Counter criticisms with praise
I have come to the inevitable conclusion that people love to complain.
I see it everywhere. Everybody has some lingering resentment that they’ll happily share with you at the drop of a hat.
Editorials and commentaries—even the most thoroughly researched ones—are usually rants against a proposed bill, a corporate practice or a societal trend.
For every system in place—from the presidential administration to the way farmers grow peanuts—there’s some freshly-published critique claiming that we would see worlds of improvement if the people involved would just follow these steps.
All this makes me wonder why people seem to have this natural inclination toward hostility. Perhaps aggression is a more powerful force than approval, and we feel much more motivated to spring into action and speak our minds when we find ourselves in disagreement.
We feel threatened, we throw our defenses up and we prepare ourselves to take on the system.
Even worse, we often sense that we cannot influence the course of events taking place, which simply fuels our rage and turns many people into self-appointed messiahs whose book will show you the path to greater enlightenment.
Tech is particularly notorious for harboring a student body that loves to criticize. When students discuss some aspect of Tech life, it’s likely to be a condemnation of a particular professor or department or an expression of disdain over some new policy or project.
Of course, I don’t doubt students of any university can easily find fault with their institution, but by dwelling on the negatives without devoting equal time to the positives, we run the risk of developing an overall cynical attitude toward the world and devaluing our happiness as a result.
Which is why, before this turns into a rant on rants, I’m going to spend the rest of this editorial doing something a little more unusual: discussing things I like. So, at the risk of sounding like a brown-nosing sycophant, here’s a short list of the things that I, at least, like about Tech:
1. Open-mindedness. Tech has a long history of tolerating diversity. We were the only public university in the south to desegregate without a court order, we took in women before the idea of a female engineer was widely accepted and we currently host students from over 90 different countries.
We’re all used to this variety, and we all get along pretty well. Even some of the most liberal and conservative student groups maintain cordial relations with each other. That’s more than I can say for some parts of the world.
2. The campus. Okay, so maybe we don’t have the rolling hillsides of some of our counterparts farther north, but Facilities usually does an excellent job keeping the campus clean and trimmed. I see very little litter, plenty of freshly cut green space and lots of plant life.
The construction projects, although temporarily inconvenient, always give way to the betterment of the Institute. The Student Center alone has improved in leaps and bounds since I first enrolled here.
3. The student organizations. Tech has a student organization for every conceivable interest and then some, and if nobody offers what you want, it’s very easy to start up your own club and promote it to the students.
These organizations have been behind a lot of the new activities that have surfaced in recent years, and it’s fantastic to see that level of involvement from a student body that’s often stereotyped as antisocial.
4. The administration. I don’t always agree with the policies that the administration sets for the student body, but they’re usually very amiable toward students, and when they do put themselves in a position to listen to student input, they take it seriously.
That sort of respect from the powers that be was something I missed in grade school, and I’m happy to see it here.
5. The technology. Tech knows the best way to spend money on the technology that serves the greatest needs of the student body, and it manages to snatch up many of the latest developments soon after they hit the shelves.
Have you ever noticed how most of the machines in the labs are rarely more than a couple of years old? Or how the library started renting out digital cameras not long after they became cost-affordable? Or how almost every lecture hall now comes fully equipped with a host of multimedia goodies?
I have more, of course, but I’m running out of space.
My point is, there’s so much more to life at Tech than the idiot professors in your department or the latest sports scandal making headlines.
We exert so much energy on condemning the bad that it would serve us well to spend some time praising the good. We’d feel better, and we’d develop a more optimistic outlook on life and on the world. Why should we settle for less?
