Educating our Soldiers. Uh Oh.

March 10, 2010

1. College Version 1.0 One of the most prominent buildings here on the FOB is the education center. There are signs all over it and posters for the online universities it represents. These posters are all over the FOB. Ordinarily I’d be all for encouraging people to get college credit, but when one of the colleges is, and I’m not making this up, “The University of Maryland University College Europe,” I think attending may actually damage brain cells and lower job prospects. I sure as hell wouldn’t expect anyone to hire me if I graduated from the Preparatory Academy School of Scholastic Academic Prep.

When I was in the army, the young soldiers thought that all that differentiated them from me was that I had a college degree; they were NOT impressed. “College ain’t nothing. I’m taking classes now.” “Indeed,” I’d offer, “but you can ‘take a course’ in literally two hours to get credit.” “Exactly! How dumb you feel for wasting four years on that?”

P.S. This isn't the first idiocy to come from the University of Maryland. First of all, they have a fight song. Why is that retarded? Because their mascot is a turtle. A turtle, of course, doesn't fight. The lyrics of the fight song command, "fight, fight, fight" when it should obviously say "hide, hide, hide." If the disaster of having a mascot who, by its very nature was selected by survival by Nature because it doesn't fight, wasn't bad enough, it also isn't even a bad-ass turtle. At least a snapping turtle can put a hurtin' on you before it holes up. Nope. A terrapin. I looked it up to find out exactly what differentiates a terrapin. Not good for the U of M: "This eight-inch long freshwater turtle is considered by many to have the best meat among turtles. Its flesh is often pounded and served like steak."

P.P.S. They should pass out helmets to the soft heads at the graduation ceremony for the University of Maryland. Or maybe a protective shell they can crawl into. Yes, that would be fitting.

2. College Version 2.0 One of the other colleges that I see on posters everywhere is Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. Think about that. I'm not sure it's such a good idea to bring the flight school TO Afghanistan. Wasn't it flight school and Afghanistan that started this War on Terror in the first place?