The Campus Connection

Hi.  Glad you made it this far.  If I followed you, it means I think you’re interesting.  That’s good.  Let’s be friends.

I have a proposition for you: I’m the owner of a new website that incorporates blogging into reviewing colleges, and I’m looking for students to blog about their schools.  Think Students Review, but with blogs instead of half-assed, poorly written paragraphs.  I know so many people who were (or are) unhappy with their schools because they fell in love with the watered-down Admissions Office image of the college and not the actual college, and that kind of pisses me off.  I wonder if there were more real accounts of college life out there, that maybe there would be less error in the selection process.

The basis of the site is that students “audition” to represent their schools, and then they blog about anything that has to do with college.  College admissions offices were actually the first to do something like this, but I imagine because schools have to be represented in a professional light at all times, entries from these blogs seem watered down and censored.  This is where my idea differs: as long as it can be said eloquently, bloggers are free to take the reins and say whatever they want.  So long as individuals aren’t targeted and there are no cited names, the sky is the limit.

The consistent flaw that I noticed in popular college review websites is that there is no structure in critiquing schools.  College profiles are made up entirely of voluntarily-response biased posts, and I find this design to be entirely unreliable.  I like deep conversation and I love controversial subjects, and so to establish order in the format of my website, bloggers respond to a weekly question.  The questions range from inquiring to how a blogger settled on picking his or her college, to how easy (or difficult) it is to get alcohol on campus.  It’s the kinds of things that kids wanted to ask their tour guide, but couldn’t.  What’s one thing about your school that you wished you knew before you arrived?  Do you need a fake ID to have fun off campus?  How heavily does campus life focus on drugs and alcohol?  Is there a safe place for an LGBT student on campus?  What’s the school’s stereotype?  The list of topics simply goes on and on.

This is where you come in.  You have a tumblr, so I can only assume that you’re perfectly eligible to blog about your respective college.  You can even reblog from your tumblr if you have any relevant posts, it really doesn’t matter.   If this sounds like a sweet opportunity, (which it is) email me at boss@thecampusconnection.net with any questions.   If you’re not interested, then you can do me a favor and forward this message to anyone you can think of who would be.  This website could be a lot of things, and the only way that it has a shot in hell is if people like you help get it started.  Join the team, or become a fan in the stands.  Whatever, just stop visiting stupid sites like Students Review and College Times.

http://thecampusconnection.net/

If I had to pick one thing about the internet that makes me want to pull out my hair, the lack of decent college websites would be the winner.  (Oh, and secondly, how every college article is written in list format, because apparently college kids are too stupid to read and write in paragraphs.)  When I browse around the most popular college sites, all I see is fluff.  Not the delicious kind of fluff that you want to jump on top of and eat, but the filler fluff that drug dealers lace weed with to make it weigh more.  Between too many advertisements, too many colors, too many pictures, too many lists, etc, etc, these websites that are supposedly user-friendly for young adults ages 17 to 22 are actually just insulting to our intelligence. 5 Great Ways to Make Friends After College?  I’m functioning just fine in the social world and don’t need to read your point-out-the-obvious article written for hermits, thanks.  How to Move Out of Your Dorm? Um, screw you, but I knew how to put things in a box before I read your page.

The trend when I read these “let me educate you” articles is me thinking, “screw you, I’m not retarded.”  To the people who actually read these pieces and take something helpful away from them, I’m both envious and bothered that you’ve lived such sheltered lives that you don’t know how to go grocery shopping.  If you seriously think that you can live off of ramen and Pringles for the rest of your life, you represent what is wrong with the American educational system.  I am absolutely an advocate for doing away with standardized testing and instead giving high school kids a “common sense” test instead.  I don’t care if you got a 5 in AP Calculus.  As far as I’m concerned, if you don’t know how do your laundry, then you are not more prepared for college than I am.  But I’ll save all of my thoughts on this subject for another day…

The other problem that I’ve noticed with most all of the websites that my generation frequents is that they’re run by people our parents’ ages.  If you were looking to have a good time on a Friday night, would you rather go to the club run by some 50 year old, or to the club owned by a 25 year old?  Looking at Wikipedia’s “most famous internet entrepreneurs” list, Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest of the names and according to stats, he has the most accessed website on the entire Internet.  The entire Internet.  Let’s backtrack; who was Facebook’s first audience?  Kids with college email addresses.  Therefore, who set the internet trend that has changed the way that people all over the world interact with each other online and in person?  College kids.  College kids rule the internet, so why can’t they run it too?

Now would seem like an appropriate time to go off on a rant (I usually do) about how my dream is to be on that list of Internet entrepreneurs as someone who inspired a generation, but I’m not going to do that because that’s not what I want.  If I do my job right, you will never know who I am.  The only thing that I want to achieve through this site is to get someone thinking below the surface.  We can talk about sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but I want us to delve into these seemingly superficial topics on a deeper level, if we can let ourselves go there.  We live in a ridiculously abstract world, but because it’s easier to think in black and white terms, one dimensional thinking is normative.  I don’t like to declare my ideas correct very often unless I have substantial evidence of my accuracy, but I absolutely believe that thinking beyond your comfort zone is the first step to comprehending anything better.  And if you feel like you already understand everything there is to understand, then give yourself a pat on the back because you’re obviously smarter than I am.

Okay, okay.  Maybe I’m pretentious.  Maybe I’m an asshole.  Maybe I have some unresolved anger issues against the whole world.  Whatever, I’m not going to sugarcoat my opinion to make myself seem like something I’m not.  I am an angry white woman who is sick of the low expectations that older generations have for my own.  But mostly, I’m sick of the low expectations that kids have for other kids.  College students are thought to be lazy, self obsessed, and unmotivated, (among other negative words), and the stereotype is kind of true from my perspective.  That pisses me off.  So earlier in the year when I went looking for an online college community that wasn’t full of socially retarded idiots and I couldn’t find one, I decided to make my own.  And voila.

Here I am.

(Source: thecampusconnection.net)