My Perverse Pride

After a few days of classes at USC's IMBA program, I got the full report from Alex and the two French girls on the work at the school: damn is it hard! They all feel ill-prepared for the classwork and know that this term will be a struggle. The schools are supposed to be comparable, but ours is harder than theirs. I am supposed to nod sympathetically, but...ok, now, here's where I admit I'm evil: I laughed.

See, I KNOW that their high school classes are better than ours. It's not called grade school, middle school, or high school there; it's Primaire (5 years, from 6 to 11) --> College --> (4 years) --> Lycée (3 years). Their students come out of all of that education better equipped than ours. And that first year of uni (what the Europeans call it, as college is something different to the English too--for them that'll be the 16-18 years part of high school) is really just what they already know, too. However, after that, our schools catch up. I had told Alex that USC's IMBA program was the best America had to offer. It's been either number one or number two (and usually number one) for something ridiculous like 15 years now. It's 36th in the world, too. It's one of those things my alma mater does right, and I WANTED them to arrive and go, holy shit, it's hard. And they did! Pardon me while I laugh more!

Yes, I know it's rude to laugh, but I can't help it. One thing that you should understand about the French in particular is that intellectualism and being an intellectual snot is part of their cultural identity...much like Americans abroad are pretty darn obnoxious. Therefore, I just KNOW they couldn't conceptualize before arriving here that we had something educationally better than they had. Alex's business school is one of the better ones in France, yet it can't stack up to USC's IMBA program. HAHAHA! Ok, I'll try to stop being such a fucking bitch now. I will take deep breaths and stop. No really. I swear. Let me just whisper one more thing, though, in a low, tiny voice: go america!

I'm proud of Alex's attitude when confronted with the challenge of work beyond what he has done. Alex is taking a class with a notorious hard grader in a subject he apparently knows less about than others in the class, but damnit, he's going to keep that class and do well in it, period! I really respect that approach. He knows that he'll do tons and tons of work; he knows that other IMBA students told him not to take the class because of the difficulty of the teacher (teacher's good, just super hard!); he knows he could take another class that would be much easier. However, none of that matters. He's not going to do it. He's going to take the challenge. You know what? The boy's brilliant and a hard worker. I don't care if he's missing a few blocks of knowledge here and there that the others in his class have. He WILL make it up and he WILL do well. I've been continuously impressed with how he's done so far. I can't see that changing now!