Attention Future Post-High School Students: Kiss Mom & Dad goodbye, and get a real education! Study abroad at The Indiana Jones School of Management, awaiting your fevered, spongelike brain! Here’s all you need to know about your future:
The Dean: Geof L. Morris, employed at a systems engineering firm in Alabama, has just received his Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering, and is a self-proclaimed Southern Christian who enjoys:
Reading (mainly O’Reilly-published techie bibles–don’t we all?),
Baseball
Monty Python
CS Lewis
Baseball
Christian Studies
…and lots of things that other vibrant, intelligent young adults enjoy.
Did I mention baseball?
Admission: Free.
Aren’t you packing your bags yet?
Syllabus: Don’t let this school fool you. The site menu says so, but there’s no actual schedule, curriculum, lessons or even bona fide lectures. The dean says, “Even though this isn’t a real school, this doesn’t mean we can’t make people think that it is.” A brilliant web marketing ploy? Indeed. Students go searching at Google for school stuff and what do they find? A place to goof off. With a capital G. Oops, I’ve let out the big secret. Read on anyway! Folks, what this site really is, a little corner of the world, offering “Lecture Notes” (blog entries) that promise the readers they can: earn a B.A. degree in Slackerdom (a term I’m not fully sure the author is the one to have coined) or get a Master’s degree in Time Mismanagement. Just a little over a year old and chock full of quotes and personal thoughts of the author, The site is a place where he and his ‘colleagues’ and ‘students’ hang out and waste massive amounts of time. In truth, it’s really nothing more than a personal web site/blog that just happens to belong to a pretty clever individual.
Report Card: Definitely a school blog to visit if you’re truly bored with the average John Q. Public weblog of daily activities or news commentary. I forgot to mention, even though the site implies something of the kind, it’s not an Indiana Jones site, the author’s hardly even a fan of the adventurer played by Harrison Ford, so don’t go running over there in search of memorabilia, movie posters, links, sound clips, and the like.
What you will find is a well-thought-out site catering to the hungry mind. As far as a blog goes, it has its entries–where if you don’t really know the author or share something in common–you can be sort of wondering about. Even so, it boasts life lessons to be learned. Here is an individual who, for all intensive purposes, has put up his daily rants and thoughts up for the world to see, not uncommon these days…but in a different fashion. Throughout most of the author’s trials and tribulations, he remains ever witty and thoughtful and has a positive outlook on life. I’m no advocate of rays of sunshine myself, but tIJSM is a truly refreshing experience.
Web site owners that have a hard time marketing their sites or believe in the Field Of Dreams formula (If you build it, they will come), can definitely take a clue or two here: This is a really good example of a site that has potential for a large–and maybe even devoted–readership. Yes, declaring it to be a school is sort of false advertising, but I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that the people who bump into the site find something interesting here. I did. To me, it’s so far one of the most astonishingly creative ways I’ve seen, in which to deliver a personal site.
And I’m damned picky. Diploma Earned. Grade: 5.0The Indiana Jones School of Management