I could be finished reading for my political science paper on UN, war and peace, having read a couple of chapters from books outside of the course’s syllabus. But nooo, the bloody pedantic bureaucrats who run the department of political science and sociology here at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology have decided that for this paper, we need at least five sources from outside the reading list, one of which has to be a book and one an article.

So instead of starting to write first thing tomorrow morning (after the mandatory Angel episode for breakfast and a newspaper, of course), I have to read through a couple of redundant articles, even though I have what I need.

Sure, I see why this is useful for us students; it teaches us to search for additional literature, a skill we’ll all benefit greatly from if we decide to become scientists or researchers. But how many of us are gonna do that? And why five? I’ve previously encountered courses where we were required to find at least two or three sources from outside the reading list, but five?! And we flunk if we don’t follow their ridiculous rules?

Call me old-fashioned, or whatever, but I don’t believe in coercion. These people should bloody well sit their asses down for a couple of days and read some J.S. Mill, and then perhaps they would learn that you can’t force people to think, or do what’s best for them, you can only use rational arguments to persuade them that you’re right, and then hope that they’ll follow your advice.

But this policy of forced literature searches? Tastes of distrust and a de facto declaration of us students as incapable of managing our own affairs. Which is probably right — I’m convinced some 70% of the students would just have taken information from the curriculum if the requirement was removed altogether — but it doesn’t make it right.

Bleh.