I think Rolla is a pretty cool place to go to school!

Any comments? Agree or Disagree?

rolla highschool? Dunno, I've heard 1 in 4 of the girls that go there have STDs!!!!!!

OH, UMR??

no

i doubt hes on crack, probably something hallucinagenic, although it could be a combination of drugs....

I've lived here for 3 years, literally, I mean I didn't go home and I'm not a foreign student. It's like any other small/medium sized town I've seen. Plenty of losers and decent people in about the same proportion as anywhere else. I wouldn't say this place is any cooler than anywhere else I've been, nor any worse...It seems pretty average. What does piss me off about this place is the number of people that go to this school that enjoy being perceived as "intelligent" people but can't figure out anything to do on their own and parrot what they have heard from other people. For those of you that say "Rolla sucks" and don't have a reason why...I leave you with this, "Four legs good, two legs bad....Four legs good, two legs better." To hell with Goldstein! and for the older generation out there (although this doesn't fit as well)...Ooglegobble ooglegobble one of us! Sheep.

I think anybody who says "Ooglegobble ooglegobble one of us! Sheep" is the true authority on what is fun or not.

Well, I normally wouldn't argue with someone who said they liked, or as in your case, are indifferent to Rolla. But this time I will. The problem with your statement is that you infer by it that anyone that comes to the rather popular conclusion of "Rolla sux" is a sheep. I am not a sheep, and I don't believe most other people are either. This place sucks. Why am I here then? Well, I wanted to go into computer engineering, and from pretty much any source of information I got in highschool I was given the impression that if I wanted to be an engineer of pretty much any sort and stay in state, I should go to UMR. It was a small school, which was good because I didn't want to attend a large/huge school such as Columbia, and it had a reputation for good education. My father went here way back in the day, but at the time didn't want to go to college, he wanted to go directly to work. His parents gave him the choice: go to college or join the military (this was during the Vietnam *war*). He came here, joined a frat, and partied his heart out, he didn't care about school. So from him and a few college statistics book I got an early impression/insight of the campus: there were few womens, although people were generally happy anyhow, and there wasn't much to do other than schoolwork. I had been to the city of Rolla several times before, as I have relatives here. Anyway, I decided to come to this school. I have found (these are generalizations, and do NOT apply to 100% of the people): teachers don't always teach well. In order to get any decent grade in many classes I have had to learn how to teach myself (I do actually remember it better this way, though). Many teachers here are arrogant and unhelpful. Advisors here are often very unhelpful or do not give a damn about their flock. The school has horrible administration, and until this year admissions were on a steep decline. The school has a horrible retention rate. This school's parking nazis are extremely ignorant. This school's policies on late payments to secure class holdings are seriously flawed (accidental mail problems or just cashier's office employee fuckups can drop you unrepairably from all your classes!). The financial aid department at this school is seriously screwed up, on at least 5 of my 6 semesters here they have at the last minute (read: after the semester started and my payments have been made) removed financial aid from under me. Every time I have to talk to the cashiers office or registrar's office, it is ALWAYS "my fault", even if it was in no way my fault, and they spend more time arguing about it not being their fault to me *WHEN I AM NOT ARGUING AND ONLY TRYING TO GET THINGS DONE*. My brother's car has been broken into, and over $600 of items inside were stolen, on SCHOOL PROPERTY that is supposed to be monitored by the UMR PD. They did nothing other than to call us and tell us are car's windows were busted through and things had probably been stolen. The res. life department has evicted my floor (4s) to allow the 9s girls onto it, even though our floor had only 2 or 3 (maybe not even that many) people leaving. From what people on our floor had been told by the 9s girls, only 4 or so girls were going to remain. This was neither their, nor our, nor the voyager people's fault, but someone didn't check retention when they booted our floor. After this we (4s) were told we'd get some sort of priority when getting new room assignments, and guess what... we recieved no priorities, and students were allowed to sign up for rooms before they were scheduled to do so. I'm only on the tip of the iceberg of literally tons of shit that has made me hate this place, but I'm still here. Why? I don't know, my roomate for 2 years has gone to Columbia (MU) and I have considered that as well, but I'd rather not go through another hassle with the administration of this school in order to get out, and I'm used to the bullshit by now anyway. In the near future if things don't change I doubt recruiters will respect this school nearly as much as they have in the past. Back to my point, I am not a sheep. Perhaps bitchy, and perhaps justified. I believe others at this school must have similar if not much worse shit happen to them in order for "this school sucks" to become such a popular opinion.

Oh, and I forgot to mention our lovely CIS department that tried to limit your bandwidth (even though the university has plenty) for no good reason, and wasn't even "man" enough to stand up for its own actions. The funny thing about this being that we'd probably have been tricked for a while, had they not fucked up and over-regulated it...

One trend I've seen going on a whole lot in the past few decades is the move from a college being an educational facility to a factory spitting out workers. A lot of people are in this just for the money, couldn't give half a damn about reform for the better. If we have students with this attitude, teachers aren't going to find a lot of creativity or learning sparks in students. Tack that onto the prenoted idea of teachers as being apathetic towards students' needs.<p>
So now we've established an interesting analogy: teachers as employers, students as workers (and trainees). What's left? Ah yes, a bureaucratic governing body. A shift in focus has really come along in the last decade, moving issues from things like textbooks and lab resources to more legistic-oriented things like money and enrollment. There are many different reasons for this. Why should we care about how many new students we get, provided that the current ones are enjoying their education and even making advances of their own? Simple: new students bring in more money. That also explains why entering computer engineers are forced to take chemistry classes that will, unless they shift their major later on, give them absolutely nothing.<p>
Ok, so money's a factor in at least one area. Actually, the lack of it (greed) is the root of all evil, but that's another philosophy course. Another big factor I've seen is the lack of females. It's not a matter of guys need fucktoys, but of balance. Women often seem to be the planners of events, as well as extremely vocal about their feelings. This goes to help explain things like why Truman and Northwest have parties all the time, whereas @rolla a party consists of everclear and porn. When government doesn't intervene in business practices, trade gets all out of whack. Remember why they made the Sherman Antitrust Act? Nobody's vocal at all our the problems in our system, due to (1) that there are no girls here (2) engineers are by nature extremely lazy. If no vocalization happens, nothing gets done. And, for those few more pathetic than I, being vocal does not include a rant in the seek forums, but something more akin to an organized protest outside an administration building.<p>
So what we have are passive workers/trainees who pretty much accept anything that's dealt to them. That's why Microsoft has such a large share of the professional market, why people are allowing the "terrorist" legislation to go through congress right now without a peep, and why UMR sucks. Voyager isn't [completely] to blame, if you want to rant on that just mail-bomb Seville ;). I'm running short on rant energy right now, but hopefully more people could contribute, and hell, something could actually -get done-. But until then, I'll just sit in my room bitching about how Rolla sucks and playing Counter Strike.

I also forgot to mention the fact that UMR's Computer Engineering program is not yet certified. When I came here, I wasn't told that, and figured since it was an engineering school that I would be an engineer when I left... Then in freshman engineering they said they were about to get the first grads out of the department and would get certified. It's been 2 and a half years since then, and it still isn't certified.

why don't you fucking leave if you think rolla sucks?

Now, what could you possibly use chemistry for in a computer? All a computer is (in terms of hardware) is chemistry and physics... so what's your problem with chemistry?

had you read my message (yes, it is about a page long! lots of reading there, I know that can be hard on some people...) I explained why I figure I have not left. And for all I know, wherever I go to could be just as bad/worse. However, just because other things might be just as bad/worse, doesn't mean people shouldn't get upset about it. Anyway, I suppose it would be hard to find a "worse" place, as this IS the second most unhappy university in the US.