In response to Sade’s and Alison’s posts about the freedoms and limitations of college, I was surprised my first few weeks at college by the lack of responsibilities that I have experienced while studying at Hamilton.
Last year I lived as an exchange student in Finland so I have already spent a year living away from home. Although there were rules I was required to obey, I had a lot of freedom, and with it a lot of responsibilities. At the school I attended while abroad, students were allowed to come and go as they pleased. Students were not questioned for missing a class and were not even required to inform the teacher where they were going if they left in the middle (including if they didn’t come back). Cell phone use was also commonplace in classrooms and was rarely acknowledged by the teachers. Instead the students were simply required to learn the material and complete the work on time. Focus was placed on these activities over attendance and participation. In my home life it was expected that I clean up after myself, help cook the food, and help with the laundry.
When I came to college, I was expecting to have a ton of freedom and even more responsibility. While I have both of these, I do not have quite as much as I expected. Although it depends on the teacher, some teachers do not punish students for late work (as long as it is not turned in too late). In my biology class, some students forgot to do an assignment and the teacher simply let them turn it in the next day. The same thing occurred in my Spanish class. I was also surprised that when a student in my Spanish class missed his exam, the teacher asked a student to call him in the middle of the exam to remind him. A few of the students have missed many classes and the teacher reminds them of the importance of attending classes (although they are sophomores and should already know the punishment for missing more than a few). These students do not have as much responsibility as I expected they would, as they have our professor constantly reminding them the importance of coming to class (similarly to my mother reminding me when I was in high school). Before I started college I pictured colder professors who would say nothing to a student who slacked on their responsibilities, and instead would remain silent while lowering their grades. Although it’s a pleasant surprise that the professors are so nice and caring, I believe these students should take more initiative and realize their responsibilities.
In my dorm I was surprised by the lack of responsibility by some students who leave half-eaten food, dirty dishes and crumbs in the common room. The other day someone left a half-eaten piece of pizza and a half-empty bowl of soup in the common room for over a day before it was cleaned up (and I would bet that it was the cleaning lady, not the student, who cleaned it up). These students, however, do not have to clean up after themselves because someone else in the dorm, or the cleaning lady, will.
Also sports teams (I know freshmen on the baseball team have to do this) have to report their grades and how their lives are going to their coaches. Their coaches then guide them and let them know at what point they need to get a tutor. At first I thought students were completely on their own at college but its nice to know that everyone has someone looking out for them (I’m sure my advisor would help me in the same way a coach helps his players). I had assumed before coming here that I was completely responsible for my grades, and my life in general, while here but the truth is, there are so many people guiding us in appropriate directions I do not have as much freedom, and responsibility, as I thought.
Your post reminded me of my college search junior and senior year of high school. My older sister was in her second year at Geneseo, a school of about five thousand students. Her boyfriend was a sophomore at Pennsylvania State, which has somewhere near eighty thousand students. Listening to them talk about each of their schools, it seemed that at a school as large as Penn State, students were in classes of seven hundred, professors didn’t really know student’s names, were often caught up in their own research, and teaching assistants often taught many of the classes. Students had a lot more freedom academically, without professors reminding them about attendance, participation, or due dates. But at Geneseo, my sister seemed to be able to actually form a relationship with her professors; going to their houses for dinner, assisting them in research, or taking trips with them to national conferences to present research. Although I understand the appeal of both environments, I think that it comes down to knowing yourself and what you want, or in which environment you believe you would excel. I knew that I was a bit quieter, and somewhat nervous going into college, so I felt that I needed a smaller environment with that closer relationship with professors.
ReplyDeleteI completely understand the responsibility aspect that you’re talking about however. I think that different professors feel differently about enforcing things like attendance, deadlines or participation, and dissimilar methods make students feel a weight of responsibility differently than others. I find it interesting that despite what we’ve talked about in class; the way we blindly place such value on our professor’s expectations and opinions when we don’t necessarily have a basis for our judgment, we’re all still so caught up on the student-professor relationship. So maybe I didn’t have to place as much value in this relationship while choosing schools, or maybe the professor’s emphasis on student responsibility shouldn’t matter. At some point, everyone has to learn responsibility, independence, how to handle freedom, and everything else you mentioned. While college is a great time and place to do this, and professors often act as catalysts for such development, not everyone matures in this way. Many learn it within families, in the workplace, or through religion. As Hamilton students, I think professors’ actions do matter, but we have to always keep in mind all the other experiences other individuals may be having.