HOFY Awards: An evaluation of Tech

With my time at Tech coming to an end, it is time to hand out the first—and probably final—Honorable Observances From Yours-truly Awards, or simply, the HOFY Awards.
HOFY Award for Restraint by a Group: the faculty. The fact that faculty-on-student violence is non-existent at Tech amazes me. I will concede that, by nature, I am not a very patient person, but dealing with some of the students on this campus takes the patience of Job. Year round, professors have to deal with such ignoramuses as the lazy idiots who cannot seem to realize that scoring in the single digits on a test is justification for failure. Worse, they have to deal with those obnoxious kids who nearly have an aneurysm for getting below an ‘A.’
HOFY Award for the Obnoxious Major: Architecture. After four years at Tech, I can safely say that there is not a group of people more filled with self-pity than Architecture majors. I stress “self” in the sense that I doubt anyone else really cares about them whining about studio classes and reviews. To all the Architecture majors out there that complain to friends about the stress they are under, think about this: if you screw up and design an ugly building and it gets built, you make an eye sore. If an engineer screws up and has a bad design that gets built, people could die. The only Architecture majors who have a reason to be stressed all the time are the out-of-state students, since it is going to be impossible for them to pay off those student loans making barely above minimum wage.
HOFY Award for Most Overvalued Group on Campus: ANAK. I have no idea what this secret society does.
HOFY Award for the Dumbest Spectacle on Campus: I Less-than-three GT Week. Isn’t reminding students that they should love their school right around the time of spring midterms counterproductive? The people saying that they love Tech that time of the year are either lying or majoring in Management. Speaking of which…
HOFY Award for Best PR Stunt of the Year: the College of Management changing the name of the Management degree to Business Administration. Fear not Management students; while they may have changed the name of the degree, you will still be the butt of jokes across campus. For those management students reading this in the back of their “really hard” class and planning on sending an email to me about how there are substantive changes to the degree, save your time. I don’t care. And for those grumbling to yourselves that one day you’ll be the boss of all those engineers that make fun of you, I will concede that there is strong evidence that Management majors do climb high on the corporate ladder: the economic implosion of 2008.
HOFY Award for the Biggest Waste of Time and Money: the 25-Year Strategic Plan. With such thought provoking goals as “Sustain and Enhance Excellence in Scholarship and Research,” I am curious as to what Tech was doing before. I missed the line in the previous strategic plan where it planned to “Strive for Mediocrity and Occasional Failure in Scholarship and Research.” Considering the budget situation, wouldn’t it make more sense to chart a path to solvency?
HOFY Award for People Who Want to Look Fashionable but End Up Looking Like a Clown: bow-tie wearers. While I admire their ability to actually tie a bow-tie, I feel that their skills could be put to more use making a YouTube tutorial than actual use of the skill on a daily basis.
HOFY Award for the Course Most Likely to Get People to Drop Out: Senior Design. Few things have caused me to spend a Saturday in the Library, and one of those things is Senior Design. Group projects suck, but they really suck when they are at the end of the semester. I realize that engineers will need to work in groups, but people can be fired for incompetence.
HOFY Award for the Group of People Who Most Freak-Out Others: Humans vs. Zombies. When people walk around L.A. wearing a bandana on their arm or head, it’s considered a sign of social revolt and disorder. When people do it at Tech, it is a sign of social awkwardness. This game is proof that some Techie jokes do have a legitimate founding.
So end the first and final HOFY Awards. I would thank all those who gave me plenty to write about over the years. I will miss many aspects of Tech, but I can say the thing I will miss the most is sharing my thoughtful, ground-breaking ideas with the Tech community.