Having grown up in Oregon, I heard various things about a school by the name of Evergreen State College in Washington. Most of what I heard led me to believe that the people there are nuts. For example, how dare a school not assign students letter grades. I mean come on, narrative evaluations of work performed? How nonsensical not to boil down 12-15 weeks of work into a single letter, sometimes followed by a symbol. The following comes from their web site:
You'll be evaluated in detailed narratives that become part of your academic transcript — instead of letter grades. Faculty will evaluate your work and your self-evaluation is also included. Experience has shown us that these noncompetitive transcripts are valued by employers and graduate schools because they are more descriptive and revealing than traditional grades.
What! Noncompetitive? Socialists I tell you! Joseph McCarthy is rolling over is his grave. As it turns out these people are nuts . . . literally . . . and I am now officially a convert. The following email changed my mind about ESC. It comes from Travis Skinner:
I'm the coordinator of the evergreen state college bike shop. I'm a welder and an amateur frame builder. I built this pedal powered
mill last year and now i'm building bikes to rent on campus. Check it
out. I'll have more pics on the blog soon of the machine in action!
Okay, so capitalization must suffer under the reign of noncompetitive evaluations (just teasing you Travis) however any school that has its own bike shop HAS to be okay. And a whole blog dedicated to a pedal powered nut grinder? Dope!
I did some clicking around and what started as this . . .
. . . finished as this!
Travis, I am now officially a fan of Evergreen State College. I assume you don't have sports teams since you are noncompetitive and all, but I will cheer on your effort to, dare I say, compete against combustion engines. Now even a long haired socialist might be willing to support that kind of competition.
One more reason BikeHacks is now a fan of ESC . . . check out the picture that came up when I first visited their Web site. Rock on Travis!
A very cool project but the phrase "Buying (or in this case building) an airplane to get free peanuts" came to mind. I'm sure it'll work but there may have been more efficient ways to do it.
Mostly I'm jealous. I want access to a full machine shop and a TIG (isn't GMAW the more correct term for this?) welder.
Posted by: Ryan | 01/22/2010 at 08:28 AM
I read this as I sit in my class at evergreen, and finally figured out where that grinder went. I wondered what happened to it when I stopped by the bike shop yesterday. As far as sports, there is definitely a burgeoning bike polo scene in this town of which I am a part. Hopefully we can get a school team going sometime soon.
Posted by: Dark Mavis | 01/22/2010 at 07:03 PM