The Day I Lost All Faith In My Generation

I'm sitting here on the couch trying to get over my cold and I decided to turn on the TV. The Real World Denver was on. I started watching it. That was probably my first mistake.

In this episode, we have one girl getting psycho possessive over a guy she's known for three days that already had sex with her roommate. We also had everyone going out and getting super drunk at some LoDo bar. Apparently at the bar, some local Denver dude insulted one of the black housemates and he wanted to leave, but one of the guys in the house had already left the club. The black guy freaked out that one of his roommates had already left and, for no reason at all, a huge fight broke out. I tried to pay attention to what was going on because it seemed to be a giant brawl, but I still have no idea what the hell was going on and why everyone was screaming at each other. Then after this weird ass confrontation, someone pulled a Michael Richards and started throwing racial slurs around. This made shit really jump off and get crazy. This is what happens when you put a bunch of drunk idiots in a multi-million dollar house together.

Sadly, these people are the representations for our generation that the public sees. When I go for a job interview, when I buy something at a store, when I go to vote, when I stand in line at the DMV, these are the images that people will see when they see a 22-year-old like me. Is anyone else in my generation totally horrified by this? There is so much more to my generation than these drunken fools, yet this is the way we're painted. It makes me long for the day I turn 30 and kiss my twenties goodbye so that I no longer have to be associated with overgrown high school kids like these.

The Dreaded Gold Column

Rant from our blog in the Hatchet

I would just like to note that my little rant about creating a film major recently appeared in the Hatchet! A few other film students were the ones who first told me about it because I hardly ever get a chance to pick up the Hatchet since I don't live on campus. I'm very anxious to see the AMST department's reaction, since I basically said I have to dumb down my film essay to make it fit for them. This should be good.

While we're on the subject of film studies...

I made a rather interesting observation in my American Studies senior thesis class the other day and I thought I’d share.

As we all know, GW does not have a film major, and they probably won’t get one for quite some time. There is a clear need and a strong desire from students for a film major, however apparently not clear enough or strong enough for GW to recognize. I’m sure they think it’s just a tiny group of outspoken film minors who want the major in the first place. I beg to differ!

In my senior thesis class, we recently went around the room to discuss our topics and, much to our American Studies professor’s dismay, nearly every single senior planned on writing a thesis on a film, or several films. The room was filled with people like me who wanted to explore film and its significance in culture, the film industry, or the themes and visuals of certain films in very close detail. I personally chose the American Studies major because it was the closest possible thing to a film major I could engineer at GW, but I was surprised to learn that so many other people had basically done the same thing.

This leads me to wonder: if so many GW students want to study film, and are willing to devote an entire semester of research and thesis preparation on film, why doesn’t GW step up to the plate and offer them a film major? In my opinion, it’s the least they could do for $40,000 per year! It just doesn’t make sense that so many people want to explore this particular academic path, yet the school simply refuses to allow them to do so.

I don’t want to have to try to view a film thesis through an American Studies lens. I shouldn’t have to take something I’m passionate about and water it down into something I’m not all that interested in. I should be able to just take my film topic, my thesis idea, and follow through with it.

The system is completely flawed and it needs to change!

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This blog is a place for students of The George Washington University to vent about academics, administration, and life at GWU.