By Matthew Freeman
2005-06 Gargoyle Senior Editor
Posted Tuesday, June 27, 2006, The OG, opinions

Coming from a small-town environment to Uni was culture shock to the third degree. My conservative background didn't mesh well with the school, and I found myself often angry at teachers and students who seemed completely ignorant to my beliefs and disregarded the way I felt.

In the end I was the one who ended up changing. I've come out not exactly liberal or conservative but certainly with a much broader understanding of the world I live in. Later in my Uni years I found myself pitying not only those back in Monticello who hadn't had an opportunity to see the other side but also those at Uni who only understood the liberal viewpoint.

Uni demands a lot of its students, who are often caught without enough time between schoolwork, work, extracurriculars, hobbies, and demands of parents. Nevertheless the happiness of students is often dependent on how they choose to react to these pressures.

One of the biggest problems I found with my peers at Uni was the lack of original thought that went into this decision. It was assumed during my time here that everyone's ultimate goal was a 4.0 GPA and perfect test scores.

Probably the most disturbing trend here wasn't that students were so focused on learning; in fact it was quite the contrary. It was that the desire to get the scores and grades by any means often stood in the way of this rather than facilitating it. I saw excellent teachers in English and elective classes completely taken for granted because what they offered was a valuable learning experience, not a strenuous evaluation.

Because I know the alternatives, I have no complaints about Uni. It crossed my mind to use this final column to tell the Uni community how I really felt about some of its members, but it also occurred to me that this would only be harmful to myself. A victim complex is extremely ironic, because its existence is only the fault of the person who possesses it. There's really no place in our society for such cowardice that would make a person try to effect change only after it will have no effect on him.