I've taken a lot of different classes at UW with a lot of different professors. I've been taught by everyone from hippie liberals to staunch republicans who swear the Trickle Down Theory is legit.
But despite differences, every professor I've had at this school has one thing in common: they all hate Wikipedia.
Whatever their reasons may be - anyone can change it, it has a liberal bias, it has too many languages (who speaks Volapà ¼k?), the puzzle of the world on the homepage is incomplete - they've all banned it from their classrooms and our works-cited pages.
This is quite a shame, I think. Where else can an olive be both a fruit and a vegetable in the same day? How many other websites provide, alongside today's top news stories, graphic photos of both heterosexual and homosexual anal sex?
For these reasons, I stand before you today as a defender of the godsend that is Wikipedia: the blessing that gets us through pointless lectures we only attend to get our names on the attendance sheets, and the holy being that allows us to write literary analyses of books we never read.
The thing about Wikipedia is that other students constantly question its validity as well. Almost on a daily basis, I hear someone's pretentious laugh over miniscule errors Wikipedia makes.
Can you believe Wikipedia claims the name Plantagenet from the Plantagenet dynasty is derived from 'planta genital' instead of 'planta genista'?"" says humorless asshole.
Ok, so it's not a perfect system, but it's pretty damn close. I use it on an almost daily basis in lieu of reading boring articles or novels for classes, and it has yet to fail me. Plus, it makes me look much smarter than I actually am, because it simplifies concepts that self-important scholars take 12 or 13 pages to express. Therefore, when I effortlessly spout out the author's thesis in one sentence or less, I look like the only student who not only sifted through the faux English bullshit until page 55, but actually understood it. This makes me not only better prepared for class, but allows more time to catch up on ""One Tree Hill"" and ""Gossip Girl.""
And unlike Facebook, which feels the need to redesign the entire site every few months for no other reason than to confuse the hell out of its users, Wikipedia remains pretty much the same. Instead of revamps, it has disciples, like Wikihow.
Wikihow is a user-edited do-it-yourself manual. They have standards like ""How to Lose Weight"" or ""How to Plant Tulip Bulbs,"" but then it gets pretty awesome with articles like ""How to Make a Snake Puppet"" or ""How to Act like a Pokémon on Halloween.""
Thus far, I've learned that if my best friend's boyfriend falls in love with me, I should stop flirting with him except sometimes, and when I tell him I don't like him in that way, I should avoid saying ""Eew.""
I also learned that to observe a lake monster, I should stake out a place to dispose of my feces and urine and be sure the monster isn't an otter or a log before I report it to the authorities.
Although Wikipedia and Wikihow take a lot of crap for being user-edited, I think it's one of their greatest features. It's sort of like citizen journalism - even though I don't like citizen journalism because it means less jobs for journalism majors graduating alongside the stock market crash - in this case, it's OK.
There's something very empowering in reading something you know you can change with the click of your mouse at any given moment. It's like history is yours to amend, and the future yours to create.
Who says George Washington was the first president of the United States? I think it was Wishbone. And who is the most infamously hideous hooker of the 21st century? Yeah, it was that bitch who didn't invite me to her Sweet 16.
So UW-Madison professors: next time you ban
Wikipedia from our research papers, remember, anyone can create and edit those articles. Even your students.
If you'd like to start a Wikipedia page about Kiera's flawless beauty, selflessness and columnist achievements, e-mail her at wiatrak@wisc.edu.
