Today's Students Just DON'T CARE: College Students

This past year, I had the opportuinity to take some college classes at the local university as a high school senior through a dual enrollment program. I thought that the college students would be more serious than my high school counterparts, but I was wrong. In three out of four of my classes, many students did not care about the class at all. I realize that three of the classes were general ed. classes need to graduate so both majors and nonmajors were taking the class, but the students should still care about how they do. Especially when their parents are paying for part of their education.

First of all, let's start with my marcoeconomics class. Half of the students (or more) in that class did not care about anything. When it came to the homework assignments, many of them did the assignments half-heartedly. When they got the assignments back, many were surprised that their scores were low. I would hear complaints such as "Why is my grade this low?" and "I did everything correctly! Something is wrong here." Well, your grade is this low because you did not spend a lot of time on the assignment and because you didn't take good notes/ask the professor for help. On the tests, people would get 60s on the test and be happy about it. People would fail tests and still be happy about it because it was a better score than they expected. It won't surprise me if many of the students in this class had less-then-stellar grades.

Another thing that annoyed me about some of the students was that they were complaing about how hard the material is even though they already learned it to graduate from high school and why they are learning it again. Excuse me, but I'm taking the class to graduate from HIGH SCHOOL!!!!! There were several times I wanted to tell people this, and I also wanted to tell them, "If already know it, how come you can't do well on your tests and homework?" I resisted the urge to because I knew some people would be irritated that someone a year younger than them was outperforming them without any background knowledge in the class.

My American Politics class was slightly better, but it was still the same attitude. The students never really prepared for the tests, and did not spend a lot of time on them either.

Then there was my Spanish class. That class was just as bad as my economics class, and sometimes worse. As always, many of the students did not take the class seriously. Sometimes, a quarter of the class or more did not show up to class. On the last day of classes, more than half the class did not show up. And on the final exam, some people did not bother showing up either. Why would you not show up for the final exam?????

As for the class that actually had serious students...that would be a 300-level French class usually taken by French majors and minors. The students in that class actually cared because it is a class required for a French major or minor.

So from what I noticed from this past year with college students, college students don't care too. Just like high school students. If college students don't care about their studies, they are in for trouble in the futre when they are applying for jobs. I know not ALL college students are like this, but I've been around so many students that don't care that it is driving me crazy.