A dash cam caught Reese Witherspoons' meltdown.
Would you get a tattoo of a company logo for a pay raise?
The National Magazine award nominations.
I started reading Gone Girl: A Novel
Michael Shannon reads the Deranged Sorority Sister e-mail.
Spreadin' Love 550
Apt. 11d 
Eh, Reese’s meltdown wasn’t as bad as I thought. Her “You’re going to find out who I am” moment wasn’t that obnoxious. I was hoping for much more in the way of rudeness, to be honest. 🙂
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The problem with being a partner (yeah, I know) is that my compensation fluctuates a lot. But if there was a way to really guarantee that it was always 15% higher than it would have been otherwise, and if I could have the tattoo somewhere inconspicuous, then I would agree to a tatoo of the firm logo, even though I don’t like tattoos much and don’t have any.
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Beware of Gone Girl. It lures you in and leaves you hanging.
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She comes out of that rather well. She was outraged, but controlled, and slightly amused that he would have a shock. He said she was being anti-American, which, reasonably, pissed her off. (Armed agents of the state, when using coercive force against citizens, need to mind their language. In another country she’d be able to sue him for slander given that it was caught on film).
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Aha! I’ve been writing comments on and off for months, which your site has been rejecting for some reason! Glad to be back.
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Sorry, harry. I just pulled out two of your comments out of the spam folder. This dumb blog really needs an upgrade. I try to check the spam folder at least once a day now, but it’s really a pain in the ass.
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I have to say, the “deranged” sorority sister doesn’t sound too different from the average college student, nor is her basic point (we need to socialize during Greek week) wrong. Unfortunately for her, the level of profanity common in casual 20-year-old conversation is not accepted in other settings, so when it gets into print, it offends people.
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y81,
I read the whole thing a while back and I thought she was really funny. Mind you, I would feel really anxious about having her as a future preschool teacher to my kid or daughter-in-law, but she’s obviously pretty sharp. If her resume crosses your law firm desk one of these days, give her a chance.
By the way, I notice that a major mistake that people make is being concise, funny and quotable. If you’re diffuse, vague, boring and lame, nobody will bother quoting you.
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If you try to abuse and humiliate people who think you’re a jerk, yes, people who receive your letter will forward it to others. If you’re polite, they won’t. I thought the author was trying to offend–as she stated multiple times. Welcome to the internet age.
Amy P, that sorority sister misused her authority. No one has the right to speak to others in that manner, let alone someone who represents a larger group. As an officer of her sorority, she had to be a responsible adult. She blew it. From searching the web, I gather the author’s left her sorority. Any web search of her name will pull up the story forever–or until she marries. Do you want her representing your institution in any way? I wouldn’t.
I wonder who would remain in an institution with such officers?
I noticed a curious thing in touring colleges with my eldest kid. The colleges never, ever want to talk about Greek life. They will answer questions about it, but they don’t volunteer information. Sometimes students working in the admissions office will prompt college employees to mention it.
If one were only to judge college social life from view
books and such, American college students spend their free time attending football games and break dancing.
I was very impressed by Michael Shannon’s reading of that letter.
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“Amy P, that sorority sister misused her authority. No one has the right to speak to others in that manner, let alone someone who represents a larger group.”
Eh, without knowing how her former sorority sisters talk, we don’t know that her verbiage was necessarily unusual in her social milieu.
It sounded like she had real substantive issues with her sorority sisters, namely that they were bad hosts, they didn’t make an effort to entertain their guests, they were incapable of socializing sober, and they talked in front of their current guests about ditching them in favor of a different set of guys.
“If you are one of the people that have told me “Oh nooo boo hoo I can’t talk to boys I’m too sober”, then I pity you because I don’t know how you got this far in life…” and then she starts sounding like an old time Marine sergeant at Parris Island, but it sounds like she’s got a point.
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/339252.php
As I said, I don’t relish the thought of this young woman as my future daughter-in-law, but she’s energetic, conscientious, passionate, and ambitious. There’s a lot of good material there.
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I agree that an adult who interacts with people who they are trying to work with to reach a common goal like this college student did would be a dreadful person to work with and I would avoid them like the plague. Did she really believe that the diatribe sent via email would be effective? I’d argue that there’s a pretty big failure of leadership there (and, I’m guessing, a drunken, late night failure, too). (It is funny, though, read in a man’s voice, but too long).
But, I am willing to believe that this is the kind of youthful indiscretion that one could learn from and move on from, and if the kid came to my attention as a woman, I’d be willing to hear her story. I do not think that the permanence of the internet should mean that she can never grow up from the child she used to be.
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I think cranberry’s insight on frats/sororities is interesting. I think you’re right that frats/sororities have gone from being an integral part of universities to something that many of them are a bit ashamed about, but can’t get rid of.
I wonder if that’s true everywhere, or if it’s certain schools? I’m guessing it’s true at the ivys, where the schools would like to believe that entering the university gives you access to everything there, and that there isn’t another exclusive club to join.
(And, that’s without the problems to the administration caused by the alcohol-infused partying scene).
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It’s not the expletives. It’s the attitude.
To me, she’s an adult, not a child. I wouldn’t hire her for any position in which she had to manage anyone else, nor in which she might have to represent the company in any capacity. That limits the options.
The world is full of smart people who respect others. I’d rather take a reasonably smart person who treats others well than a supposedly smart person (although in this case, it’s only for the sake of argument I’d put her in that category) who bullies and threatens others.
She might have a future in reality tv.
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bj said:
“I wonder if that’s true everywhere, or if it’s certain schools?
Our local Greeks are so busy with chili cookoffs, bedraces, handicapped ballet, fundraising for Type 1 diabetes, blood drives and float decorating that I wonder how they have any time for the less edifying activities that fraternities and sororities are famous for, let alone studying.
cranberry said:
“She might have a future in reality tv.”
I was thinking the same thing about reality TV. Also, collection agency work. There are niches in the economy where being able to yell at people is an important part of the skill set.
Nobody who ever interviews her, knowing her priors, is going to think, “Well she’s qualified, but isn’t she too nice for the job?”
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True story: one of my husband’s students asserts that one of our local fraternities has 11 members (including the president of the chapter) who all wear purity rings.
I am not in a position to verify this.
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Yankee here. What do purity rings have to do with anything? What are purity rings? Are they as reliable as wedding rings are in signaling one’s fidelity? (or as unreliable, depending on how cynical one is.)
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“I wouldn’t hire her for any position in which she had to manage anyone else, nor in which she might have to represent the company in any capacity.”
Twenty-year-olds are not commonly hired for such positions in any case. But I doubt that this girl was any more abusive or profane than the average newly-minted corporal. That is how twenty-somethings speak, and the other twenty-somethings on the receiving end usually don’t take it too seriously. As you get older, you realize that there are better ways of managing. Coincidentally, that is also when you get actual management responsibilities.
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I do not believe my child will speak like that when she is 20, and hope that Laura still has this blog then, so that I can come back and tell you all that I am right (and I will admit it if I’m wrong, through my shock).
Those of you who currently have 20 year olds, do they talk like this to their peers? (and, it’s not the obscenities, but the name calling and lack of consensus building and respect).
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But, I do not think 20 is grown up. And, I could forgive someone older for a obscenity laced diatribe, if they convinced me they were sorry and wouldn’t do it again. Lying (Sanford, Wiener), harder to forgive.
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“Yankee here. What do purity rings have to do with anything? What are purity rings? Are they as reliable as wedding rings are in signaling one’s fidelity? (or as unreliable, depending on how cynical one is.)”
That’s not exactly my milieu either, but it suggests that that particular frat has some rather earnest young men in it. I’m sure they’re not perfect, but the story about the purity rings suggests that they’re very unlikely to wind up going full Steubenville. My impression is that there’s quite a range in behavior among the Greeks. (My husband has a colleague who knows a bit more about the local system than we do, and the colleague said that the tendency of the Greek system here is to encourage the kids to pair off pretty fast. The colleague said that the fraternities and sororities have a lot of events where a date is required (you apparently get fined for not having one), so the path of least resistance is acquiring a boyfriend or girlfriend so you always have a date. And then engagement and marriage follows quite naturally from that. That may or may not be a good thing.)
We’ve been living in an undergraduate neighborhood for the past school year (we have the top half of a duplex where the bottom half is inhabited by a bunch of college guys), and it’s been surprising in a lot of ways. I thought it was going to be way louder. It turns out that we are probably way louder than our downstairs neighbors (I almost never hear them), and our college student neighbors’ most visible failings are 1) not walking their dog and leaving the shared green space littered with dog poop 2) stuffing our recycling container with their trash. Among our immediate neighbors, there’s no sign of heavy drinking (and we would be able to tell from the trash they’re stuffing in our recycling container, as well as just from yard litter). There is a big old house nearer campus where the lawn is regularly strewn with red Solo cups come Monday morning, but it’s definitely not like that everywhere in off-campus housing.
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The 20 year olds of my acquaintance don’t talk like that.
None of them joined any fraternities or sororities, so maybe they’re unusual–but I don’t think so. I also don’t think the “deranged” sorority emailer represents typical sorority members, which explains why everyone’s describing the email as deranged (or crazy.)
The language was at its worst in middle school, when everyone suddenly had access to email and facebook. The faux “adult” posturing on electronic media was annoying, but as usual, it was a phase.
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When the letter leaked to the press, my twitterfeed commented heavily. The men loved it. Thought that she should be hired by a big law firm. The women thought she was evil and recalled meeting girls like her. Said that she was awful, and she would turn into an awful adult.
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“The men loved it. Thought that she should be hired by a big law firm. The women thought she was evil and recalled meeting girls like her. Said that she was awful, and she would turn into an awful adult.”
Maybe everybody’s right.
I imagine her giving the “2nd place is steak knives” speech Alec Baldwin gives in Glengarry Glenn Ross.
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