General Discussion Thread

[Helia]

The only thing I would say about "college" and "university" is while in the US they are the same thing, in Canada and Europe they are actually very different things. A college is a small very skill specific place where you would go to learn training for a specific trade, or in some places it can be a school that is between high school and university. My cousin in Quebec will to go to college, which is three years from what would be grades 11-13, and then from there he will start at university. A university on the other hand is what Americans call colleges. College degrees are quite different from university degrees, so I might caution (in an international setting) against using college the word unless you specify. Like how in the US there is football and soccer and in Europe there is also football but it is completely different, Europe and Canada also have college but it is not the same.

"College" is a very confusing word indeed. In Hungary there are two types of higher educational institutions;
1. university - large, with a lot of different faculties and has bachelor, master and PhD programmes in a lot of field.
2. the second type is smaller, specialized only in a few fields, and even though they can offer master programmes (rarely even PhD), their main focus is on bachelor level education. And while universities are participating in research activities and have a more theoretical approach, the other kind of schools are generally concentrating a bit more on practical knowledge.
Our Ministry of Education forced these institutions to call themselves "college" in English, but when you use it in an international environment,you often get a response like "so, it's not even a university"...
In the EU this type is usually called something like university of applied sciences (and in secret, many Hungarian non-university universities do the same).

[Lenny]

In Australia "college" equals the final two years of secondary school, with some places offering an optional third year extra. Rather like what Viola said Canada's was.

[Vafhudr]

Well it's not college they have in Québec - it's CEGEPS. They serve as a mix of technical schools and bridge for those who want to pursue more academic careers in University.

As far as I know college is just a sort of linguistic holdover. It was the term used for pretty much all institutes of higher learning, at least in Canada, until the 20th century. With the creation of new institutions, they tended to call themselves universities, not college. The word college stuck around as an expression, though the vast majority of people who say that are going to college in fact attend a  university. In places like Canada were higher education became available fairly late into the game, the expression has less currency. In fact college, to my knowledge, implies something below university - like somewhere you would learn a trade, for instance. University has now become a byword for higher education. College harkens back to the notion that the older institutions were in fact guilds - a college of academics. 

[Piney]

There are a couple like that: it's not a hard and fast rule. As an example, Dartmouth College has a graduate program, but it is very adamant about keeping "college" in its name. There's also a university not too far from my house that doesn't really have any graduate students to speak of, but it's very proud about calling itself a university. It's more of a general rule of thumb rather than something that's policed: schools can call themselves whatever they want, really.

I think in my case it's an art school thing. Plenty of art schools have grad programs, but none of them are universities since the schools are just for art.

[Russet]

Hello! My exams are finally over! /flops onto the forum
Over here after we complete secondary school at 17 y/o we typically go to pre-u (pre-university), which can be anything from foreign pre-u courses like Cambridge A Levels, SAM (South Australian Matriculation) and CPU (Canadian Pre-University); to STPM (Sijil Tinggi Persekolahan Malaysia, or Malaysian Higher School Certificate); to the Malaysian Matriculation Programme, etc. Places that offer foreign pre-u courses are typically called "colleges", and after one to two years in any pre-u course we carry on to a local or foreign university, but typically you can only get into a foreign university with a foreign pre-u course or with very good results in STPM.

[Solovei]

So I wanted to share this video and I couldn't figure out where it should go... so I thought I'd put it here!

It has danes trying to speak swedish and swedes trying to speak danish!

[Ana Nymus]

So I wanted to share this video and I couldn't figure out where it should go... so I thought I'd put it here!
[...]

Hahahahaha! That's hilarious! *clicks link to watch more*

[Haiz]

It has danes trying to speak swedish and swedes trying to speak danish!

hahaha, this is great : D

meanwhile, at uni, we get copies of texts in danish and swedish because they don't exist in norwegian?? groans

[Daéa Reina]

The Official Trailer for the new Star Wars movie is here and it's WONDERFUL!!!

I sincerely hope they don't ruin it, though...

[Fimbulvarg]

The Official Trailer for the new Star Wars movie is here and it's WONDERFUL!!!

I sincerely hope they don't ruin it, though...

Nope, not happening, no way, not looking. I know your thing Hollywood, spoiling all the things and then some with trailers and whatnot. Not this time.

[Trinka]

YES STAR WARS THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO ME

*saw part or the trailer at a bar with family last night and literally squealed with excitement*

[Haiz]

happy back to the future day everyone!!!

[OrigamiOwl]

-___-

UrgHGHghGhghGhghGhghghgHghgHGhhh....

My cat seems to have become a furry ark for bugs, and has brought a heap inside. I first noticed when I stopped her from eating a slug that was crawling across the carpet. -__- Random tiny bugs, a weevil, and then a tiny tiny spec that caught my eye (because I now have a built in alert for tiny specs) that turned out to be a tick. (Always trust the tick intuition u__u)

Ticks again.

I'm just. So DONE with ticks. And now I've probably got them all over me again because I picked her up and hugged the billyo out of her earlier XD
DX
So now I just have that uncontrollable paranoid itchy feeling. And I won't know if any are biting me until the morning and I have an essay to write then and don't wanna be itchyyyyyyyyyyy ;___; AAAAAHHHHHGGGHHHH.
And now.....she's just wandering around the living room, scratching like WOW THANKS MITZ I AM SO GLAD YOU VENTURED OUT INTO THE LONG TICK INFESTED GRASS GOD-KNOWS-WHERE TO FLING TINY PARASITES ALL OVER THE HOUSE, MY BED, AND ALL THE CARPET THAT I VACUUMED TODAY AND BLED FOR BY ACCIDENTALLY CUTTING MYSELF WHILE CLEANING OUT THE FILTER FOR WHICH I NEEDED A KNIFE (i was cut by the vacuum, not the knife) BECAUSE IT WAS COMPLETELY BLOCKED WITH TWO AND A HALF SOLID HANDFULS OF YOUR FLUFFY FLUFFY FUR.

I can only imagine that things get just better Post-Rash <_< /MikkelOptimism ahahahoha...

Spoiler: show

Like ticks and fleas contaminated with troll blood hitching a ride on cats and scouts and biting people and it turns into a RASH PLAGUE I dunno

[Ana Nymus]

happy back to the future day everyone!!!

Great Scott, you're right! Ha, after today even the future will be in the past And we still don't have hoverboards I want hoverboards. Smartphones are pretty cool though, I guess.

Also there will now be people who have lived through the past, present, and future of Back to the Future

-___-

UrgHGHghGhghGhghGhghghgHghgHGhhh....

My cat seems to have become a furry ark for bugs, and has brought a heap inside.

Have you tried flea and tick medicine? I know they make it for dogs, I can't imagine there wouldn't be a cat variety.

[DB (f.k.a. DaveBro)]

happy back to the future day everyone!!!

All right, even if that was technically spam, it was cool spam!