HELP my parents want me to go to college!

[Rach620]

Sadly, there can be a difference between going to college and getting an education.

If you’re just ‘going to college,’ you’re there taking classes which will get you a degree that will take you from point A to point B. It’s nothing more than really overpriced career training. You go to business school, take the easiest major in the liberal arts, or even pursue a science or engineering degree.

If you truly want an education, you value learning for the sake of learning. You’re a real student, consumed by what you’re learning, talking about things with friends, reading constantly. You take classes in which you’ll learn a lot from intelligent profs. You major in something which anyone will say isn’t ‘useful’ (like philosophy, classics, or medieval studies). But you learn a lot, develop your communication and analytical thinking skills, and come to be a pretty interesting person who can (surprisingly) compete with all those biz school graduates.

If college for you is mind-numbingly simple and a review of 8th grade, then I’m sad for what you’ve missed out on, but it’s not the fault of higher education, and that’s not going to be the experience of everyone else who goes to college. It certainly wasn’t mine. With a bit of wisdom in discerning a college choice, you can find a school where you’ll get a real education, one which will transform the way you look at the world (in a very good way, I might add!)

 

[SeekerJen]

Excepting my amazing anatomy class & lab, there is not one thing I have learned in college up to this date. And no, we are not talking about “what you put in is what you get out.” My college experience has been nothing but a review of 8th grade, complete with the misguided youth suffering identity issues and teacher/student politics.

So I still stand by my declaration: grin and bear it. I pray everytime I attend classes that I will be able to stay in the race long enough to reach either a school or a level where I will be challenged and actually have to learn. I call it medical and law school.

Maybe some on here who have attended medical and law school will not burst my hopeful bubble by anouncing it is just as bad at that level, too.

Of course, I should not be such a pessimist. I mean, without the completely unchallenging courses, I would have been unable to continue my own business plus work at a job for 40-80hrs a week, plus have a life.

Good grief. I wish I could have learned calculus, biochemistry, organic chemistry, physical chemistry, analytical chemistry, physiology, microbiology, and classical ethics in 8th grade. You must have gone to some middle school. Sadly, I think med school will be a bit of a disappointment to you. Every single med student and doctor I’ve talked with has told me that the most challenging part of med school is admissions. After that it’s memorization and interpersonal skills.

Seriously, why didn’t you keep your own business and life? You wouldn’t be out tens of thousands of dollars, you wouldn’t be miserable, and you wouldn’t be setting yourself up for a career that is increasingly less about patient care and more about bureaucracy.

(Sorry to burst your bubble, but I enjoyed my undergrad experience, learned more than I thought possible, learned about networking with my fellow scientists, and set a good foundation for my PhD studies. Of course, I did value my education.)

 

[BLB_Oregon]

We must be thinking of two different ideas of college.

Excepting my amazing anatomy class & lab, there is not one thing I have learned in college up to this date. And no, we are not talking about “what you put in is what you get out.” My college experience has been nothing but a review of 8th grade, complete with the misguided youth suffering identity issues and teacher/student politics.

So I still stand by my declaration: grin and bear it. I pray everytime I attend classes that I will be able to stay in the race long enough to reach either a school or a level where I will be challenged and actually have to learn. I call it medical and law school.

Maybe some on here who have attended medical and law school will not burst my hopeful bubble by anouncing it is just as bad at that level, too.

Of course, I should not be such a pessimist. I mean, without the completely unchallenging courses, I would have been unable to continue my own business plus work at a job for 40-80hrs a week, plus have a life.

Not all colleges and universities teach at the college level…although this is very much due to the fact that so few students come prepared to do college-level work. If you think it is frustrating for you, imagine being a professor who has watched the level slide for 20 years.

I’m sorry, but I never had a student complain because my content was too low. I and many of my colleagues got shelled when we expect too much. It is because the comodity students seem to think they’re buying isn’t an opportunity to learn: it is the grade or the certificate that *says *the student knows something. It made me want to vomit.

One of my colleagues had his students drag him in front of the board because the text he selected was too thick! My dean talked to me because my students complained to him (and to him first) that my tests were too hard. He convinced me to give them the exact same final as was given by the previous instructor. They got exactly the same relative grade as they had been getting from me, and my overall grade distribution was about the same as his had been.

Law and medical schools have the advantage that entrance is very competitive. My experience at graduate school was anything but disappointing. We all had nightmares that the lady down in the dean’s office who processed our applications was going to come and tell us there had been some mistake. I have heard anatomy and physiology classes at medical school being likened to being asked to learn the Boston subway system this week, and don’t get behind because next week comes the Los Angeles bus routes.

I did have classes with essentially no content. I was usually lucky enough to catch on to this early enough to bail out in favor of a different instructor or a different course to meet my requirements. Some of them, though, especially in the first year, were just hoops I had to go through to prove I belonged in college. Oh, well…it turns out to be a question whose answer is anything but obvious.

 

[maria29]

Not all colleges and universities teach at the college level…although this is very much due to the fact that so few students come prepared to do college-level work. If you think it is frustrating for you, imagine being a professor who has watched the level slide for 20 years.

Do you think this is just freshman level course or all across the board?
I’m sorry, but I never had a student complain because my content was too low. I and many of my colleagues got shelled when we expect too much. It is because the comodity students seem to think they’re buying isn’t an opportunity to learn: it is the grade or the certificate that *says *the student knows something. It made me want to vomit.

One of my colleagues had his students drag him in front of the board because the text he selected was too thick! My dean talked to me because my students complained to him (and to him first) that my tests were too hard. He convinced me to give them the exact same final as was given by the previous instructor. They got exactly the same relative grade as they had been getting from me, and my overall grade distribution was about the same as his had been.

Law and medical schools have the advantage that entrance is very competitive. My experience at graduate school was anything but disappointing. We all had nightmares that the lady down in the dean’s office who processed our applications was going to come and tell us there had been some mistake. I have heard anatomy and physiology classes at medical school being likened to being asked to learn the Boston subway system this week, and don’t get behind because next week comes the Los Angeles bus routes.

I did have classes with essentially no content. I was usually lucky enough to catch on to this early enough to bail out in favor of a different instructor or a different course to meet my requirements. Some of them, though, especially in the first year, were just hoops I had to go through to prove I belonged in college. Oh, well…it turns out to be a question whose answer is anything but obvious.

My favorite meaningless class was one called Drugs and Society which was taught by an older hippie woman that had done every drug known to man and the class was basically about what Acid would produce what kind of trips…And this was a science credit class!

 

[slackernerd]

Others have said this before, but here’s my chime as a college senior:

Don’t go to college if your heart isn’t in it. About a quarter of 4-year college students don’t make it past their freshman year; only about half graduate. Going to college without motivation is just throwing time and money away. You won’t get much out of it if you’re not ready to put much into it.

I went to my first college(which was prestigious) mostly because of my parents, had a miserable time, and almost flunked out(avoided this only by taking bird classes in the spring). I transferred to community college and took some courses more related to what I wanted while getting an on-campus job and did much better. When I transferred to another 4-year, I continued to do better because I actually cared and because the school was a much better fit. No it’s not high on the US News and World review list like my first one was, but guess what? I’m actually engaged now.

That said, job realities may “motivate” you to pursue some form of postsecondary education. Whatever you decide, you need to have a realistic plan. BTW I am fully aware of the irony of some with a username of “slackernerd” discussing academic motivation.

Edit to add: You’re reminding me of my brother’s high school girlfriend who chose her college to be near him. Well actually she didn’t get into his college so she turned down some other universities to go to a nearby community college. She didn’t put much into the academics and lost her financial aid as a result. Even though they broke up a year and a half later, she’s still hanging around in that community taking a series of low wage jobs and pretending to go to school(by “pretend” I mean she signs up for classes, doesn’t show up much, and then drops or fails them). She’s bright, but I really don’t think she should be in college at this point in her life.

 

[slackernerd]

Also I’ll add that when I was starting to get a little bored academically late in my junior year, I added on a math minor. Problem solved:thumbsup:.

 

[BLB_Oregon]

My favorite meaningless class was one called Drugs and Society which was taught by an older hippie woman that had done every drug known to man and the class was basically about what Acid would produce what kind of trips…And this was a science credit class!

The classes for non-majors tend in that direction, which is to say they keep attention by being entertaining. When it comes to laziness and morale-killing-complainers among students, the worst offenders are non-majors who are taking a class to fulfill a breadth requirement, without any majors in the class. They seem to think they are entitled to an easy ride when the course is outside their major. Some colleges have finally gone the route of not having courses aimed at non-majors. All the courses in every division are open to majors and non-majors alike. I think that’s kind of too bad, because the freshman-level courses are often foundational. If you don’t get to take the next courses up, you miss a lot. I would really rather go the direction of a demanding survey course that didn’t count for credits toward a major, but when there aren’t majors who love the subject leading the charge, class morale can drag the standard down to depressing levels.

I also saw it in students who had taken so-called “Advanced Placement” courses in high school who resented finding out that their education was nowhere near as “advanced” as they supposed. A surprising number surmised that their high school class was at the right level and the college one was unfairly difficult.

The best students, to be blunt, where the nursing students who were petrified that they wouldn’t get a good enough chemistry grade to get into nursing school. When they learned that doing story problems was a skill that could be learned and not an aptitude that you were either born with or not, they were thrilled. And boy, they worked hard.

Joel Hildebrand, a renowned professor from Berkeley, wrote a book way back when that was titled, Is Intelligence Necessary? His thesis was that if a student had a good work ethic and an active curiosity, a less-able student might easily surpass a lazier student of higher aptitude, at the college level. According to my experience, I think he was right.