January 19, 2011

School Again

I have finally been to all of the classes I will be taking this semester and it really seems like a lot of work! I am taking a lot of my education and teaching courses.

Things here have been really hectic with the weather. The snow and ice have made school and travel a complete nightmare.

College is a very strange place. I'll never understand the "college experience." For people should be experimenting with budgeting, cooking, studying, working and overall living on their own, a lot of the students seem to be not practicing any of these things at all.

Throughout the sememster, many students never learn to budget their time and end up missing assignments. Some students only show up for class a few times a month.
Many students spend way too much time socializing, going to parties and hanging out with friends. Not to even mention underage drinking and other illegal activity. 

I hear girls in the halls talking to their friend about how "so and so" is cheating on his girlfriend and how stupid people were acting at that "underwear party" on Friday night (I would not believe such a thing existed if I hadn't heard people talking about it myself.)

Something that astonishes me even more is the pure number of girlfriends and boyfriends, I hear fighting over the phone. I can't imagine that people stay in relationships where every call is a fight.  Has the standard of relationships been set so low that people think that daily fighting is "normal?" I know not every day in a relationship is perfect but shouldn't there be more perfect days than not?

I even overheard a girl telling her friend that her father was so mean because he wouldn't let her boyfriend sleep over because he was afraid they would sleep together. She then said that it was pointless because her mother already knew that she had already slept with him and was keeping it a secret from her husband to protect her. This girl said she didn't want to lose her father's trust. I felt like asking her why she does things that she is not comfortable telling her parents about. If she wants to have her parents trust, why deliberately break their trust?


Whatever happened to movies and popcorn on a Friday night or study groups? Some of this stuff is just too much and the worst thing about it is that they really don't seem happy. Many of them are regretful. Why is this behavior cultivated and promoted around educational institutions? Maybe this is a case of "it's always happened at college and it only seems more prevalent now." So, what do you think? Has college always been this way?







13 comments:

  1. I don't know... I guess it was similar in the past, only people did not talk about it, so it was less prevalent, because it wasn't acceptable. While now everyone talks about it, so people think it's normal.
    So I guess it's up to us who don't think it's normal to set another norm... at least in a small scale.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I hope it goes back in that direction. I agree that it is up to us to set another norm. :D Sorry for my rant, I was just overwhelmed to be back in college after winter-break and hear "all the drama."

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well I'm not exactly the expert (I've taken one college class at William and Mary last summer for a month) but I think the college experience is determined by who you surround yourself with. I hung out with a bunch of history geeks and we would watch historical movies and do our work together and actually talk about the material and such. I know there's a lot of unsavory tomfoolery that goes on with a lot of college kids, but I would wager that there are some people still out there who believe in the clean, industrious, but still fun college experience. But yeah I feel ya as far as the relationship issue goes. It really is a shame.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks Mary, I agree. I wish you good luck. Do you know where you will be going to college yet?

    ReplyDelete
  5. I know exactly what you mean. It's so depressing! Stay positive and surround yourself with like-minded people :) It is sad though, how the standard is so distorted.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks Sophia! I really hope it turns around sometime. I guess the really brave thing to do would be to admit that I don't do these things when people talk about them just to let them know that there really is another option.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I think it always been there. I don't regret missing a lot of it in the 60's thru conscious choice, "deferred gratification," and some inate shyness. Also I never looked back on my decision to be a history teacher. My spouse, my children and my work were the loves of my life.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I'm not so certain that the modern promiscuous behavior was truly as prevalent 60, 70, or more years ago as it's been over the last 40 to 50 years.
    Oh, I know it's always been there to some degree, but there are many today that like to make it sound as if sex was everywhere, not unlike our modern society.
    And, yes, I also realize that there were those that "did it" and it was not spoken of.
    But, again, I don't believe it was as much as modern so-called historians would have us believe.
    We live in a way-too-open-and-sex-obsessed society here in the 21st century. And, many would like us to believe things really haven't changed over the last century or two - just to justify their own behavior.
    And I really hate it.
    Just my three or four cents...

    ReplyDelete
  9. Thanks Ken! It's good to hear from someone who would actually know. I think the fact that people are so open now does persuade people that it is so very normal. I do believe that the "norm" in the 21st century is sex crazed-- never before were people exposed to images and commercials like we are. Even "naughty" pictures in the past were only drawings or photographs. Today it is so much more extreme and realistic.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Troutbirder, Thanks for commenting. I definitely think that the 60s and 70s play a role here. These are the kids of the people who were in college then. I feel the same way, I think people regret being too promiscuous.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I'm not sure where I'm going to school yet, but I've been accepted to the University of Pittsburgh and the Honors College at the University of Iowa. I still need to wait to hear from my first choice school (James Madison University) but I won't hear until APRIL. Haha I'm going to go nuts!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Mary, It's good to have choices and to find a school that is a good fit. I hope you get to go to the one you want to.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Thank you! Fingers crossed, hopefully all will go well.

    ReplyDelete

Tell me what you think!

Copyright © 2008-2020 Stephanie Ann Farra. All rights reserved.

All materials posted on this site are subject to copyrights owned by Stephanie Ann Farra. Any reproduction, retransmissions, or republication of all or part of any document found on this site is expressly prohibited, unless the author has explicitly granted its prior written consent to so reproduce, retransmit, or republish the material. All other rights reserved.