In Defense of Eavesdropping, WKU, and Caps Lock

Lemme tell you about the Carol Martin Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science.

First, we live in this here building:

It's a niiiiiice building. It's also a bit of a monstrosity too, but that's okay. It has to contain like 126 crazy teenagers and the Center for Gifted Studies. You can't have it all.

Anyway, it's situated at Western Kentucky University, which is in Bowling Green, KY. Bowling Green itself is known for a couple of things:

• Corvette Museum
• Home of John Carpenter, director of the Halloween franchise (or at least according to my film professor)
• Not being in Ohio.
• Possibly accelerated car world (#AndrewPhysics)

However, there are some not so good about WKU in my opinion.

• Unaccredited computer science program
• It's on a hill.

A lot of other people, however, think that WKU is this humdrum of a school that'll take anybody and everybody who may or may not "deserve" post-secondary education. It's this blip on the map in comparison to the University of Kentucky in Lexington and the University of Louisville in, well, Louisville. When you throw in sports, it's just a school that people race to fill out the application so they can get a diploma. 

All in all, it's not worth all that much.

That's bullshit*. 

Today I was sitting at Garrett, which is probably the best place to eat during the work week, and I was by myself. And while a victim of plugged in culture, which is my term for the generation that spends most of its time with headphones in or eyes down on a small screen, I didn't stay plugged in during lunch. 

So I eavesdropped.

A couple of tables over I heard some guy talking about the effect of caps lock, er, I mean, CAPS LOCK, and why, at least in casual settings, the guy on the other end shouldn't be offended by it. 

When I lived in Wisconsin, I spent part of my summers at what would be more like educational summer camp than the negatively connotative "summer school." Naturally, in this information age, we had to learn about the internet. And to make sure they didn't unleash a generation of even ruder kids upon the digital world, they taught us internet etiquette.

After a Google search, apparently the tool they used was "Surf Swell Island." It was this game created by Disney that was based on this jungle island to make sure kids weren't jerks on the web. It was sort of Reader Rabbit in a way.

Surf Swell Island asked the real questions.

Aside from ridiculous cheesiness, this game actually brought up some valid points that you need to teach your impressionable kids, which is probably most evident in the map used to navigate the island.

Temple of Tact might be my favorite.

Obviously you're teaching your kids to keep their mouths shut, to not download sketchy stuff, and to be like Hufflepuffs and use tact/be decent human beings. However, in the Temple of Tact, the game says that Caps Lock will probably offend whomever you're talking to. It doesn't really matter how EXCITED AND WELL-INTENTIONED YOU ARE! 

But this guy had a good point. Professionally, we probably shouldn't use all caps because of grammatical reasons, but is all caps always bad? Is context required to figure out the intentions of the caps lock? 

After that I heard bits of conversation about muscle memory and personal philosophy from other tables. If WKU was just this poser university, then why do people think like this? Maybe it doesn't matter the institution but the people in it. And maybe we all just want to be listened to, to maybe be taken seriously or just to give somebody a good laugh. It doesn't matter where we are, but what we do.

I never expected to get so existential while eating cheap chicken tenders.

*Excuse my language. This happens more often than I admit to people that I'm not immediately friends with.