What's Been and What's Ben

There are many things to say about KAUST that are awesome. I went to a friend’s future apartment today and it was awesome with running water, working AC, and an internet connection. It is the King’s vision – one that I am glad to be onboard with.

Today we were told constructive criticism was a key to science, so here goes. The downside is that nothing is full ready to be moved into yet, the IIE staff seem power-hungry, workers are often found sleeping in our apartments, they push endlessly for us to get PhDs for many who do not plan to get one, and they give us so little money to do our laundry that many of us to it in the sink with shampoo instead of paying the exorbitant prices the hotel charges (I get 395 SAR to eat a day and 250 SAR a week for laundry, 3.75 SAR = 1 USD). I feel guilty complaining, but saying that everything is okay is an overstretch. I also think that the campus was not designed with input from students. I hope they redesign KAUST over time and don’t remain with the status quo. They seemed to have asked school administrators about design – a group who know about as much about classroom life as the birds outside the window. Nowadays we sit through presentations that are redundantly boring and redundantly redundant. I was told today about what a hypothesis is and other things I learned in 7th grade. The library presentation was concise, but it was the exception in a sea of knowledge that would be more useful in a booklet of KAUST info than slowly read from powerpoint slides (a habit I would have been corrected on in 10th grade).