I've been trying without much success to get my former classmates to come forward and explain just why I deserved to get kicked out of university. I got quite a few responses to my last blogpost on this topic, but most of them were just generally abusive, with very few people actually coming forth with specifics. These are the things that people came up with:
1. An incident in class where I told the prof I didn't like his method of using power-point presentations.
2. Another incident where I went up to the blackboard to make some kind of point.
3. An incident where I disagreed with the prof about using rubrics to mark assignments.
4. A habit I had of wagging my finger in the air when I wanted to ask a question or make a comment.
5. Telling a professor he was biased because he gave me a low mark.
Come on, all you haters out there, you've got to to better than that. Oddly enough, none of these points are even mentioned in the letter I got from the Registrar listing the complaints that had been filed against me. (That letter is posted elsewhere on this blog. You can find it if you look for it.) But that's not what motivated me to write today. One of my detractors, in the course of trying to portray me as a kind of "nutcase", said something peculiar about me trying to "redesign Manitoba's transit system".
If that makes me a nutcase, then I have to plead guilty. Yes, I did try to redesign Winnipeg's bus system a few years ago, because I don't think we need to spend 2 billion dollars on rapid transit. We already spent the first 200 million on the first leg, and this week they announced they're committing another 600 million to complete the link to the U of M. So we're well on our way to 2 billion dollars.
The politicians are big on sexy mega-projects, but there isn't much interest in doing the little things that could actually make a difference. I figured out a way to re-design the bus routes using the existing fleet and infrastructure so that people could actually get from point A to point B a lot faster. I think it's a pretty good plan, so I drew up all my routes and put them up on a website. You can see the plan here:
How to Build A Better Bus System
I think it's a pretty good plan. The idea was to concentrate the existing busses on a smaller number of routes, to cut down on the waiting time. The tradeoff is that there's a little more walking time. I think it's a pretty good system. I'd rather walk a little farther than stand around waiting like an idiot.
When I used to explain this to people, some of them said "what about the elderly and the handicapped?" I used to tell them if you design a bus system for the benefit of the elderly and the handicapped, then that's who you're going to find riding the buses. If you're interested in attracting busy people who need to get from point A to point B in a hurry, then you need to design the system for those people.
I still think that's true. The irony is that the city planners seem to agree with me. They just have a different solution. Instead of re-designing the system for they busy people with places to go, they're keeping the old system in place (for the elderly and handicapped) and designing a whole new system (rapid transit) for the busy people with places to go. It's a great idea if you have an extra 2 billion dollars kicking around that you need to spend. I still think I had a pretty good plan.
And getting back to the original topic, I'm still accepting posts from former classmates who want to explain to my readers just what I did that got me kicked out of university. But please no more "just being continuously obnoxious every single day". Actual details is what we want. Is that really asking too much? Inquiring minds want to know.
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