Below is a letter written in response to a request for a few things, including some summer internships for some Bates College students. Before anyone who knows me gets too excited, it's not that kind of letter. I had been known in a past life to sometimes write overly...animated...letters to some of the staff at Bates, including one particularly heated exchange I had with a certain person referenced in the following letter.
Those letters aside, as I was proofreading this behemoth, I realized I should post it here because I stand behind what I said and could use any support I can get. If any former or current students are reading this (Bates or anywhere else), I strongly encourage you to make your voice heard if you're heading down some sort of entrepreneurial road. Shout it from the rooftops and make a scene, because that's the only way your institution of higher learning will maybe learn something themselves.
*side note - In the following letter, 'short term' is in reference to a program we had to take at least 2 years at Bates. It was 5 weeks in duration, after the school year was over in May, where your liver was tested up to and far beyond its limits while your mind was massaged by something they called "class", where you would show up to a place where the lights we dim and you were allowed to do art, listen to music, or "learn" about something not considered important enough for a real class. Don't tell anyone in administration, but the students actually found a way to use this time to partake in some less than exemplary experiences.
LETTER:
Sounds good <name>. We'd love to get some Bates kids thinking about
entrepreneurship. Which brings me to a related question/offer.
When
we were seniors a couple years ago, we came up with this idea to start a
hard cider company sometime late fall/early winter, at which point
there was no question what we would be doing upon graduation. We held
meetings at night in that giant lecture room in basement of pgill where
we made charts and graphs and plans and dreams. When it came time for
short term, words can not explain how ready we were to start our
business. We figured that for our short term class, with all of us
already having our mandatory credits taken care of, we could do a
(group) independent study with the guidance of any number of professors
from bio/chem on the product side (we've brewed beer in class to learn
about the fermentation process) to econ on the business side. When I
approached a certain department chair about this, she told me that Bates
doesn't do business class, and to basically take a hike (which,
coincidentally, was a short term offering (seriously, you went on hikes
and took pictures)).
My first two short terms were scenic
painting, where I sat on alumni walk and painted for 3 hours a week, and
soda firing**, where I messed around on a pottery wheel for a few hours a
week. I thought it was pretty backwards that I was required to do
these art classes, for which I had no passion and just wanted credit for
hanging out with my friends for 5 weeks in the spring, and when I did
have a passion for something, and sought help and tutelage from those
who are paid to do so, I was flat out denied. Instead, we worked on our
own. I didn't take a class and instead chose to be a campus hermit,
getting let into my house by roommates to sleep, and sneaking into
Commons for meals (sorry...). Needless to say we could have been more
productive with some guidance.
Anyways, I'm not sure if this is
even in your domain, but I'd like to do my part in making sure this
doesn't happen to anyone else. We'd love to be there for any future
students who are in our position. I know we're not exactly qualified to
teach in any traditional sense, but drawing from my experience, I would
have jumped at the opportunity to have the guidance of someone with a
couple years under their belt, rather than being forced into a class for
which there is no passion, or even worse, bumming around campus with
zero responsibility and too much free time (I believe 24/7 qualifies as
too much).
My point is, I STRONGLY recommend getting some sort
of option for those with an entrepreneurial spirit. If that's not
possible, let us help. I have learned more over the past 16 months than
any other time in my life. If this were to go down in flames, I have
already taken enough from this experience to give me the confidence to
go do anything I want. I think it's not only fair that other Bates
students should be afforded this opportunity, I think it would do great
things for a lot of people. In a perfect world, Bates would have a
budget for an Entrepreneur class over short term where students could
actually get a chance to make a difference on their own, create jobs,
and at the very least, gain some semblance of real life experience.
Anyhow...penny
for my thoughts I guess. If you find this rambling cohesive and
sensible, but maybe you aren't the person to make this call, could you
do me a huge favor and forward this along to someone who might be able
to do something?
Thanks for reading my novel, and go Bobcats!
Ross
** secondary note about soda firing that I didn't include in the letter. My friend and I would show up to this class, mess around on the pottery wheels for a little bit making weird shapes with the clay, then toss it in the compost mix when we were done, never actually making anything to be sent to the kiln. Near the end of the semester, our professor called us into his office for private meetings. We were individually informed that both of our performances were shockingly unproductive and in turn, we would be unhappy with the grades we were likely to receive unless we turned it around. Those grades were C-. Our professor was apparently unaware that short term is pass fail. Anything above an F got us our credit. We didn't turn it around. And for those counting, if you take the amount Bates costs for 4 years ($258,000) and divide it by the number of classes taken, 34, you get a value of $7,588.23. For pottery class. Also the reason my children (girls included) will be punting footballs from the day they can walk. Two words: full ride.
--DOWNEAST
