What Is Spam?

Well? The question came to mind as I was checking my university e-mail. See, although we have to check our e-mail for potentially important news (exam changes, registration times, &c.), well over 90% of what we receive is utterly worthless. I'm not saying that I've signed up for a site that sends out worthless spam to me - no, I am saying that well over 90% of what the university administration chooses to send me is completely worthless. Of the 10% that is not strictly worthless, most of it is stuff I don't particularly care about, or which I've received notice of through other channels (such as my gmail account), or what have you. So a vanishingly small amount of e-mail I get through official channels from my law school is spam to me.

I get a lot of e-mail from school, too.

On the other hand, my gmail account has become the target of a lot of "free cixal3is" type spam, the hardcore, destroy-your-computer spam, but guess what? It goes into my spam folder, I check the message subject lines, verify in roughly 1.7 seconds that it's all worthless, and delete the entire folder. Of the stuff that doesn't go to the spam folder, it's all stuff I signed up for, and which I might now regret, but, stunningly, a higher percentage of that is relevant than of my official university inbox population.

In other words, as far as electronic junk mail goes, eBay sends me more relevant stuff more often than the administrators of an ABA-approved law school.

Let me try to avoid cursing while I express anger at the time-wasters who are taking $30000+ a year from me.

Don't:
-Send me e-mail just to tell me that, even though you hate, despise, and want to destroy the military, the JAG recruiters are on campus, although they are evil homophobes so we shouldn't make a pact with them. Look, if you disagree with armed forces policy, fine. But I don't ever get e-mails about how evil ANYONE ELSE is. So f...screw off.
-Inform me for the fifteenth time that the Center for Ethics and Public Service needs slaves...er, employees. First, my parents aren't rich, and I'm not rich, so unlike most of my classmates, I need to make serious cash this summer. So take your pitiful salary and shove it. Second, knowing the head for the Center as I do, you might want to take the "Ethics" out of the title and replace "Public Service" with "White Guilt." Just sayin'.
-Send me the exact same e-mail twice in the same day. I get it, some worthless liberal is going to speak on campus about nothing. I didn't care the first time I read it, I won't care the second time.
-Send me info about yearbooks, then start the e-mail with "Graduating 3Ls can pick up..." Oh, so this is for graduating 3Ls? Then send it to them and only them. Stop wasting my time.
-Send me (and every other law student) a job opportunity that is only available to undergrads. STUPID.
-Send me a survey showing that, in some group of people, Miami ranks 18th out of all law schools. Get just the right group of morons together and anything can rank in the top 25. I've never heard of Lawdragon and all I know about it now is that its rankings are total BS. Miami is 70th, down from 65th, and I'm starting to discover why. Latching onto phony rankings isn't helping our reputation, guys.
-Speaking of surveys, don't send me a chance to take a survey on the law school, and then a few days later, remind me to take it. Because when you reminded me, it got me so angry that I actually DID take the survey. And I was completely honest in it. Hope you're happy.

Do:
-Send me e-mail relevant to me or my classes.
-Get a frickin' spam filter.

Yeah, this won't do any good.