Surly Temple said... What a useless, infuriating, turd. I'm so sick of hearing about how my students have "dreams"...
I am genuinely curious. What exactly do students "dream" about, these days? What are your students' "dreams"? Do they ever describe these "dreams" in any specific detail? If so, what do they entail? Aside, of course, from making a lot of money. (I find they rarely specify what they're going to buy, with that one.)
My online, largely non-traditional students are fond of a particular handful of cliches. Their favorites are "failure is not an option," "nothing will stand in the way of my dreams," and "I set very high standards for myself."
ReplyDeleteTo answer Frod's question, I don't really know the full nature of their dreams, just that those dreams always include receiving an "A" in my class (which is a freshman-level requirement for all majors).
They believe deeply in the nobility and heroism of overcoming obstacles in the pursuit of their educations. You can almost hear the stirring, made-for-TV theme music start to play when they recount the troubles over which they will inevitably triumph.
But they are completely unrealistic in their ability to asses just how difficult having young children, a full-time job, an ailing parent, marital discord, and financial troubles will make it to pursue a college education successfully. (And the admissions office sure isn't going to counsel them to take it slow). Everything in their lives takes precedence over their schoolwork, as it often must. Thus the student a few days ago who exceeded the limit on a timed test by three hours and wanted to know why she received a zero: "But my sister stopped by to talk after visiting our sick mother, and I HAD to talk to her right then and there."
Or the student trying to take a full load of classes while working full time and caring for two children, whom I advised to cut back on her coursework, all of which she was failing: "YOU DON'T KNOW ME! [her caps] I HAVE to graduate in May!"
Maybe it's because movies and TV shows glorify this "triumph-over-hardship" narrative. And in the films, the actual hardship is only symbolically represented by, say, a 15-second shot of a character sitting at a desk late at night with open books, a heavily-chewed pencil, and a furrowed brow. The rest is all stirring success.
My students are so unprepared to encounter the reality of a working student with a family that *any* minor difficulty results in complete derailment and the demand that I excuse them from the work because [insert personal issue] is more important than schoolwork.
And all of the above doesn't even address the academic deficits they bring to college. Which, of course, they are completely unprepared to face.
I like the income I get from my online work, but sometimes, in my dark-night-of-the-soul moments, I wonder if it would be better for these students if colleges such as mine (and it's not a for-profit, it's a SLAC with a big online program) would get out of the business of preying upon these students and pandering to their false expectations. Sigh.
What do my students dream of? Law School, Med School, Wall Street, becoming celebrities, making lots of money. That's a gross generalization, of course, but I figure it covers about 90% of them.
ReplyDeleteThe other 10% are actually interesting.
Well said, Surly!
ReplyDeleteThe completely unapologetic de-prioritizing of the actual school work is just so "normal" among my students. "I couldn't come to class. MY TOE WAS SORE." And the rest of that is: "So now you'll have to give me a private tutorial of all I missed because the toe tragedy has been solved."
Viva - so their slogan is from the _Rocky Horror Picture Show_?
ReplyDeleteA local CC officially has the slogan "You can get there from here." Makes sense: not a promise, but a possibility. But then it's shortened on a lot of documents as "get there!" wha?
Most of my students in CC Universe want to be nurses, teachers, allied health something-or-others, or business something-or-others. I get a few aspiring engineers, morticians, psychologists, and actors as well.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, the allied health students tend to be the most focused and realistic, perhaps because they are usually required to finish their education at the local med school and have very stiff entrance requirements. The psychologists and engineers tend to be grounded as well.
The teachers are a mixed bag. The ones who are doing it for the love of a subject are generally fine. It's the elementary ed, "I want to be a teacher because I love kids" students, who tend to be less realistic. I think they believe that teaching young kids must be easy because you don't have to be that smart.
Aspiring nurses are bi-polar. There are the super-intelligent ones who understand they need excellent grades in their courses to get accepted because nurses take people's lives in their hands daily, and there are those who look at the word nurse and see nur$e.
I find it sad that profs have so little faith in us. I would like to get all "A"s, however I do not expect them, I work my butt off for them. I deserve the grades I get, I miss A LOT of social events so that I can study, and be prepared for class-because my education (not the random party) is going to help me achieve MY dreams. I don't dream of Law school, or Med school, or any other such school that will lead to a money grubbing profession. I want to go to graduate school for Art History, is there money in the humanities? No, and I am well aware of this, and my favourite prof has actually discouraged this path. As much as y'all bitch and complain, I want to believe that there are at least a few students each semester that make it worth it. I don't seek a career that will provide me with 6 figures a year, I want to do something I love-and I LOVE Art History, and I can only hope that one day I will be able to inspire someone the way my fav prof has inspired me.
ReplyDeleteArtfully Academic: Yes, there are a few students in each year who are like you, and you make this job worth all the misery. But it does seem like you're getting fewer each year.
ReplyDeleteAnd specifically to Frod's excellent question.
ReplyDeleteThey dream about fame and leisure. Period.
I loved medieval literature, and it was my dream to study it and eventually teach it, but it turned out I loved sleeping indoors and eating decent food more than I loved literature. I thought I'd be content to be a poor college professor, but when I realized exactly how poor I'd be, suddenly my dream didn't seem so appealing any more. It's one thing to be poor; I can live with that. Starving is quite another. I don't much enjoy going hungry; it's really hard to focus on anything else, and living in a house without heat or electricity is rather dreary. So much for my dream, but I'll admit that I enjoy a comfortable life with regular meals, hot showers, and a decent place to live so I'm not one to stand on principle or value dreams more than creature comforts.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree that all students who go into well-compensated professions do it for the money. Maybe most of them do, but I've met students who love medicine, law, finance, or whatever not because of the money, but just because they like those subjects. I even met someone who was fascinated with teeth and wanted to be a dentist, not for the money, just so she could work with teeth.
As boring as law, medicine, dentistry, etc seem to me, well, a lot of people feel that way about my major, computer science. Not so much any more, but in the go-go '90s, many students majored in computer science, thinking they'd be the next Internet millionaire or design a blockbuster game. But the grim reality is that playing video games is not necessarily a suitable background for designing them, and the profession involves a lot more math than many would-be game designers realize.
It's all a matter of perspective. To some people, lawyers, doctors, and anyone who makes six figures are money-grubbers, while art historians, medievalists, and other liberal arts types are inspired and noble. But there are people who find medicine way more interesting than art history and would argue that art history is the dull, boring career. So, really no point knocking even the majors that lead to highly-compensated jobs. Just because no one goes into art history for the money doesn't mean everyone goes into medicine for the money.
As far as the dreams of our students, they seem to all want to launch their own business and become successful entrepreneurs. That sounds awful to me, but I don't really care that I'm not my own boss, and that seems to be a big selling point with the would-be entrepreneurs.
I get a good many nurses, of both the serious and the more $-oriented sort (and very much appreciate the mechanisms that help weed out the incompetents in the latter group, though of course the rigor of entrance requirements for such programs tends to precipitate grade complaints in the sort of required classes I teach). Also other aspiring medical professionals (including doctors, psychologists and technologists). A fair number of my students want to save the world, and/or protect some corner of it from terrorists, child molesters, or assorted other bad guys (though whether they have the imagination and intelligence to do it well varies considerably). A substantial group want to have some sort of connection to sports, from the not terribly realistic (aspiring agent/sports promoter who doesn't seem to be particularly gifted at either math or English) to the more practical (nutrition/injury prevention and healing). Quite a few are aspiring entrepreneurs of one stripe or another. There are occasional clumps of aspiring actors, artists, writers, and/or dancers (like athletes, they have complicated schedules, and tend to move in packs when they leave the venues in which they spend most of their time). Some want to teach, on levels ranging from elementary school to college. Some really want to be scholars. Now and then I get an aspiring pastor, priest, or imam (no rabbis yet). Judging by their majors, a fair number want to "communicate," but they aren't quite sure about what yet. A lot of them have more than one area of interest, which these days seems to precipitate pursuing a dizzying array of majors, minors, and certificates.
ReplyDeleteAll in all, they're an interesting bunch, and not too terribly unrealistic in their ambitions (but, yes, often a bit unrealistic about how much time and effort pursuing any one of those ambitions -- including getting a college degree -- will/should take).
@Programming Patty
ReplyDeleteYour description of the sort of people in computer science fits Noah Antwiler, aka "Spoony", to a T...the guy did computer science, wound up in a job where he fired people for a living, quit and worked at a game store, then became an "Internet celebrity"* reviewing cruddy games and horrible B-movies. I don't know why the 1990s "New Economy" is totally forgotten today because it's the reason why we have so many ex-programmers, ex-computer engineers doing jobs they never were trained for.
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*http://www.thespoonyexperiment.com
BTW, not only in the computer field; I've known math tutors who were civil engineering students but they got sick of the life of a CE: they hire you to design something, you build it, they fire you, you look for another CE job. My grandfather did something similar, going up and down the coast doing naval engineering work for the shipyards; it stinks unless you like travelling circuits.
There's nothing wrong with dreaming about money, particularly not if one comes from an impoverished background, or has family responsibilities. Business can be lots of fun, when it's played like a game. What worries me are students who dream about money only because they have no other dreams, and don't know why. I also feel sorry for students who claim they have dreams, but upon examination, can't enunciate them. To me, that says that they really don't have dreams, aside from those they were told to dream. I suspect that Rayturd MaxPeabrain is one of these, although I find it very difficult to feel sorry for him in any way.
ReplyDelete@Froderick Frankenstien from Fresno
ReplyDeleteThey dream of money because they live in a country dominated by finance capital, and the pop music culture has people waving wads of dead presidents in front of the camera. You are right, they are one-dimensional people. Warped from childhood to believe in the American vision of "success", all they can see is how much they might make from this job or that business opportunity....the Russians would call them "nekulturny" or uncultured. It is poetic however that as the financializers hollowed out the American industrial economy, they produced these hollow people, novo homo americanus.
What Strelnikov said.
ReplyDeleteMine dream of Law School, Med School, and B-School because that's what their wealthy suburban families and friends told them they should dream of. I can count on one finger the number of students for whom I've written law school recs who actually had any evident enthusiasm for the intellectual pursuit. Not coincidentally, she's the only one (out of scores, by now) I've written for who hit the jackpot of a top-three law school.
She was an intellectual who was interested in law, and I was really happy that she got the opportunity she did. The rest of them are drones who think the law is the shortcut to their parents' lifestyle. I write for them out of duty, but I could care less what happens to them down the road.
Dreams? You mean those things that happen while you sleep? Yeah, they have them.
ReplyDeleteOh, dreams as in...What? Ambitions? Mostly to get money. And get out of college. Some of the non-trad students actually have realistic expectations of why they're at the college and why they need to go, what they want to do with their lives, but most of my students don't care and are far from realistic.
"My aunt is a nurse and she barely works and makes XX,XXX a year! I'm totally going to be a nurse! But I don't have good enough grades...I need a better grade in your course!"
*shiver*
I also fantasize about being rich so I'm no better than the shallowest of students. I wouldn't base my whole career on the desire to be rich, because I also hate to work and only the fact that I like what I do makes it tolerable. But I do fantasize about winning the lottery so I never have to get up early or wear business attire again. If I wanted to read a book, I'd simply buy it the day it is released, instead of waiting months to get the latest Stieg Larsson from the public library. And I'd buy a new sofa, something that I've never had in my entire life. I have never flown first class or eaten in a four-star restaurant. I've never been to the opera or gotten an annual membership to a museum. I can't help wanting to do some of these things before I die.
ReplyDeleteTry not to judge people who want to make money too harshly. Some of them might be simply inheriting the prejudices of their wealthy families, but others, like me, never had too much of it and can't help but aspire to have more of it. It's true that money isn't everything, but it's not nothing, either.
*ahem*
ReplyDelete"You got big dreams? You want fame? Well, fame costs. And right here is where you start paying... in sweat!"
Remember that from the opening of the TV series Fame in the 1980s? Was it in the original movie? The new movie? I can't remember.
All I know is this: Today's students seem to have little concept that many people WORK for their dreams. And even the hard-workers don't always make it. They see the Jersey Shore skanks and think they can be skanks too and get lots of bling and celebrity.
I wish them luck because they may need it. Because I worked hard to get where I am and it's not pretty (I owe more in student loans than my parents do on their mortgage). Maybe the skanks have the right idea after all.
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the academic dream.
ReplyDeleteI have a dream that one day higher education institutions will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all snowflakes are created equal."
I have a dream that one day in the white halls of ivory towers the sons of former students and the sons of former professors will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the community colleges, a place sweltering with the heat of unjust marks, sweltering with the heat of oppressing homework, will be transformed into an oasis of partying and free grades.
I have a dream that my stupid little children will one day go to a university where they will not be judged by their intellect or ability but by the content of their dreams.
I have a dream today.