Monday, June 05, 2006

London School of Hardknocks (LSH)

Today, while having coffee with my village informant: Holt [Upper Canada Old Boy turned embittered Village Waiter, you serve $11.00 salads for a year with a BA and see how you feel], I saw a member of the Helmet Brigade (the Helmet Brigade are forty-something + women who get their hair blow dried once a week to the point of consistent hard helmet hair - look around it's all over the place). As a family friend of this particulary Helmet Brigade member (holla holla Linda), I asked how her daugther was doing at teacher's collge. "Fabulous of course! She doesn't like Buffalo... but other then that it's great."
As Linda walked away Holt turned to me and said, "Buffalo? Who goes to teacher's college in Buffalo?"
Ha ha... dearest reader's welcome to Faux Hill where people do in fact go to teacher's college in Buffalo. Why? For the exact same reason that Jessica Goldenstein goes to law school in East Lansing. That is where the progeny of Linda and Jessice Goldenstein got accepted.
Welcome to Faux Hill in 2006 where getting into a Canadian grad school is really really tough :( but getting into some sketchy American grad school that offers equivalency programs, if you're willing to pay top dollar (let's say 20,000 americano - lowball ballpark figure), is really really easy. This is good news if you're thinking of opening an American Apparel outlet in East Lansing; bad news if you tend to think that people should work hard for their future and not simply buy it. Oh wait - this is a capitalistic society, isn't it?
Witness the rise in popularity of going teacher's college in Australia, Buffalo or the favoured grad school of the jetset, LSE. Oh London School of Economics... an interesting case of an international school which has succesfully marketed itself to cash-rich North American's hoping for a bit of Old World Cache (this is an historical consistent... the Vanderbilts foamed with glee at being able to marry off their daughters to poverty stricken British royals). LSE has invented hundred's of master's programs in almost every discipline you could think of... and well to be honest, this kind of shit works. LSE = master's = high paying job... Remember those people who get their teaching degrees from D'Youville College Buffalo will compete for the same teaching job that Sally Smalltown, who worked her ass off to get into teacher's college at Queen's, wants. Who said that life was fair and that we are all given the same opportunities? What do you think this is Communism? Bitches, I saw a Ferrari in Faux Hill today; it's called inheritence... Those who have it have an easier job maintaining it.
So at the end of the day, where does that leave Holt and I? Feelings of imbued superiority and poverty with a mix of a grande Sumatra. Holt, however, did say he was thinking of working on his portfolio for Parsons School of Design... natch.

No comments: