Fresh-faced Honesty: Students have lives, too
Meg Allen
Issue date: 10/19/06 Section: Opinion
As I was spending my entire day Sunday in the Maxwell Library, something struck me. Professors must not realize that students take more than one class. Wait, let me rephrase. Some professors must not realize that students have more than one class, and that students do not spend their entire lives doing schoolwork.
Personally, I have a busy life. I devote countless hours to The Comment, work roughly ten hours each week at the Maxwell Library and volunteer Saturdays with the Children's Physical Developmental Clinic. In addition, I have not one or two but four 400 level courses, and just for fun two other not quite so stringent courses. Oh wait, I need to be accepted into my professional program and submit an application for study abroad.
I am sure that about 75 to 95 percent of this college's student population would join me in a collective groan about the lack of space their personal schedules allow for actual, productive study time. With midterms rapidly approaching, students who are already crunched for time become stretched to the maximum.
There are only so many hours that a student can devote to reading before his or her eyes become blurry, and a headache begins or sleep descends. There are only so many different subjects that can be crammed into a head at a given time. Field trips and group projects are time consuming and require massive coordination.
There are some professors who require students to read a fairly large book over one weekend. This daunting assignment is combined with the homework assigned to a student in four or five other classes. And so marathon reading times are set aside, like the five hours I devoted Sunday to coursework. Unfortunately, not all students have an entire Sunday during which they can catch up or get ahead on their work. I would guess that more than 50 percent of the student body works one, if not both, days every weekend.
As a student who has to coordinate my schedule to accommodate both a group project and a field trip this semester, I am really feeling the hurt from trying my best to fulfill these course requirements.
Personally, I have a busy life. I devote countless hours to The Comment, work roughly ten hours each week at the Maxwell Library and volunteer Saturdays with the Children's Physical Developmental Clinic. In addition, I have not one or two but four 400 level courses, and just for fun two other not quite so stringent courses. Oh wait, I need to be accepted into my professional program and submit an application for study abroad.
I am sure that about 75 to 95 percent of this college's student population would join me in a collective groan about the lack of space their personal schedules allow for actual, productive study time. With midterms rapidly approaching, students who are already crunched for time become stretched to the maximum.
There are only so many hours that a student can devote to reading before his or her eyes become blurry, and a headache begins or sleep descends. There are only so many different subjects that can be crammed into a head at a given time. Field trips and group projects are time consuming and require massive coordination.
There are some professors who require students to read a fairly large book over one weekend. This daunting assignment is combined with the homework assigned to a student in four or five other classes. And so marathon reading times are set aside, like the five hours I devoted Sunday to coursework. Unfortunately, not all students have an entire Sunday during which they can catch up or get ahead on their work. I would guess that more than 50 percent of the student body works one, if not both, days every weekend.
As a student who has to coordinate my schedule to accommodate both a group project and a field trip this semester, I am really feeling the hurt from trying my best to fulfill these course requirements.
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Ron Groves
posted 10/24/06 @ 10:59 AM EST
I feel your pain.
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