Kevin Eaton
In the video “A Vision of Students Today,” by Michael Wesch and his students at Kansas State University, the video describes what it is like to be a college student in today’s society, and the hardships that the students face. This video really draws you in because they make you pay attention for the video there is no one talking. The students that put the video together also put together a survey and had 200 students fill it out to compile some shocking information about college student’s daily proceedings. They start off by saying that their average class size is 115 students and that only 18% of their teachers even know their name. People today are paying so much for their schooling and when there are 115 people to a class and there is no personal interaction how do they expect anything to stick? Then on top of the loads of money already spent on tuition then students are forced to go out and buy textbooks that will have little to no use in the course they are even taking. Then the average amount of sleep is only 7 hours a night when a healthy amount is 8 or more hours especially when trying to actually learn information the brain needs rest to work properly. Then the total of all the averages of what people do a day is 26.5 hours per day so if I’m not mistaking that’s more hours than are in a day and we as college students are supposed to handle that load. But the only way to handle that is to multi-task like one of the signs says, “I’m a multi-tasker, I have to be”, which Michael Carr pointed out in interview that the more people multitask and the better they think they get at it they are actually getting worse. Also to be in an overcrowded classroom with a teacher that more than likely doesn’t know your name most will be in debt by around $20,000 by the time they graduate. Another one of the students then says, “When I graduate I will probably have a job that doesn’t exist yet,” if the job doesn’t exist what is there to learn from the school, all the college can do then is further your general education. Then the video points out the fact that our economy and the world are having problems and more are popping up each and every day and the students didn’t create the problem but it is their problem to deal with. The daily life of a college student especially at a university is a very stressful thing to deal with, the loads of things to do are big, the amount of personal contact or interest in the topics are slim, and the amount of time to deal with it all makes it hard. People are going to college to further themselves in the world but with the problems in the world building up more and more people with college educations are going to have to give up what their goals were to focus on the issues that they had no hand in helping develop. I believe this video had the purpose to show others how difficult college life is and also to show that this generation is the generation that needs to take care of past issues, even issues that were brought up by our ancestors. Their point is it’s time to change the world whether we like it or not and the generation of today are the people expected to make the difference.
Others may not be aware of the challenges the average college student faces. Hopefully now their will be more awareness to this fact and those who cannot handle the stress will be able to find balance. Because us as students can easily have those problems become less with the help of other people. Geeesh, even if they lowered the price for books or helped students find jobs we'd be less stressed.
ReplyDeletei like how you put everything in the terms showing how bad it is that there is so much to do when we actually have so little of time. i like where you state that an average student has about 7 hrs of sleep when a healthy sleeping schedule is around 8 hours. also when you say when someone will get a job that doesn't exist yet, i like how you emphasize as to what do we learn in school for a job that doesn't exist yet. you sir have written a very good blog and i believe you touched a lot of key points as well.
ReplyDelete