Why the hate?

So for the past year or so one sixteen-year-old Canadian boy has taken the world by storm. That's right, I'm writing a blog post about Justin Bieber...

I probably lost about half of readers right there. I've noticed through observation of my facebook news feed, that J-Biebs isn't exactly popular with a lot of my "friends." In fact on more than one occasion people have professed their utter hatred for this kid, all I want to say is that seems a bit harsh, don't you think?

I should clarify that I'm not a fan of his music, or even him really. His music is very simple and a little annoying, but that certainly isn't enough to make me hate this kid. I mean he isn't doing anything worthy of hatred. All he is doing is making music. You might not be a fan but that is no reason to hate anyone. That'd be like me saying "I hate cameras, so I hate my Mom" (My Mom sells cameras by the way, also I love cameras and my Mom). You see my problem here? You can't just hate someone for making a living, unless of course someone's living is like murder or politics.

Now I realize that these days the word "hate" has almost lost all meaning. No one takes it seriously. How many times in a day do you hear people say "I hate the bus" or "I hate olives," the word has become a tad overused. It has really just become interchangeable with dislike, but hate is so much harsher. Rarely does someone use hate and actually mean hate, and I'm sure I've done this before, but I try not to unless I feel very strongly, like when I'm talking about olives.

So with this post I'm not trying to promote Bieber, or even defend him, I'm just asking people to think before they use hate. That word requires justification, which I cannot possibly think of any justification for hating Justin Bieber, he's a nice kid from Toronto that has found success, so just back off a little. If anyone has a legitimate reason for hating him, please let me know.

That being said I only ask of you one thing; please just think before you hate.

The Anatomy of Skipping

So as a university student I attend my classes regularly, but lately I've had trouble going to a few of my classes. It's just so easy to skip a couple of them. Between boring lectures, terrible profs, and no attendance marks, I just don't see the point in going to a class like Geography.

I'm going to say something a little weird here, but bear with me. After about a month of classes I always think of my classes in terms of bar graphs. I have various categories that I think about and I grade a class from one to ten  in each category. Things like the quality of the prof, my interest in the course, and how much weight the prof has placed on participation. Thinking like this gives me visual statistics and helps me determine whether or not I should actually bother going to class.

Here's a couple examples of graphs I think of.

This first graph is for Geography. As you can see the ratings for prof, interest, and participation are all minimum. I do technically need the course, but just the credit, and I do have a couple friends in the course. So overall Geography only has an average score of 2, not a great turnout. 

Here is another graph, but this one is for Creative Writing. As you can see this class scores high in both prof and interest, and it gets a full 10 for participation because every class missed is 10% off your final grade. I don't really need this class and, like I said in a previous post, I kinda dislike a lot of the people in the class which prevents me from making friends. So this class has an average of 5.8, but any class that scores a perfect ten in any category is virtually unskipable. 

So as you can see I put a lot of thought into skipping a class. It isn't some arbitrary decision, it's just statistics.