Grad school has begun again. Usually, it’s busy and stressful in the beginning and then I tune out and just go through the motions. This time is a bit different. I’m taking a class called…GROUP CHANGE. It’s difficult because I don’t like groups and I don’t like change. It’s also an elective outside of my program with a whole new set of unknown, unpredictable liberal commies. It didn’t start well when my teacher asked me if I had worked on the Obama campaign when I mentioned I worked in politics. (Way to show your colors early, lady!)

We did this NASA Survival activity where you pretend that your space ship crashed on the moon (I think mine did years ago, by the way) and you have 15 items. You have to number the items 1-15 as to how important you believe they would be to your survival. You can see the entire exercise here. My first 4 items were oxygen, water, food and 2 .45 pistols. None of the other items seem to matter (matches, flare gun…um, people….we just crashed on the moon. There is no air. A solar-powered FM transmitter? Leave it behind). Of course, not one of my group members selected keeping the gun in the top 10 and ultimately, I lost out and had to surrender my gun in our group presentation. I pushed hard to keep it and even offered to give up my food. They weren’t having it. One even said, “No way, guns are bad.”  Yes. Even hypothetically…in a space-shuttle crash, the liberals still want me to give up my rights.

Then the teacher explained the use of the books for class, –one of them titled “Helping”– and she explained how we would be able to look into ourselves, evaluate and change to be better group workers after this course. “We’re all in this together!”, she said. [No. We’re not. I’m all about the individual.] She then explained that by the end of the course, we will have a sense of how to ‘facilitate’ others into the group mentality as well and co-participate.

So let me get this straight: I need help. I need to change. I need to shift to collectivism and rely on others while helping those others shift towards a group mentality as well? You can ask my mom and my boyfriend: I am stuck in my ways, stubborn as they come and I’m not changing. In this instance, I consider that a good thing. What’s scary to me, though, is that my cohort members do not see any of the underlying messages being projectile vomited into their laps. The liberal bias of education no longer surprises me, however, the increase of ‘in your face’ in denouncing of individualism and self-accomplishment is just baffling to me.

Graduate school has taught me very little about the field, but taught me priceless information in terms of stamina, patience, strength and keeping my mouth shut. As a whole, it’s been a learning experience for government funding, the student loan process (the lack of checks and balances pertaining to the dispersion) and a look inside the post-secondary educational arena as a whole. The countdown is on. July 31st…I’m waiting for you. I’m sure the university will be happy to see me go as well.