43454 E534F 52534 84750

This morning we were scolded by the RAs because apparently some people had been writing horrible, mean comments about how much COSMOS sucks. When I opened up the blog a few minutes ago after finally finishing the impossible project 4 (and helping a couple other people fix their errors too), I was expecting to find posts full of horrible, mean comments about how much COSMOS sucks. Instead I found posts filled with constructive criticism, positive comments, and a few complaints which may or may not be considered unreasonable.

In my opinion, the staff of COSMOS needs to stop taking such offense at the blog posts, especially since on the first day, when we were "suggested" to write posts twice a week, we were informed that the staff has "thick skins" (direct quote) and can take constructive criticism. We were told that the blog was for constructive criticism and now we are told not to write any since it makes COSMOS look bad. However, perhaps COSMOS should worry less about looking good for our parents and worry more about letting students express their thoughts and feelings honestly. The staff should realize that even though we complain about having to have RAs escort us everywhere, we are just whiny teenagers, we realize that the RAs are just doing their job and it is necessary because of liabilities, and we don't mean any offense to anyone at all.

I would also like to say that I, along with most of the other students at COSMOS, appreciate all the hard work that the RAs put in to provide activities for us every night, but they need to accept that not everyone will always like what goes on on a particular day. This does not mean we take the RAs for granted or hate the program, and honestly, we should be allowed to post our actual thoughts on our blog, instead of a version that skims over anything negative because we might get lectured again.

So now, for the first time on this blog, I will say what I think about COSMOS instead of writing about random unrelated events in my day. In my opinion, the science communications class takes up too much of our instruction time, especially since it does not relate to our cluster. I know that it is probably still important to learn, but I wish we spent less time on it and more time doing hands-on work in the lab or learning more advanced C. I really like all the teachers for our cluster, and I have found Bridget and Arash particularly helpful on more than one occasion. I personally think that the amount of homework and essays that are assigned are excessive, especially since this is a summer program and the essays don't always actually have very much to do with our cluster. The homework should reinforce what we learned in class since the lectures are often difficult instead of trying to introduce new topics. I also the reslife program, although I think that the nightly activities should not be mandatory every day since we have a lot of time to socialize during the day and sometimes we would rather stay in our rooms and relax or have a little extra time for homework. I also really like all four of my RAs (and no I am not just writing this because I just found out that at least some of them read this blog). Well, class is drawing to a close so I must stop writing now.

P.S. Thanks, Mike, for inspiring the entire cluster to write an extra blog post today.