Welcome to the dawn of the internet's 1,014,956,251,838th web page!

Originally posted as a part of ih8cgs.freeservers.com. When it became quite evident that nobody hated CGS quite as much as me, I closed the site and opened Taftese.

Well, I guess I will answer the questions that many people have been asking me since this website went up:
1. "Why did you help create this website? Isn't it just a (somewhat physical) manifestation of your hatred towards CGS?" Woah, slow down. That's two questions in one, you can't expect my feeble CGS brain to take such a truckload of information all at once! Firstly, the reason I started the website is because I know lots of other students at CGS feel the way I do, in that, they hate CGS. I got tired of sitting around with my friends and bitching, so I figured, hey, why should WE be the only ones to bitch when there are so many others just sitting around in their rooms with no one to care about their bitching. IH8cgs.com is essentially a support system. If you've got something to bitch about, it will be read by your piers (or at least our webmaster). That's what the Sounding Board is for. As for the second part of that first question, the answer, is, well, yes. I don't like it here, and like I said, lots of other people don't either. This is a great place to be angry. And why not? I would be happy if I were allowed to take oh, say... classes I actually wanted to take.

2. "If you hate it so much, why don't you transfer?" I'm working on it. I have friends that want to transfer out of CGS because they despise it, but are going to sit through the torture because they want to get into BU's "prestigious" COM school. The reason why I put "prestigious" in quotes is because I have not yet met one person from COM (or any other Boston U school) whose intelligence has blown me away. I have no doubt that COM is a good school, but to say it is the best in the country is a crock of shit. Depending on which part of communications you want to go into, there are countless schools that are much better than BU's COM. Journalism, for example. If you want to major in Journalism, the places to go are University of Missouri in Columbia, Northwestern University, or Kansas. For broadcasting, Syracuse outshines COM. For Film/Television, it is hard to beat COM, but USC has more connections than you will ever find at Boston University.
Anyway, as a future journalism major, I had to go talk to my counselor at CGS, who I asked about transferring within the University. I found out this is impossible because so many students who feel like you and I hate CGS and want out. So the University has made it impossible for students who want to switch out to switch out, with two exceptions: SFA, because despite their good reputation, they have low enrollment rates; and ENG because it's one of the worst engineering schools in the country, and pretty much anyone who can breathe, do advanced calculus, and turn on a light switch can get in there.

OK, so I can't switch within the University. Then I asked him where should I go to instead? Then I had a conversation with my counselor which made me discover what he really is: A guy who gets paid to agree with you. Here, nearly verbatim, is the conversation I had with him about going to another school:
ME: So, where do you think I should apply to?
COUNSELOR: Let me ask you something...
M: OK....
C: Was BU a stretch school for you?
M: No, not really. It was about a 50-50 school. Actually, I got rejected from Indiana University, which doesn't have as good of a reputation...
C: Really? You got rejected from Indiana?
M: Doesn't that seem odd?
C: Yes, it does! Let me ask you something else... Are you planning on transferring at the end of the first semester?
M: Well, maybe...
C: Well, then that might be a good idea.
M: But I don't think so. My parents think that I should wait it out here, give it more time...
C: Yeah, that sounds like the thing to do.
M: So, I was thinking that maybe next year I'd apply to Missouri. That's a good journalism school, right?
C: Yup!
M: And Iowa, too... I think Kurt Vonnegut went there...
C: Yeah! Iowa's great!
M: What about DeVry, or a community college?
C: Either of those could be the right place for you...
M: What about Harvard?
C: You could do that!
M: Ummmm.... I'm addicted to crack, and I'm not going to quit.
C: That's a great attitude to have! You know what they say! Quitters are losers!
M: They don't say that.
C: You're right! They don't!

Keep on pluggin' till next week, amigos.

14 January 2000