Dear Acadia,

The best years in my life have been spent in your hallowed halls. I met my best friends on your green campus. For five years I have been proud to call you my school and my home.

I know that we've squabbled. You've always been asking me for my money, but you've made good on your promises, and soon you'll be delivering a paper denoting my accomplishments in your presence. You've had a couple of arguments with yourself, forcing me to sit idly on the sidelines until we could continue. Many others left after your first squabble. I felt that I could see through the faults and stay with you.

You've encouraged me to go out on my own in the world, and provided me with the support I needed to get started. You have indeed been a Nourishing Mother. Now I'm leaving, and in ten years or so you'll be phoning, wondering where I am and how I'm doing (and asking for some funds, natch).

Before I go, why the change? I know you couldn't stay 1.0 forever, nor would I want you to. But already you were so cautious with your computers, and now you're making us buy our own. Acadia, look at how Dell has treated you in the past. Their goods are fragile, cheap, sometimes dangerous. We've only had to replace drives and motherboards since the contract, and the new computers are only a single digit better than the one I'm writing with now. I fear that their salesman has seen a lonely empty-nester and sold her an overpriced product. Open your eyes! Do the research! There is no reason why you should be asking your children to be paying that much for a computer. Computers are much, much cheaper than that. You should have driven the cost down. Mr. Dell and Mr. Jobs would still make profit. There's free, open-source, versatile and compatible software out there.

Your 2.0 has promised to be the future. I'm sorry, but you're firmly stuck in the past and afraid to change. Your business mind is still firmly there. The Advantage, in the beginning, was daring and out there. That's why it won awards and honours. Now? Now it just feels like a newer model. Juggle the features and the price a little bit, but in the end it still costs the same as the last one (if we're lucky), and it has all the same features. Coming out of high school, we know how to use Microsoft Office. I've yet to use LoggerPro in a work setting.

Teach us, Acadia! Teach us how to be efficient with computers! Teach our teachers, and teach them how to pass it on. We have the technology, but why? Show us how to break the mold with our tools. Knowing Microsoft is no longer an advantage, it's merely expected. But knowing how to use Excel and Access to manage an experiment with hundreds of cultures (cough cough)? That is an Advantage. Teach us how computers work at their best, so that we can master our tools.

A good carpenter with a good hammer works better. An uneducated carpenter with a good hammer just bangs his thumb harder.

Don't razzle-dazzle us. Your scores are soon going to sag. There's many fifth-year students who are none too pleased at your treatment of us. Some see you mainly as a transaction. Pay $50 000 and four years, get degree.
I wear your crest, your signet and your spirit. Please don't make me change.

Your loving biologist son,
Owen