Doomed

At the end of each or the original “Lost in Space” episodes, the intrepid family of explorers was clearly doomed. One hundred percent, inexorably, thoroughly, capital D--D-O-O-M-E-D. The evil provocateur, Dr. Smith, abandons the crew on an icy planet; the robot goes rogue; alien baddies abscond with our heroes; environmental disasters and disastrous environments. Every week another nasty peril from which there is no possible escape.

Except of course they always did. I mean, c’mon. They couldn’t die. June Lockhart couldn’t go back to playing Lassie’s mom. Bad career move.

So as an adolescent viewer in the 60s, I felt completely confident—okay, mostly confident—that the family would survive.

Even more so when I read the Mad Magazine (issue 104, “Loused Up In Space”) parody in which IT WAS GETTING DARK at the end of the episode and WHAT WOULD HAPPEN to the voyagers and WERE THEY ALL GOING TO DIE and it turned out that what had happened was that the sun was going down and it was nighttime and everyone was fine.

In college admissions, there is also a lot of “we really mean it, it’s different this time, admissions is changing for the worse” information. Here’s a recent the-sky-is-falling-we’re-all-going-to-die-it’s-the-end-of-the-world headline.

“For high school students across Florida getting into a dream state university is getting tougher. Straight As, strong test scores and still no guarantee.”

The piece went on to disclose that Florida colleges were becoming “more competitive” and that “good grades and test scores were not enough to guarantee admission. The implication was pure Yogi Berra: “that place is so crowded nobody goes there anymore.”

Because I gotta tell ya, on a recent visit to the University of Florida--you can’t name too many college campuses I haven’t visited in my 40-something year career—the place was crawling with undergraduates. First year students in the gym, sophomores in the student union, juniors throwing Frisbees, seniors lounging everywhere. I can only assume there were students frequenting the classrooms although I didn’t want to pry.

Clearly, somebody was being admitted to the University of Florida because I couldn’t see any other explanation for all those students milling about.

Perhaps the following analogy will help to elucidate my point that “more competitive” does not mean “fewer students.” (Yes, the comparison involves an example from running. Wanna make something out of it?)

Abebe Bikila shattered the marathon world record at the Olympics in Rome in 1960. He crushed the world record again in Tokyo four years later running 2:12. Indeed Basil Heatley of Great Britain and Kokichi Tsuburaya of Japan thought they were battling for first place when they entered the stadium. Bikila was four minutes ahead, an eternity in running events, equivalent to a geological age in real time. Bikila had already finished! He was no longer on the track! Four minutes! Impossible! Magnificent! And Bikila had had his appendix removed six week prior. Extraordinary!

But I digress.

In Paris in 2024, Tamirat Tola won in 2:06. (On a tougher course. There were some brutal hills in Paris.) With 2:12, Bikila would have finished 38th.

Not a typo. The best marathoner on the planet in 1960 and 1964 would have been 38th in 2024.

So, yes, the Paris marathon was more competitive that the Rome or Tokyo marathons, horrifically more competitive. But here’s the thing: there were still three people on the podium at the end. Three medals, gold, silver, and bronze. Same as it ever was.

The University of Florida is more competitive today than in previous years? Uh, okay. But there are still 40,000 undergraduates. The spots on the podium. Forty thousand undergraduates.

It doesn’t matter how competitive either event is. It matters how many spaces there are. To make the University of Florida less competitive, somebody has gotta get out there with some CBS blocks and some dry wall and build some more dorms. Fifty thousand undergraduates rather than 40,000 would mean that admissions could become less competitive. Because more students could be admitted.

Mind you, I have no skills as a building contractor and am not suggesting that more beds is the answer to anything. An undergraduate statistics course at UF can already have two or three hundred students. I’m just pointing out that admissions is no more competitive year to year or decade to decade. The number of high school graduates in Florida has increased in my lifetime although the number of high school students in the country has remained pretty steady. Maybe grade inflation is responsible for students feeling like they “deserve” to go to UF. Maybe kids today have a sense of entitlement. Who am I to make an inference? My thinking has been corrupted by Mad Magazine!

Which brings me—“finally” it could be argued—to my frequent point about competitive colleges in general and UF in particular. If Susie truly does have the ability, the motivation, and the academic background, it hardly matters where she matriculates. Susie took BC Calculus as a senior and scored a 5 on the AP exam? But got an unlucky roll of the dice and ended up at Florida Gulf Coast or the University of North Florida? Susie’s life is exactly the same as it would have been had she matriculated at UF except that years later her family doesn’t have to hire the UF football players to be the pall bearers at her funeral because Susie—having gone to a different institution—will no longer need those athletes to let her down one more time.

Sorry.

How you do still matters more than where you go.

No matter how “competitive” an institution appears to be.