*Originally posted by Dunmurry *
I don’t want to turn this into a rant, but I am tired of some people I go to college with.
It’s their ATTITUDE.
To come to my college, people choose to come to study after their compulsory schooling, therfore they are not under obligation to come.[/q]
Nor are they under any obligation to behave how you want them to.
[q]**
Many students are over 18, hence they are considered adults, however their attitude appears not to have changed since their childhood.
I have got good examination results, and am perceived to be more “serious” than the rest of them. Many others students are in a “gang” with common things e.g. they all wear the same clothes. I prefer to be on my own, as the people in the gangs talk about futile things such as who won a football match or which girl on television last night was sexiest.**[/q]
Unfortunatly you’ll soon find out that the world is made up of people who enjoy hanging out with other people who share the same interets as they do. And I know you won’t believe me, but there is nothing more pathetic than seeing the various PIs in my field who focus solely on their careers and cut everything out of their lives but science. Yes, some of them have good careers and are well respected leaders in their field. They are also all divorced, have drinking problems and spend 80 hrs a week in the lab. There is a HUMAN element to life that we all need.
[q]**
I want to do something for which I will be remembered. I want to offer something to the world,to discovers something, to invent something, yet I am being held back by these people. When Iwas at my last school, I spent lunchtimes with teachers in their rooms because I preferrred the conversations aduilts have as opposed to the things people my own age talked about.[/q]**
This is one of the saddest things I’ve seen on the boards. Yes I understand that people need motivation to accomplish things in their lives. But doing something simple in an attempt to become famous rarely works out. More often than not it ends in dissappointment, bitterness and suicide. There is more to life than to simply become recognized. What are you going to do after you make your ‘contribution’. Will 1 be enough? What if it isn’t of the magnitude of what you wanted. What if you never achive it?
I’ve met a number of failed graduate students, and PhDs who are on their way to becomming Burger King shift managers who have that attitude. Scientific discovery isn’t about accomplishing anything. It’s about asking a question and poking away at it, year after year, decade after decade. It’s about learning something for the sake of YOUR interest.
Personally I have NO desire to ‘shake science’ --to come up with a new fundamental relization-- or to cure cancer or clear HIV infections. I want to know HOW things work. I want to gain the skills to tease apart the methods of viral infection and see how various pathogens interact with thier hosts. Because of this world view, EACH time I have an experiment work that gives me new data I find fullfillment. That means each experiment helps to push me into new areas because I’m accomplishing what I want with each little step.
If the only reward you see is the ‘big picture’ the publication, the cover of Cell, or a Nobel Prize you will spend decades sitting in a lab. Sitting there fustrated and bitter because all you see is each experiment as a failure because it didn’t bring the gratification you want.
The idea that they are holding you back is pathetic. In college nobody is holding you back except yourself. If your course work isn’t fullfilling enough, why haven’t you gotten off your ass and hit the journals. Or read more advanced text books. What about hitting the upperlevel courses? Or arranging independent study courses.
As for having ‘adult’ conversations. Wait until you spend 50 hrs a week reading journal articles and designing experiments and processing data. Being able to get away from highly complex technical topics is a godsend.
[q]**
When they are given work to do, they say something like "Why do we have to do all this st? In my opinion, Knowledge is Power therefore I do not say this.[/q]
Knowledge isn’t power. Power is being willing to do things nobody else will dare. To take risk that nobody else will try. You have to set yourself apart, make yourself special then use the power people give you when they see you are different.
Knowledge gives you OPPERTUNITIES. It gives you skills to do things, the ability to think about a problem from different angles. To see in something a different set of circumstances that made it happen and see which part is most vulnerable.
Hehe college students that WANT to do work. 
[q]**
One student makes childish noises even though he is at least 19.
When will these people realise that they are not here to enjoy themselves.
Sorry about the length of that. I am just so tired of them. **
