Physics 1602 problem sets are usually fun. Not quite so when I leave them for the night before the deadline and also have a World Dance paper to finish. So I choose the unscrupulous route and ask J, the guy living on my floor, for the PDF solutions file for chapters 27 & 28.
Apparently, his system is that some guy (a friend, presumably) e-mails him the files before the homework is due, and he copies the solutions in time to hand them in. However, this “dealer” is apparently “shifty” and “hard to get a hold of”. Also, J was always reluctant to pass me these PDF files when I last asked.
Where did all this defensive sense of property come from? Back in the IB, we always shared whatever information we had about courses (or so I thought?). Even with the fact that the R-Score is a lot more dependent on how well you do vis-a-vis your peers than the GPA is, the kids in IB were just more open to both sharing the joy and the misery of endless homework and tough classes.
Don’t get me wrong here, I am definitely a competitive person. (Just ask anyone who has played board games with me.) But the atmosphere of competitive academics is just something I can’t agree with, especially at this point, where all of us have reached pretty much the epitome of elite schools. What are they continuing to compete for? Grad school? Internships? As Plato said, a good artist does not try to sabotage the works of another artist; a good artist loves all masterpieces. So why is there such an atmosphere of guarded information?
Competition should be about me and me only. There is no point in trying to disadvantage or sabotage the opponent, be they a classmate in Physics or someone sitting across the board. As long as I play my game as I should, I’ll always come out on top.
