Dowbrigade Alma Mater Tops Party List

When Harvard graduate and budding anthropologist
the Dowbrigade was in desperate need for a "real" job in Peru, way
back in 1981, the want ads were not overflowing with positions for
Cultural Anthropologists, and so we embarked on our long trajectory teaching
the Mother Tongue.

Three years later, by which point we were on the faculty
of the National University of Peru, we realized teaching had become
a
career
and a calling, and that we needed some professional training, not to
mention a Master’s Degree, in the field.  But with limited time
and money, a wife and kid and another one in the oven, we looked around
for a solid but short degree program. On the recommendation of a colleague,
Samson Devera, we found one – the State University of New York flagship
campus in Albany – where a Masters of Science in Education could be
had in one academic year,
plus two summers.

We never regretted that decision, and spent 14 happy
months in an apartment complex near the state capitol.  Albany
seemed agreeably dull, offering few distractions or alternatives to
work. Admittedly, between a full-time job mornings at New York State
Blue Cross Blue Shield preparing
BUP reports (bi-annual user profile) on stone age computers running
the first real spreadsheet program, Lotus 1-2-3, our Master’s program
classes in the afternoons and evenings, and a pregnant wife and 2-year
old at home, we didn’t have much time for partying.  Only now
do we realize what we were missing…..

ALBANY, New York (AP) — The State University of New York at Albany
returned to No. 1 on the list of party schools, while Brigham Young
University kept its
title as top "stone-cold sober" school in an annual survey of American
college life.

The Princeton Review’s report ranked Albany seventh in the use of hard liquor
and marijuana, ninth in beer drinking and first in "students (almost) never
study."

The annual "Best 357 Colleges" survey, conducted since 1992, is based
on responses from more than 110,000 students at campuses around the country.
The review has no affiliation with Princeton University.

It is the ninth time the University at Albany — a state-run school with an undergraduate
enrollment of 12,000 students — has been on the party school list. It was No.
1 in 1998 and No. 14 last year. The University of Colorado at Boulder ranked
No. 1 last year.

As usual, we are the last to learn…

from CNN