Why do certain non-Aggies always feel the need to "educate" us on their view of how the rest of the world perceived Bonfire? I just had someone say something to the effect of "you die for your country, not for your school." It's always very hard for me to temper myself in this situation, but needed to do so since this happened in a professional setting. I simply responded that people involved themselves in Bonfire out of a desire to be part of something great, to contribute to something they loved and that was important to them. More importantly, people didn't knowingly risk their lives to build Bonfire!

It was an accident, we put ourselves in situations that could lead to accidents every day, but thank you for your hindsight view on something you know nothing about.

Anyway, I'm sure this has been posted multiple times here, but damn it just really irks me. How do you all respond to this kind of stuff?

I certainly wouldn't become fumed about it, they're ignorant, and not necessarily in a bad way, they just simply don't know. You may very well respond the same way if they described a similar situation to you from their world. Just write it off as somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about.

Don't get me wrong, I don't respond to comments like this negatively because I do realize that the people making them just don't understand. If I was on the flip side of the situation, though, and didn't understand something from their world, I certainly wouldn't feel like I had a free pass to piss all over that something because I thought it was "stupid" - this is the attitude that bugs me.

People know it can be a sensitve subject, yet still can't resist the temptation to dig in.

Eh, really just wanted to rant a little.

From the outside looking in...

quote:

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I just had someone say something to the effect of "you die for your country, not for your school."

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just reply with: "you can die living, or you can live to die..."

It hurts when people say that sort of thing, so I see no reason to NOT get fumed about it. Why temper your passion? To me, doing so admits that you're wrong for loving something... when in actuality, you're not wrong. They are.

However, I do agree with the original poster about professionalism. I think that if you fail to respond, you perpetuate their ignorance -- people tend to not understand and I think that it is important to help others make sense of it. I think that it sounds like you handled it appropriately. I agree with the above poster about dieing to live, not living to die.

[This message has been edited by northsidegreek06 (edited 4/24/2007 9:50a).]