He shouldn't be too impressed by his younger class mates. Having discipline to do the work and problem sets would put him ahead of most of them.
Based on the article, I'd expect that he disagrees with you.
Strongly.
A Navy Seal's Semester at Yale, at Age 52
21–30 of 188 posts
Re: A Navy Seal's Semester at Yale, at Age 52
#22The author either has a fundamental misunderstanding of the criticisms against "safe spaces" or he's deliberately mischaracterizing them to earn the favor of his classmates.
> What she meant by “safe space” was that she was happy to be in an environment where difficult subjects can be discussed openly, without the risk of disrespect or harsh judgement.
If that's actually how safe spaces were implemented in practice, there'd be little backlash against them. The primary criticism against safe spaces is that they are an excuse to censor dissenting opinions. A common example is that people opposed to sex-reassignment surgery are not allowed into discussions about trangenderism because their opinions are considered "disrespectful" or even "violent" to transgender people.
Re: A Navy Seal's Semester at Yale, at Age 52
#23The Yale Directed Studies program is no joke -- it tends to attract the most motivated humanities students and to have incredible amounts of work and reading. Impressive that he's taking it, but he's also seeing a somewhat more serious class of students who, by extension, are less likely to be snowflakes.
Are you sure that relationship holds true? I've talked to more ordinary college students and they're pretty reasonable, normal people too. Perhaps what's more likely is a tiny fraction of toxic people who use the social justice toolbox illegitimately are amplified disproportionately. The world has always had toxic annoying people. There's always been that lady at church that pretends to be into Jesus but secretly jus…
The point is that the tiny toxic fraction is unlikely to pursue a curriculum that starts with the assumption that the western canon is worth reading and understanding deeply.
Re: A Navy Seal's Semester at Yale, at Age 52
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you sure that relationship holds true? I've talked to more ordinary college students and they're pretty reasonable, normal people too. Perhaps what's more likely is a tiny fraction of toxic people who use the social justice toolbox illegitimately are amplified disproportionately. The world has always had toxic annoying people. There's always been that lady at church that pretends to be into Jesus but secretly jus…
The point is that the tiny toxic fraction is unlikely to pursue a curriculum that starts with the assumption that the western canon is worth reading and understanding deeply.
You're missing the point. Try engaging with people -- and I mean engaging with them, not talking at them or even arguing with them -- and don't make so many assumptions.
Re: A Navy Seal's Semester at Yale, at Age 52
#25Studying with veterans is an incredible experience. I'm lucky that my school (Columbia) has a very large undergraduate vet population. It adds a dimension of experiential diversity that many colleges fail to capture, and makes real what are normally distant and easy to abstract away geopolitical decisions, like deploying troops in Afghanistan. I hope more universities follow Yale and Columbia in creating spaces for r…
Also hiring. I worked with an ex Army Ranger who was by far the best leader I've seen.
Re: A Navy Seal's Semester at Yale, at Age 52
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve mentioned an idea to a friend of mine: a sort of welfare/basic income program where people are paid to talk to others. There is no restriction as to the topic as long as the other person consents to having the conversation: it can be as mundane talking about the weather. My reasoning behind it was just to get people who otherwise would not talk to each other to do so to actively reinforce my observation that eve…
This is the social value that we used to get from churches, fraternal organizations, bowling leagues, block parties....
Some of those things are more inclusive and diverse than the others. Fortunately there exists a modern equivalent that exposes people to a lot of different folks all at the same time: universities. For many rural teenagers, a university will be the first time they meet people from another country, who don't speak English as their first language, or a sizable number of people with a different skin color. Speaking from experience, growing up in Iowa.
Re: A Navy Seal's Semester at Yale, at Age 52
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve mentioned an idea to a friend of mine: a sort of welfare/basic income program where people are paid to talk to others. There is no restriction as to the topic as long as the other person consents to having the conversation: it can be as mundane talking about the weather. My reasoning behind it was just to get people who otherwise would not talk to each other to do so to actively reinforce my observation that eve…
This is the social value that we used to get from churches, fraternal organizations, bowling leagues, block parties....
All of which exist, and will happily take you in if you want.
So this is a social value in addition to that, not a replacement for its loss.
Re: A Navy Seal's Semester at Yale, at Age 52
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is that the tiny toxic fraction is unlikely to pursue a curriculum that starts with the assumption that the western canon is worth reading and understanding deeply.
You're missing the point. Try engaging with people -- and I mean engaging with them, not talking at them or even arguing with them -- and don't make so many assumptions.
I think we’re talking past each other? I’m not making a value judgment per se. It is simply a fact that many in the toxic social justice group you reference do not believe that the work of dead white males is particularly interesting or important. Thus, they tend to self-select out of classes with an emphasis on the western canon. This isn’t an assumption — it’s an observation about many of my friends who took DS (I couldn’t hack it myself!)
Re: A Navy Seal's Semester at Yale, at Age 52
#29If you want to see what a Navy SEAL's life is like, I highly recommend this documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGvvNKBGgUw
"Documentary" makes it sound sterile or clinical, but in fact it's pretty badass.
Kind of dispels the illusion that we're not pampered.
It's so good I'll probably watch it again today. The diving section is the best, IMO. Imagine someone spinning you around underwater and ripping off parts of your dive gear then having to reassemble it basically blind.
Imagine a junior code review that starts like this (https://youtu.be/AGvvNKBGgUw?t=230): "This entire codebase has been a joke. There hasn't been a single module that you've written during the course of this project that has even remotely resembled perfection. Everything has been sad, weak, and unreadable. And it's all because you're inside your tiny little brain, self-defeating yourself."
Admittedly that only happens during the training phase, though.
Re: A Navy Seal's Semester at Yale, at Age 52
#30The thing that hit me after coming back from the war, was how absolutely meaningless the vast majority of life’s required set of petty exercises are. I understand the elitism and the challenge of conquering Yale. There seems, however, to be a monumental difference between him and the rest; that is, 26 years of hardship, quiet observation, and directed action in shaping the world before reaching toward a philosophical understanding of it, versus young people desperately seeking that relevance for themselves, but only within the bounds of perfect physical and emotional comfort, perhaps not realizing that their pontifications are more limbic than neocortical. Downrange was my “safe space”; it gives a name to that limbic fear and drops a lot of emotional pretense otherwise. Stanford, not so much. What I found impressive there was the Sisyphean devotion to transforming ones mind into a perfect vessel of discovery, creation, and healing. I didn’t really respect it until I started to see that path as a superior way of being to my own, and made my best effort to commit to it despite the overwhelming disadvantage of time. Perhaps someday I too will see the same moral superiority in the screeds of elite youth in the humanities and social sciences. He was, after all, a far greater man in his first career than I ever will be.