Reviews & Comments
Bryan, TX
response to Kelly and this place sucks, rednecky, -
9/29/2015I got a good laugh from this item. About This place sucks, TAMU Bryan Tx, etc. Did you not do some research before you came to this Aggieland. I sure hope by now you finished that Master Degree because if you have not you are not going to no matter how long you hang around. Did you know that in the days of the hippy era there was not even one of them there? When U T students were going to classes chanting Hey Hey LBJ how many boys have you killed today that AMU was mostly the corp? Girls only got there in 1967. What are they very conservative and intolerant about that grips you? Are you surprised? Did you not know ahead? Did you get one of those 20,000 scholarships to help them salt and pepper their population? Did your daddy who was an Aggie make you go? You know highway 6 runs both ways. There are only about 15,000 Aggies there in the summer. The place goes to sleep and then wakes up when the Aggies return in September. Businesses shut down. People take vacations. Teachers, etc come to summer school, meaning adults. Women and lots of them bring their computers, study hard, stay in their living quarters and all subjects are harder because they go so fast. Of course it is hot. Summer starts Mar 15 and ends Oct 15. You can fry an egg on the sidewalks, people wear sandals and wrap around skirts to class. Knee length shorts. Walk a mile to park their cars. Did you not know? You stayed in 3 months must have meant no car. no friends. no dates. nothing to do. had to study. did not get dark until 9:30. Welcome to Aggieland in the summer. Why didn't you have classes and a job. Bet I knew why. Someone else paid for your course work and you paid a typist to do your papers after you stapled together some pages you got here and there and gave them to the typist. Summer school is hard work. Those people piling in there from elsewhere are there to make A's. Especially the women. I did 12 years of summer school at Lamar U, Sam Houston U, U of H, TAMU and it was far more difficult than the academic year. How come you had nothing to do. Next summer take more hours and get you a job and you will have plenty to do and not just hang around and sleep and complain like the 2 percenter you are. I will make some suggestions to you that I found to do there. The libraries at TAMU and city of Bryan are really good. If all else fails, read all the new magazines of your interest once a month or more often. Bryan city library has a really good Texas history section. Grocery shop on Sat night or Sunday night and if you are somewhere that has a small kitchen learn to cook some simple things. If in a dorm room, might order a tiny refrigerator off in www and stock it with some sandwich makings and some cokes and put together some fine eatings. Join a church and go to more than one. Look at people coming out into the parking lots and decide which one based on the ones that look most like your parents, your family, you. Assign yourself some topics and write some essays of about 1,000 words on things that come to mind. Your family members, your home town specific places. Do like Faulkner or someone said; write about every inch, every leaf, etc in your own home town. Then put them in some sort of logical order and make and outline in the front and turn it into a table of contents and lastly, number the pages.
Here are some things I like to do now and for several years before. Find some free movies and clips on the youtube and watch them. Not the pay for ones, but things like old John Wayne movies, find one or two and look in the right side and see the list of whole movies there. watch some. How about some fine concerts by singers who would have had to pay big bucks to hear; The Everly Brothers; The Brothers Four; The Kingston Trio; Peter, Paul and Mary, Porter Wagner, Johnny Cash; Pete Segar singing something about up to my knees or other part of the body in the big muddy and that big fool keeps saying push on. That is what he got put off national TV by LBJ guys maybe the Sumters Brothers also. See when singing songs like We shall over come and he is talking about union workers. See him at age 30 and then at 90; John Denver; and all the great girl singers. Watch some clips from great movies such as; Splendor in the Grass. Natalee Wood, Warren Beatty; The Long Hot Summer w/ Joan Woodward and husband. Earlier clips form the Great Gadsby. How about The Lover and Damage and Conversations with other Women. Are Les Meserable the 10th Anniversary live performance. then 25th Anniversary London. Listen to 10 different ladies sing The Rose. Watch Janice Joplin. Nina Simon. Beatles. Now write all these down for ideas on as piece of paper. Turn them up to fill up the screen and sit back like they were in concert just for you. Right in your room there will be class, culture, and beauty. How about A Beautiful Mind. The English Patient; clips from Brokeback Mountain. Those scenes from Monument Park in John Wayne movies in the background. Some spegetti westerns. A little music from young Supremes, Diana Ross, Statler Brothers. Dolly Parton and various guys she sings with, the more of them you click on to the more of them turn up. This ole Aggie has given you lots of ideas of what you can do free and with very little effort except the click of the mouse. One more thing to do in the library. There is a section in the TAMU library with news papers from major cities and some from other countries. I liked to find the real estate sections and read the ads. Also see the same news stories and see how they are treated in the various places. Then there is people watching, but better to do that in the academic year as there are so few around in the summer. Click back on the internet and when you are feeling up to it watch Ike Eisnhower and the troops find those Jewish/Nazi camps and see what they saw. Watch JFK on the grassy nall in Dallas and Jack Ruby shot Oswald in front of everyone on live TV. Watch the marches from Selma Ala and the lunch counter sit ins. Watch Buno monkeys do it, lions do it, rhinos do it, watch the movies of Betty Davis, Ingred Bergman, Doris Day, watch swing, jitterbug, watch Sissy ride that mechanical bull. Trvolta dance in Saturday night fever. Watch Swashy dance in Dirty Dancing. What Hank Williams and hear him sing and then 12 others sing his songs. You would never run out of things to do right there in your air conditioned room. While eating snikers and drinking diet cokes and unbuttered unsalted popping corn popped in brown paper lunch sacks in that microwave oven just push the button that says pop corn. Buy plain store brand plastic sack, about 3 lbs, about 2.99 in cost, enough for 2 weeks every night if you want.
Beaumont, TX
Bryan/College Station/TAMU -
9/29/2015I am amazed at what I read on these items about the twin cities of Bryan/CS and Aggieland in general. I was dragged there from Houston by my husband in 1980, kicking, screaming and cussing. Because I was too old to be transplanted in a place I had never been before and no intention of going. It was twice the size of College Station. The main thing wrong with it was it was not HOUSTON, where I had lived as an adult for 17 years. Also, there is a very serious difference in the cost of living as to if you are buying or renting a house. Those that bought when things were cheap, thought it was a low cost of living. Those that bought after prices sky rocketed were paying far more than we had in Houston for fantastic houses. Now, if this was not bad enough, MY salary was about 65 percent what it was in Houston. Those friendly people were head over heels jumping with joy about my husband coming there. They thought I was very lucky to get out of Houston (that I loved). Now, I was 40. Finished my M Ed 18 years before, never planned to take any courses again that I had to make any specific high grade in. You guested it. Plopped right down in TAMU to do a doctor degree is there was anything at all for me to do in my "spare" time. Praise the Lord when I learned about what had taken place since I had done my BS at Lamar U in Bmt and M Ed at Sam Houston in Huntsville. A little thing called grade inflation. All those people carrying on about got to make all A's, etc thought that was normal/average. I had done my college work in the normal years of age 17 to 21 and graduated youngest in the class at Sam Houston. No difficulty, all you had to do was go year round at Lamar and then also at Sam Houston and also take the recommended number of courses in the catalogues and you could get two degrees plus a few additional certifications. If you are not eaten up with thinking you got to make all A's, so drop six hours after school starts and before Q drop day. I never heard of anyone dropping something already paid for. So, I worked full time year 'round at BISD, until 5 pm. Was the mother of 2 elementary aged children, wife and hostess for numberous dinner parties in my home trying to get some kind of social life going by guests and then get two doctoral degrees at our house finished and wave good bye to Bryan, say see you at retirement time, we are keeping one of our homes here and rent it in the mean time. In a reasonable lenth of time. My goodness lady, all of those schools area good. I cannot imagine anyone paying for private schools. The subjects you named as classic education are dead languages and not anything to help anyone make a living, cook meals, raise a family or read the Bible and discuss it and apply it to your own life. How on earth did you get to Aggieland, the hub of Texas and Stephen F Austin's old 100 families and freedom and so forth. The only grip I had was the Bryan marking system that got my quiet as a mouse little daughter P's in conduct because she made bad grades. See was a very ordinary to poor student and there was no help for her in math due to the step program. When we left there 8 years later my hubby said. Not sure we did any good here at all, but I put a silved bullet and stake in the heart of that step business. That basically was a thing help over by a prior Supt where students repeated and repeated over and over what they did poorly in seeking mastery or when they reached gr 8, which ever came first. Another thing I could not believe was how my rowdy little son got away which so much he dished out to such nice teachers and he never got his little backside treated in the traditional way because they did not do that in Bryan. He got G's in conduct. By the 3rd day every semester the teachers were calling ask me what it was he wanted. I said; he wants to be the leader and control of your classroom that is what. Please do not let him have it by default. Well, I am not so sure how it happened but several decided it was a good time to add a new baby to their own families. I said; if you cannot paddle him then how about sending him out there to run a few laps around that track. They said can't do that, he needs to be kept in a recess as the only penalty we have for his fits and bad behavior. I said he needs to run off that excess energy, dear and gentle people. Well, part of the problem was he was the smallest one and so cute, then he would turn on the charm and win them back only to repeat it over and over. Now I visited Bryan recently and looked at every thing. This description above is not what I saw. And not the Bryan of the 1980 to 1990 area. I grew to like Bryan and it took about 30 days. My husband and I were so thankful the college professors who taught our classes, all of which were younger and none of which had the experience, etc we had were realistic in the amount of work assigned. Hubby said to me after my first classes, when I was complaining that I was afraid I was only going to learn what I already knew; My gosh. Don't you know that could make it hard as nails and work us 'til our tongues hung out and what we learned would just be the same? Now, there are some poor folks around but how does that bother other people? There are many TAMU professors and families who live in Bryan also, preferring a more normal distribution of people rather than college students etc. Bryan was a big town way before the land grant college came and College Station was build 4 miles away. They are both wonderful places. But lady, you only have to go once a month to Austin? I had to go to Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Waco to see some traffic, tall buildings, red lights you had to sit through twice before you got to move a block, eat Mexican food, etc to keep from going stir crazy. I told someone early on this place is in the middle of no where. She said; we say that when you are in Bryan, you are half way to every where. 8 years passed for my family in Bryan. We kept our favorite home over near Johnson ele school and Bryan High and the Wynn Dixie grocery store. It is so beautiful and I wish I lived in it today, but things changed for our family in 1991 and we were schattered to the 4 winds. The one over on Oak Ridge looks just like it did. I never liked it, being a 2 story with all Bedrooms up and me running upstairs 17 times a day carrying loads of clean folded laundry. I think of all the friends and associates that were there. I remember them as they were, not 35 years older. And my little girl now deceased 15 years and my rowdy little boy still rowdy but he knows more about turning on the charm now to his superiors and handing his two young sons. And we did both finished those Ed D degrees although we had already done about all we were going to accomplish before arriving. But we finished them and those professors came, went, wrote books, went to Germany twice, all the things they do to cause their students to take 8 years, not 3 and never even know it because after all, you live here anyway. But we finished. Many many could never finish because their time just ran out and they were not going to take the same courses again with the same professors and the same text books. Overall, it was our best decade for my family. Not sure we knew it at the time. The things that happened to us that were less than great were not anything caused by those people, the schools, the university, the weather, etc. Guess what. When we returned to the Houston area, Spring Branch, it had all changed also while we were gone. And so had we. Enjoy Bryan while you are there. Just give a bunch of dinner parties in your home and leave the education issue to the public school people. They are doing a really good job. If you have money to throw away on private schools than that is your business. You are just paying twice. Public through your taxes. Private through fees and tuition. I do not know how to make corrections on this and I am not an old lady alone, so don't sneer and say how come her spelling and typing is not better. I can only see three lines at a time in this little window. Your item looks like it was written by either someone who has not been there very long, or someone who has not gotten around much. If you don't study the situation I think you will lose one I Q point a year. I did doing all I have described. It came back when I had to really hump it to tread water in the greater Houston area when I returned at age nearly 50.