The Basket of Deplorables vs. the Soufflé of Adorables

Townhall.com ^ | November 15, 2016 | Alex Grass

[Kaslin]

The soufflé is a difficult dish to master. Even seasoned chefs can tell you that this very fragile, puffy delicacy will collapse if you open the oven at the wrong moment. Mirroring the vulnerability of the soufflé, a nation of undergraduate and graduate students is on the verge of a hysterical collapse following Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump.

Just as the frustrated chef’s anxiety comes from the perpetually delicate soufflé, the educator’s anxiety comes from a perpetually delicate generation of students. Post-election safe spaces abound at campuses nationwide, where mollycoddled students are offered coloring books and puppies (not a joke), and administrators implicitly signal to the campus minority that voted for Trump that their political philosophy is damaging to their eggshell peers.

My own law school sent an email offering group stress-relief and individual therapy sessions to grieving students. The higher-tiered University of Michigan law school one-upped us, though, by providing a “[p]ost-election [s]elf-care” session replete with play-dough, Legos, and bubbles.

If my school had only asked, I could have brought all those items in. Although it might’ve taken a while to find the play-dough, which is kept in storage with the rest of my 10-year-old daughter’s old toys that she’s outgrown.

After receiving that email from my law school, my wife explained the soufflé-making process to me, which I thought was quite the apt analogy, given college students’ exaggerated victimhood:

[goldstategop]

Delicate snowflakes can barely make it in academia.

They’ll ill-equipped to make it in the real world.

No wonder higher education is a puerile joke.

[exDemMom]

Sarah Klotz, a Butte College assistant professor... In place of a planned lesson on Emily Dickinson, her 25 students would instead “talk about their feelings.”

I think I would have walked out of that class. The last thing I want to do is discuss my feelings. I probably would drop that class--or, at the least, panned the professor in the end of course evaluation. You are supposed to go to college to learn, not participate in touchy-feely garbage.

Finally...a specialized exam could be created to assess their ability in a specific field before they even attended college. If a kid scored a 100% on such an exam, let’s say in the subject of physics, he would be able to get a loan to study physics. (...) The same principle of qualification by examination could be extended to grad school applicants.

Such an exam system already exists for grad school applicants. In general, they must take the GRE (graduate record exam) and a subject GRE. Some specialized programs have specific exams--for example, the MCAT for medical school applicants. For the most part, graduate school admission requirements are pretty rigorous.

That doesn't mean, however, that all graduate programs are equal. A PhD in "_____ studies" is as useless as a BA in that subject.

[Biggirl]

No wonder it is next to impossible to make.

[SES1066]

So ... a cooking school staffed by and attended by these snowflake, could they inflate these soufflés by their vitriolic hot air? Would the output be burned to a crisp in the heat of their anger?

[Flick Lives]

Eerily, University of Denver has placed a surveillance camera to keep watch over its “free speech wall,” following the defacement of a Black Lives Matter message and the addition of lyrics from the Minor Threat song “Guilty of Being White.” In the spirit of chilling speech, the university explained that “[anonymity] allows one to disrupt community standards without facing the impact and accountability of their work… A camera has been put in place to monitor The Wall.”

---

Big Brother is watching you.

[saintgermaine]

I would suggest to give each and every mentally affected “Snowflake” a pacifier and tell her to suck on it. I came through WW II and its aftereffects and survived, and I am quite sure they could as well if they hadn’t such a pampered lifestyle. Most Americans don’t know what it means to rough it when the ground shakes around you after a barrage of bombs. I hope not, but the day may have to come when a lot of these mentally fragile people will have to learn and come back down to Earth and face reality.

[LambSlave]

In place of a planned lesson on Emily Dickinson, her 25 students would instead “talk about their feelings.

Not sure which is worse, perfect illustration of being impaled on the horns of a dilemma.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"where mollycoddled students are offered coloring books and puppies"

I like puppies, am I out of the basket of deplorables now?

[libertarian27]

A few reasons souffles collapse.

You need to use the right dish to bake a successful souffle, it needs to be round and have nice high, straight sides.(well rounded and focused brain)

Your eggs are not at room temperature = Not out in the world but protected in the cool, dark fridge.(Mollycoddled eggs(students) won’t succeed)

Your bowl is not metal = fragile glass bowls just don’t work in getting those eggs(students) to their peak.

Need a dash of salt = A little bit of common sense is necessary to raise those eggs(students) to their potential.

Don’t open the oven door during baking, introducing liberal drafts of air(doctrines) can collapse the souffle right in the oven.

Consume immediately, leaving it out on the counter(grad school) will result in the souffle eventually deflating even if you did all the correct steps before this stage.

[Makana]

“In place of a planned lesson on Emily Dickinson, her 25 students would instead “talk about their feelings.”

When I was in school, we did that in the frat house at 3 AM after a 12-pack. Dad would not have paid the tuition for that to happen in a f’n classroom.