Following on from Joan's horsepower post, I thought I'd blog about the vibe I'm getting from my course. I present to you the definition of the ideal engineering student, hereon known as the ideal student for the sake of simplicity.
The ideal student is perfectly healthy all year round. It has no job, no friends (though it does have colleagues), no family and no emotions. For practical reasons, an ideal student can be considered to be in one of two states. The first is the study state, which lasts for the duration of the semester. The second is a hibernation state, which lasts for the remainder of the year and is used to conserve energy and cement the concepts it has learnt during the semester into it's consciousness. When talking about consciousness of the ideal student, it is important to realise it is not the same as you or I. The mind of the ideal student contains one desire - the desire to learn. Notions of love, humour, sadness and pain are alien to the ideal student.
The ideal student's natural habitat is the university. It migrates between lectures, tutorial rooms, the library and labs. Under no circumstance will the ideal student enter the refectory or club, as these areas degrade its "study field", which extends 2m around it's body and stimulates the study centers of the ideal student's brain. For this reason, ideal students often gather in small "study groups", combining their study fields to increase productivity.
The ideal student is incredibly organized, recording detailed notes on every concept it learns and every experiment it undertakes. These notes are dated, numbered and organised in folders. The taking of these notes, or "journals" is so highly prized amongst ideal students that it has become a holy ritual, with the beings that oversee the journals being revered as the infallible gods they are.
