Speaking of Ally

Many of my favorite bloggers tend to post in inverse proportion to their current level of happiness. I think that we can all agree that a thwarted, frustrated and bitter Skippy is a boon to the blogosphere. The posting frequency of others (including the Maximum Leader, the Minister of Propaganda, and myself) tends to be tied to the intensity level of their work week.

I hope that Ally's lack of recent posts over the last couple of weeks is tied to both variables. She has said that she is finishing up on her degree - go thee hence and congratulate her! She has also had other good news as of late, what with moving, new job, etc. I miss her witty insights. I, truth be told, also miss the occasional hammering she gives me.

So I hope altruistically that she is happily existing in the real world outside the blogosphere. And I hope narcissistically that my recent freedom from spanking is not because I have grown boring.

I recently took my post-exam AP US history class on a tour of a state college.

I had lunch with the director of admissions and we talked about the quality of various institutions. During our discussion, he blew me away with a fact. As a scientific thinker who tries to eschew magical thinking, that fact forced me to reconsider and revisit a debate I had with Ally.

Long-time readers will remember my highly controversial post about community colleges. Ally teed off on my hide (as did Minion Molly and Powerfmn). I did back away a bit from my previous incendiary stand, but the shift was a retrenchment rather than a retraction.

But the director of admissions hit me with this fact: Students who transfer to this particular state college with a 3.25 GPA in a community college do as well as upperclassmen as their peers who began their college careers at JMU. This lends serious support to Ally's position and I'm man enough to admit it.

Of course, as our conversation continued, the director of admissions related this anecdote: His son, once attending that institution and now transferred to William and Mary, Virginia's finest state college*, had this observation: The professors were more snooty at William and Mary, but he enjoyed college more because, unlike the other state institution, the students at William and Mary continued to talk about class subjects after the end of class. The intellectual curiosity of his peers is much higher at William and Mary.

Heh. So I guess I'm still retrenching rather than retracting. Perhaps I could a corrolary to my previous position that "Excellent students can get a good education despite the average quality of students and professors at their institution."