One of the best ways to get ahead in today's competitive world is to claim some special consideration because of your unfortunate circumstances. I have friends working at the UnHeard Of University, and they tell me that anyone can get admission to a course without any academic ability at all, as long as they have some special handicap.
There are students who gained admission by being one-legged, or a single mother, or an indigenous islander.
But the fastest-growing area of access to privilege is through personality disorder. In most courses, several places are reserved for students with Asperger's Syndrome or other learning difficulties, and universities employ full-time disability consultants and counsellors. So it's a system that selects learners precisely because they cannot learn. Sadly, many of them flunk during the first term, but apparently that's beside the point.
Each application by a special student takes the university administrators a long time to evaluate (e.g. interviewing applicants, reading their life-stories, substantiating their symptoms, ranking their applications against all the other special applicants, etc.).
What is needed is an international system for grading personality disorders, to streamline the investigation and certification of people's problems.
This is why I am working on a project with Lee Ann and my colleagues at the McDonald Institute.
We are aiming to set up the world's first Institute of Advanced Personality Disorder. This professional body will have a number of functions, including standardising and regulating the award of qualifications such as O.C.D., N.P.D. and R.D.D.
Now is your chance to register and get in on the ground floor of the organisation, before standards are raised and it becomes harder to gain recognition for your disability.
Only genuine cases need apply. No time-wasters please.
late edit - I am grateful to the commenter who pointed out that this post can be interpreted as disrespectful of disabled people. I intended to take an affectionate swipe at institutions who, with the best of PC intentions, go out of their way to attract special applications, only to end up failing most of the students for whatever reason. I was also looking at the increasing medicalisation of problems, whereby half the people in the western world now warrant some disability acronym or other, NPD and RDD being a good example. I see now how this post could be read in other ways, especially by carers of people with real disabilities. I have several disabilities myself, some frivolous and some more serious. I apologise for any offence taken.
open text
01 August 2006 at 13:41
I.A.P.D.
Hotboy said...
Adolf! Heil! At last an organisation I can join! I can lay claim to all the personality disorders listed, but would like to go to university (who cares if I'm thick! I just want to stare at young women and go to parties!) under the banner of the Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I'd like to be catered for initially by being carried into lectures on a raised throne, carried shoulder high by great big Amazons.I'm practising how to sneer as I finish this. That might help when it came to being asked to do any work! Hotboy
~
.- said...
dude, I should already be registered. you should - in fact - be seeking ME out.
matter-of-fact; I should already have honorary tenure....
~
onan the bavarian said...
HB - I said no time wasters. You used to claim to be neurotic. Face it, you're chronically normal. Apart from the bliss stuff, the eyerolling and the headstands. The plastic bag outfit. Have you thought of trying a pantaclava?
Eric - good point. I was trying to have an affectionate go at the institutions who, with the best of PC intentions, go to huge lengths to deal with the wave of special applications, only to end up failing most of the students for whatever reason. I was also looking at the increasing medicalisation of problems, so that half the people in the western world now warrant some acronym or other, NPD being a good example.
I see now how this post could be read in other ways, especially by carers of those with disabilities. I have several disabilities myself, some fictional and some more serious.
I apologise for any offence.
~
Hotboy said...
Adolf! Heil! Totally appreciate the backtracking on the question of whether thick people who can't learn anything should be excluded from the upper bourgeois realms of higher education. The problem is that everyone can type now. I used to be the only one. Then, when we went ot uni, only five percent of people (and almost no working class people like me!) got to join the academic elite. Now here in Scotland they're trying to get everyone to go to uni! Everyone has a degree these days apart from working class people, and they can blame it on the crap schools they go to. But even they can type. What I'm trying to say, Adolf, is that this is a big improvement from the days you used to advocate neutering everyone who wasn't tall and blond and handsome like moi. This is a good policy for me at the time as well. God, why does everything look wonderful for me!?Anyway, if we got a gun, who should we shoot? I'd like making a list. That would help! Hotboy
~
onan the bavarian said...
HB - I'm pretty busy, could you start the list then pass it to me? I don't have a gun, but the Canadian army is on winter exercises here, maybe they'll have some to spare.
Eric - wow! According to Google, ZxFs is cutting-edge. Thanks for the tip-off.
~
Hotboy said...
Adolf! Heil! Now that you've upset Eric who is, after all, a bit of a military expert compared to you or me ..well, my advice to you is sue for peace now at any price, and look out the dingy. That would help. Hotboy p.s no wonder your previous attempt at world domination failed. What a something head, or something as insulting! Hotboy again.
~
Lee Ann said...
I did not read this in any other way than you intended it.
I agree: Only genuine cases need apply. No time-wasters please
I am looking forward to our project Rob.
~
onan the bavarian said...
Thanks Lee Ann, I knew you'd understand.
HB - The dog's ravenous. As a cost-saving measure, I didn't think you'd mind if I sent her up the mountain to sniff out some working class meat. St Bernard in reverse.
~
