<p>Hoya: perhaps sarcasm is too subtle? It’s ok, the internet is supposed to be a faceless, anonymous medium of communication anyway. </p>
<p>I know they are your experiences. Who else’s would they be? If you didn’t intend to use it to extrapolate something else (the overall Duke experience, the Duke culture, or even a portion of the student population) however, it would be pretty pointless to say it since you know, strictly speaking, it’s just your personal observations. So clearly, you believe that your experiences carry some sort of “weight” and as such, it would be of value for someone trying to ascertain whether Duke, overall, is a ******y school. </p>
<p>So therefore, I used sarcasm to point out that personal experiences would be inappropriate as validation for very broad generalizations expressed by other people. </p>
<p>So in conclusion, saying that your personal experiences corroborate or support danstearns’ assertions is fine. I’m not going to argue your feelings or opinions. However, using that as basis to say that the over-SIMPLISTIC and general statements of another is absolutely “correct” is somewhat overreaching based on the limited data (qualifiers or not).</p>
<p>So before you get all worked up about it, understand that I believe you when you say you had a bad experience at Duke and I know there are people at Duke like that. I just don’t find the phrasing to be appropriate.</p>