Lament the lack of muggers

One thing I’m hearing very often in SMU, is people lamenting the disappearance of “the first batch of SMU students”.

Well, I don’t know anyone from the first batch, but most descriptions I hear are centered around “not as grade conscious”, “truly different” and ”care to have fun”. In contrast to the pioneer batch, the newly joined students care more about grades than learning, muggerish bookworms chasing paper achievements.

Sure, I won’t like seeing dorky, tunnel-vision nerds clog up the library on week 3, but I also won’t like seeing SMU graduates who can talk big and look professional yet can’t go beyond impressing people with boombastic ideas of no practical impact.

That’s not to say that I think the first batch of SMU students are “all fluff no substance”. I think that students who seriously care about studying and doing well in school is as important as a fun-loving and eloquent bunch.

As much as you can say that there’s more to university life than studying, let’s face it, our main purpose for attending university is to learn a trade and get a degree. If your main purpose for attending university is to make friends, join university social events and recreational clubs and party late every night, then you’re wasting your time. There are a million ways to make friends, join clubs and have fun without spending a full 4 years and a hefty university tuition.

Besides, learning can’t be done simply by going to class and discussing issues with friends or chatting with your professor. Picking up technical knowledge requires putting a lot of time and serious hard work into reading, studying, thinking and practising. It involves long hours in the library poring through thick books and memorising facts (yes you do need to know some facts at your fingertips).

And face it again, grades are your Key Performance Indicators in school. If you haven’t put in the effort and understood your concepts, your grades will show. If you did, your grades will show too. Negative correlation between hard work and results is an anomaly. Negative correlation between knowledge obtained and results is an even more rare anomaly.

At the very least, people who cared about grades will bother to study for it, and in the process, pick up the necessary technical skills and knowledge (which you are supposed to in university anyway). It’s really not enough to be able to talk about things or pretend to know them.

Be glad for the muggers, they’re setting a standard.