Greetings and thanks for this opportunity to respond to some issues I've read in this forum. First...as far as M-S-U goes...as a graduate I received a lot out of the program...that is the ON CAMPUS program. And like any other institution of higher learning, the fact is you get out of it what you put in to it. There were numerous class mates of mine who are/were in this school merely for fame of being on TV and/or making big $$ and those are the "real losers" in this, those who tend to promote this "watered down" effect from our graduates. Second...as a teaching assistant at M-S-U for the OFF_CAMPUS students...I will agree that it is a total joke, or at least some of the classes are. But that problem was solved easily when another colleague of mine and myself started failing these guys who refused to learn anything. And we literally did fail half of statistics class and a satellite and radar course....one of the most basic courses you should be interested in learning because you use it so often. But it requires the help of others to cut through the crap and "weed out" the people who are using this program as a stepping stone. And believe me, unlike some of your readers may think, these folks' stupidity and lack of intelligence in the realm of forecasting DOES show eventually. I've seen many of these fools talk about things totally wrong on the air, miss a rain event, the sky cover, the temp, and miss severe weather outbreaks...yet they call themselves meteorologists. Now granted some days we don't always get the weather right. But it starts with attitude...if you want to learn, you will, and you can be real good in this profession. If you want to clown around, you can, but it will eventually come back to haunt you in the end. And don't think some of us at M-S-U are a joke...because in our graduating class last fall, myself and another outstanding forecaster and "teller" of the weather landed Chief positions right out of college in major severe weather regions of the U.S.
It just depends on what you really want. And believe me, one day these fools will want a job with you or me, and we can exact our revenge at that point in time by not hiring them for simple weather incompetence.
Yours truly...
Jim Loznicka
p.s. ....if you are going to write letters in this forum and start pointing fingers and laying blame all over the place, why not have enough courage to give us your name(s). Remember, it's easy to be a drive-by-shooter...but real hard to be pull the trigger point-blank. Include your names and take the criticism you deserve(if you deserve any at all)..