Posted at Mar 25/2006 10:19PM:
Sebastian De Vivo: Ben, I have to confess I was a bit worried at the beginning, but seeing how you managed to attack a subject of the magnitude of "Stanford University - Changing Lives Since 1891" through focused investative nodes, particularly myths and their relation to the experience of Stanford students, I am very happy with the final product. The questions you were interested in pursuing were a bit hazy at first, mostly I think because you needed to gather the data through surveys and questionnaires, but in your analysis you brought everything together. The project's navigation was clear, and you brought in many of the issues we discussed in class to bear on your analysis. I had a lot of fun reading about Stanford undergrads -- great job!
A View from Inside the Stanford Bubble
by Ben Canning
Table of Contents
1. Stanford: A Brief History
2. Unpacking the Myth
a. The Urban Myth
b. Dropping the S-Bomb
3. Only at Stanford
a. The Stanford Bubble
1) How to Make a Bubble
4. The Stanford Dating Scene
a. The Stanford Social Scene
5. Unearthing the Farm
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Other Pages
so you go to Stanford...
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Resources
Project Resources
Daily Articles
Links:
Ten things - science, technology and design
Ten Things 2006: Projects
Ben Canning
Posted at Feb 14/2006 08:52PM:
Kome: This is a wonderful and unique idea...I look forward to seeing the progress of your project and learning more about this artifact/machine/insitute/way of life...Good Luck!!
Posted at Feb 21/2006 11:45AM:
[klfsong]: Hey sugar, I would bring up Gaieties. What does it say about our culture that we can mock it infront of the entire student body and faculty. Our band? Why do we run around looking crazy and not follow a specific field pattern? Why are we known as the Birkenstock wearing granola eating clan? How can we look at a girl and call her a slut when she probably got over a 1500 on her SAT?
Posted at Feb 26/2006 04:58PM:
Daniel Steinbock: What is your unit of analysis? Are you going to consider Stanford as a whole, its history, what it symbolizes, what work it does, what its inputs and outputs are? Or will you get into the subdivisions within the Stanford culture? Academics, residential living (greek life, co-op life), undergrads as cash cow for graduate and faculty research. Stanford students obviously have some pride about being their idea of the "cream of the crop", but how exactly is the cream of the crop measured at admissions time? Just how much does passionate creativity or social service measure up against high SAT scores? What about children of alumni families, children of rich donor families, athletes? These are also defined as the cream of the crop? On the flip side, what sort of person
doesn't get into Stanford? My apologies to the artists, but there seems to be a serious lack of skilled and passionate artistic/musician types at Stanford? Could it be because standardized tests can't measure creativity? There's a disconnect between who we are
taught to be the cream of the crop in society (e.g. Einstein, Mozart, Allen Ginsberg, Steve Jobs) and yet many of them could never have gotten into Stanford. (None of the people I just mentioned would get into Stanford). So this all boils down to the question, "who or what is a Stanford student?" I'm pointing out that it depends a lot on who is being admitted.
