Professor Mariachi

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This is your brain on steroids

professormariachi

on Oct. 31, 2009

Had a good time last night. Hope you all did too. Sorry I didn't get a chance to post this up last night. Anyway, on the subject of the latest post on academic doping… There was supposed to be a comic put up today about the fact that we're fast approaching 100 days to the winter Olympics here in Vancouver. However it was pointed out to me that it might have been a little, shall we say, too satirical, and as authorities seem to have lost all sense of humor recently, that particular comic is subject to revision at the moment. Yeah, let's just not go there, ok?
Anyway, academic doping is one of those problems that most colleges and universities sort of sweep under the mat with all the other npleasantries of academic life. There've been a few half-hearted attempts at puting out pamphlets and some articles written about it, but by and large it something people know is going on, and is more or less condemned as socially inacceptable, while in reality there's little that can be done to stop it. A lot of the drugs, at least in the case of Ritalin abuse, are obtained by prescription by people who know how to work the system to get it even though they don't need it. There are actually guides online (ooh, the big scary internet) as to how to exhibit symptoms and what answers to give to a doctor's questions to get your fix. This comic suggests a universities potential response? Mandatory drug testing, perhaps? Treat the academics like sports, and we'll have trophies instead of grades! But that's just silly. In all of this, I still find it funny that academic doping is bad, but binge drinking and parties of the like are socially ok… and used in high quantities by university and college students, by and large. Hmm. at my school, beer is called bzzr because there are rules against the explicit promotion of alcohol. However, when bills are posted everywhere saying "BZZR GARDEN SAT NITE, $4 CANADIANS" I think it's pretty obvious what they're talking about. Unless of course we're selling people into slavery for cheap.

Through all of this, I can't help imagining some skeezeball in a trenchcoat approaching me and opening up his jacket to reveal bottles of tablets and syringes: "Hey, man I've got some brand name stuff here. Wanna buy some Ritalin? The first one's free."

I think not.

May the Force Be With You
Care