[rant]

so like i said i graduated the other day, but it wasn't a memorable day or anything. before i start, though, i have to mention that in Russia we have a different education system - we don't have 1-2 year courses, rather we study 4 years, then compose a research paper (which is 70-100 pages long), present it to a commission and then get a bachelor degree (in finance), then we get an option to stay an additional year in the uni to get a master degree, but yesterday could be formally considered as graduation. Now back to yesterday.

I really wanted them to at least read my research and finally figure out what i did for the second time in the row. Seriously. Because the fact of the matter is that I used the same research as for my degree in accounting, that was completely butchered (incorrect tables, wrong numbers, chunks of theory that had nothing to do with the rest of the work etc - by then most professors trusted me blindly, and I simply put it together from a couple of dissertations on that subject that were freely available from an official source, but nobody knew that and it was really difficult and bothersome to check my paper for plagiarism, so I was sort of the pioneer this method and managed to make some money off it by selling other dissertations to lazy-ass kids), but still passed the commission with flying colors and i got the highest possible grade for it. This year, I simply adorned it with some fresh theory, analysis and rectified most blunders of that last paper, but on the grand scale not much has changed - I made upa lot of figures to make them fit the theses I featured in the paper, some conclusions and recommendations I made looked like something interesting and novel, but were hollow inside since they were barely applicable and generally repeated obvious facts in a different fashion. Partly because I didn't really have much time to make a brand-new paper, partly because I wanted to see how things would turn out if I left everything intact.

So I was really hoping that someone would question what I did in there and at least skim through the paper, ask me a couple of questions - I never thought I'd be able to get this far just by the virtue of my higher-than-normal academic average (4,94 on 5-max scale). You could say I was experimenting to measure the amount of bullshit I could get away with, although my motivation was slightly different. And man, as I learned yesterday, that limit is ridiculous. Nobody really gave a shit.

I got a question about the legal aspect of the research and I gave a WRONG answer, and when the prof corrected me, I instantly told him "well, I saw it with my own eyes in some contract with a foreign company". Nice bluff, huh? And there I was standing in front of him with my pants pulled down, but instead he said "well, that solves it then". WHAT?! I might be an action junkie who craves for adrenaline and likes to push it to the limit, but how is it possible not to be upset about how this system works? Someone gives you complete bs, you nod and give him a degree. fuck that.

So when the commission announced the results, I got some credit for "great research skills", but I didn't deserve that credit, nor did I deserve the grade I got for the paper, in fact I deceived them for the second time and nobody gave a shit. I don't know, maybe those who can't see a hustle deserve to be hustled, or I just expect too much from them. So I skipped the ceremony, called my friends and we bought some beers to "celebrate", played some poker (surprisingly, we finished down only 1.5 buyins) and that made me feel a bit better, but I'm still in a pretty bad mood, despite graduating and having a shitload of free time on my hands to get things going with our site and finally start getting some coaching from ________.

Or maybe I'm just a jackass adrenaline junkie, who needs to be in a constant state of crisis to feel good.

[/rant]