It is bad enough that students are forced to take useless courses as part of a professional curriculum, but this is just plain ridiculous.
I guess since the standard of education was lowered to "stop hurting the feelings of slow students", colleges are now receiving dumber applicants. Maybe they have no choice but to lower the standard of what they can call a course.
The University of Baltimore has integrated as part of its curriculum English 333, or commonly known by students as ‘Zombie 101′, where the common themes of this popular culture are explored in detail.
The zombie movement should be forever be attributed to today’s students, as let’s be honest, the world wide web was created for two reasons: pornography and downloading music. Social networking on the other hand is famed for one real phenomenon: the flash mob.
Many will know that zombie films such as “28 Days Later”, “Zombieland” and comedic parody, “Shaun of the Dead” involve the population being infected with a zombie-inducing virus, spreading uncontrollably and resulting in a few survivors fending for themselves.
The idea of the zombie flash mob as a social phenomenon, often as a result of a Facebook group or ‘off the cuff’ organisation using the web as a medium for mass communication has sparked headlines and record breaking feats the world over. Baltimore clearly understands the power that zombie fascination has, and as a result has made it an academic module to further the understanding of the often misunderstood craze.
The proof? “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”, an adaptation of the Jane Austen original with an added, obvious twist. Zombies though fictional and biologically impossible are a cornerstone for fiction and films today, but spreading outside to the real world with the help of social networking.
They’ve even become popularised in modern day video games; Call of Duty being the first that comes to mind, where Nazi zombies infest the game in leisure game mode. The number of times I’ve heard from one of my friends, “I can’t come out tonight, I’m off to kill some Nazi zombies” are countless.
It was only a few months ago in the dead heat of summer I was walking through the city center, just after the end of exams for this academic year, where a torrent of blood covered, possessed zombie students were ‘terrorising’ the tourists and shoppers.
Out of nowhere, a friend of mine I know well approached me with dead eyes and blood pouring from her face, when she ‘bit’ me, smeared blood on my face and shirt, and I became one of the infected.
In town for a quick coffee with a friend, and instead I become the undead. I’m sure some people have had worse days.
