beautiful so that eases the complexity of my activities…so it appears that at least for this Fall quarter, it shall be somewhat simple. I guess this means internship-hunting or something?
P.S. I’m following two rules: make time for actual meals, not just non stop snacking and not mentioning to folks that I go to You See L.A. cause then they automatically judge as being more worthy.
22 8 / 2012
"
Problem-posing education, which breaks with the vertical characteristic of [the] banking [concept of] education, can fulfill its function of freedom only if it can overcome the [teacher/student] contradiction. Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers. The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow. In this process, arguments based on “authority” are no longer valid; in order to function authority must be on the side of freedom, not against it. Here, no one teaches another, nor is anyone self-taught. People teach each other, mediated by the world, by the cognizable objects which in banking education are “owned” by the teacher.
The banking concept (with its tendency to dichotomize everything) distinguishes two stages in the action of the educator. During the first he cognizes a cognizable object while he prepares his lessons in his study or his laboratory; during the second, he expounds to his students about that object. The students are not called upon to know, but to memorize the contents narrated by the teacher. Nor do the students practice any act of cognition, since the object towards which that act should be directed is the property of the teacher rather than a medium evoking the critical reflection of both teacher and students. Hence in the name of the “preservation of and knowledge” we have a system which achieves neither true knowledge nor true culture.
The problem-posing method does not dichotomize the activity of teacher-student: she is not “cognitive” at one point and “narrative” at another. She is always “cognitive,” whether preparing a project or engaging in dialogue with the students. He does not regard objects as his private property, but as the object of reflection by himself and his students. In this way, the problem-posing educator constantly re-forms his reflections in the reflection of the students. The students — no longer docile listeners — are now critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher. The teacher presents the material to the students for their consideration, and re-considers her earlier considerations as the students express their own. The role of the problem-posing educator is to create, together with the students, the conditions under which knowledge at the level of the doxa is superseded by true knowledge at the level of the logos.
[…]
Students, as they are increasingly posed with problems relating to themselves in the world and with the world, will feel increasingly challenged and obliged to respond to that challenge. Because they apprehend the challenge as interrelated to other problems within a total context not as a theoretical question, the resulting comprehension tends to be increasingly critical and thus constantly less alienated. Their response to the challenge evokes new challenges, followed by new understandings; and gradually the students come to regard themselves as committed.
"
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary ed., p.80-81
The commentary on authority refers to who is awarded say: the instructor, who expounds static, immutable knowledge which they are the proprietors and false mediators of by taking on an uncontested role of an educator. Relying more on memory than a dialectic method, banking educators alienate the students from the educational content by removing them from it, creating a “world without people”, that leave the “students” struggling to find not only their time in history but the subtle, yet close relations and placing in the world they are taught. Such a notion serves to strengthen the belief that they are incapable of changing a world in which they do not see themselves.
Through dialogue with the students, the instructor ceases to be the one who knows a fixed truth and becomes one who fuses cognition and narrative, which the banking concept dichotomizes along with educational roles and historical content in regards to the present — I believe, when Freire refers to the newly-invalid nature of arguments on authority, he is speaking of the power that such a figure of authority holds, turning into a figure of revolutionary leadership as authority on the side of freedom. Ultimately, the role of the revolutionary educator is to elevate knowledge from the level of insulated, sterile belief (doxa) characteristic of the banking concept, to that of contested, constructive reason (logos) - that of problem-posing and dialogics.
Lastly I think it’s worth the moment to share, from the last quoted paragraph, that I used to regard history and society through isolating lens, with challenges as rhetorical questions and undercontextualized (or decontextualized altogether?) historical events. I could not sense how they connected to me, how they arose and where they would lead. Admittedly grasping this knowledge and insight is a process that must be actively worked on, but realizing one’s place and role in society was a crucial point to make for me. Once drowned in ethnocentric white history, I realized I was still within it, if placed at the very bottom. I still find it, nevertheless, a place on which I can stand and move against oppression which comes into greater focus through practice and co-operational reflection.
(via peterpunxka)
(Source: reinsurreccion)
18 8 / 2012
"Caucasian students receive more than three-quarters (76%) of all institutional merit-based scholarship and grant funding, even though they represent less than two-thirds (62%) of the student population.
Caucasian students are 40% more likely to win private scholarships than minority students. These statistics demonstrate that, as a whole, private sector scholarship programs tend to perpetuate historical inequities in the distribution of scholarships according to race."
The Distribution of Grants and Scholarships by Race
i am so sick of white people coming to me talking about “affirmative action” and how there aren’t any scholarships for white kids. let me get my fucking violin out
(via esaedders)
(via platanos-fritos)
10 8 / 2012
“Studying (or education) is not measured by the number of pages one has read in a night, nor is it by the quantity of books read in a semester. Education is not the act of consuming ideas, but instead creating and re-create. “
if only all those ignorant folks who bash on ethnic studies and liberal arts could read this.
(Source: asesinadeilusiones, via lahoops)
09 8 / 2012
My conversation with a Yale grad. He was accepted to every Ivy League, and is currently at one of the top occupations in Microsoft.
- 1: I know right now, everything seems so unfair. You need to study, all to get compared with other people. Your future is dependent mostly on whether you go to this school, major in this thing, receive this much money, or get this job. I know. I was there, I was you. Studying my ass off for an easier life. You're told that everything right now is the most important, that you need to get As, go to a great college, have an amazing job, generate immense revenue, therefore become happy. But, there's just one thing that I failed to understand. And let me tell you, there are barely any things that I do not understand. Yet, I have no idea why I'm not happy. From a young age, you're told to take these steps and if you succeed, you'll reach happiness. It's not true. I've done every step every mother would tell her child to do, to become, but here I am, unhappy. After many years of trying to find where I went wrong, I realized that I had been looking in the completely wrong place.
- 2: Then where do you look?
- 1: At your friends. Your relationships. Your family. Your coworkers, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your social life. Many of the richest men in the world aren't happy, why? Because they spent all their lives trying to achieve happiness in the wrong place. You have a ton of money, great. But in the end, we're all sitting in our rocking chairs, and nobody cares who had the most money or who went to the best college. It's about who had the most fun. Who had the most people to look after them, who had the most to look after. The happiest are the ones that have people to call in times of trouble, the ones that had the time to spend with their family and feel all that love. That's what people lack! Love. When you're on your deathbed, everything doesn't matter anymore you see. You'd want people that love you to be around you, to be comforting you, to tell you about all the great things you did for people. You don't want to be alone, with what? A degree? Cash that will never be used? Nobody ever says "wow, I went to a great college and therefore I'm satisfied" in the end. Only the lucky ones get to say "wow, I was surrounded by love my whole life. My time on this earth was beautiful."
- 2:
- 1: But you know, I'm not telling you not to get into a great college or not to do any of the things society tells you to. Go for it, it pays off! It doesn't give you happiness but it takes a lot of stress off your shoulders. All I'm saying is don't make it your everything. If you don't get in somewhere good, don't stress about it. As long as you're okay with the people around you, you're going to be fine. I'm sure of it. Priorities change in the end. We're only people.
23 7 / 2012
"
Above all, capitalism wastes human life. The U.S. spends billions to warehouse 2 million people—many of them young Black and Latino men—in overcrowded prisons. It provides sub-par education to millions of poor students, sending a message that their lives will amount to nothing.
Are people homeless in America because there’s a shortage of homes? And if that’s the case, is there a shortage of homes because we don’t have the concrete, the wood and the steel to build them?
The truth is that under capitalism, there’s no incentive to build low-cost housing for the homeless—because it isn’t profitable to do so.
The same goes for the more than 800 million people in the world who go hungry. It isn’t profitable to feed them. So food is stockpiled or destroyed rather than distributed to them.
"
