No, I don’t think so. This opinion piece may be an outlier.
That’s what I figured. I’m sure some students might agree, but I doubt that it’s a prevalent attitude.
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What I find fascinating here is that he’s not complaining about not having time for activism - he’s complaining about not having time for what is, essentially, a college EC:
I’m frequently lowering the quality of work I submit for my five classes so that I can dedicate time to work on my nonprofit consulting project with the World Wildlife Fund
I can already see it - it’s part of his future LinkedIn profile and first resume - “worked with WWF on strategic planning around resource management for next five years” or whatever. It’s like the oversubscribed clubs at Ivies et al. that all focus on consulting, and it’s the student’s idea of what they need to differentiate themselves from every other Princetonian graduating for the job at Goldman Sachs, which is precisely what students in HS are doing to differentiate themselves from every other student at Harvard-Westlake or Andover.
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It’s not even that exceptional as an EC. But he realizes he also needs a 3.9 GPA to get that prestigious job opportunity and he’s presumably struggling to do that. The subtext is wishing he went somewhere with (even) more grade inflation.
And now he has a bigger problem: this op-ed may well get his resume thrown in the trash at places like Goldman or McKinsey. Maybe he’s sore because he already got rejected when applying for an internship?
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Because Clinton grew up with little privilege (though simply being White in Arkansas was better than being Black), while Buttigieg grew up in an upper middle class homes but likely only reached moderate wealth after his father had taught at Notre Dame for a few years - one does not reach affluence as an English Professor teaching at NMSU).
This kids lives in Concord and attended Groton before Princeton. Aside from those outer trappings, everything he writes drips privilege.
The privilege of this kid is most obvious from the fact that he thinks that studying those difficult classes in college has nothing to do with “becoming a leader”. It’s the old version of “elite colleges”, where the children of the wealthy and powerful attend in order to establish relationships with other members of the upper class.
There are literally hundreds of colleges out there in which he could have the time to do whatever he wants. But he wants both the prestige of attending a college which is known for its rigor, AND wants to spend all his time NOT working hard on rigorous classes.
What I don’t understand is, if he attended Groton, and got grades which are high enough to be accepted to Princeton, he should not have THAT much of an issue keeping up. I assume that he got in because he did well academically.
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I have thoughts about this article.
- Translation: “WAAAAAHHHHH!”
- Translation: “I didn’t know that college would be, like, HARD!”
- Translation: “I’m using this opinion piece to brag about my extracurriculars so I can get a killer internship next summer.”
- Earth to author: there are, literally, tens of thousands of other students who would be happy to take your place.
- You knew before you enrolled what the general ed requirements were at that university. Or if you didn’t, well, you were stupid to not look it up before you paid your enrollment deposit.
- I do not feel sorry for this young adult.
- Hey author: feel free to transfer to another college if you don’t like it. Otherwise, suck it up, buttercup, and quit your whining.
- Oh…you didn’t realize that you’d have to actually, LEARN STUFF, did you?
Puh-leeze. This kid has major spoiled child written all over him. Or, at least, a huge sense of entitlement. And the amount of privilege that’s all over that article…it’s really disgusting.
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I wouldn’t want to work until 7 pm!
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Initially I thought that this must be the Onion . . . but no. Gee, who knew college was for learning, studying and taking classes - some of which will be challenging. Unfortunately, I think the pre-professionalism of college these days contributes to the mindset of the author. If college is primarily a credential for getting a well paying job (as opposed to a rich education), then it makes sense for someone to think that it ought to be structured in a way that allows kids to do what is necessary to get that job. Someone who has been on the conveyor belt of privilege like the author is even more likely to have that type of entitled mindset. I’d like to imagine he is an outlier, but since I’m cynical, he probably isn’t.
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We are now living in the lifetime of George Jetson. He was born July 31, 2022.
George Jetson - Wikipedia
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The disgruntled student is free to transfer to a less rigorous college.
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Don’t take a job in consulting then. And avoid investment banking, law etc like the plague. But please don’t take a prestigious job or attend a prestigious college and then complain it’s interfering with your lifestyle like the author of this op-ed…
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No, it doesn’t necessarily mean that at all.
Most of the increases from productivity have to do with capital investments or switching to a more efficient process.
Here’s a simple example. My wife runs a small medical practice. Go back in time long enough and she would have her front desk person call patients to remind them about upcoming appointments. Now she has a service that texts the patients a week before, two days before, and the morning of. The result is less work for this task for the front desk and fewer last minute cancellations for the office.
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Getting a job at Goldman Sachs does not require any unusual “differentiation” (certainly not any differentiation that an applicant can control). Being in a business club can help, but that’s hardly unusual. More than anything else it requires strong grades and doing well in the interviews.
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…and the response headline from adults:
“Princeton’s Mindless Pursuit of Academic Rigor Helps Prevent Mindlessness”
The number of hours that people are working had gone up, but they were still getting paid for same number of hours. People with full time, salaried jobs, who don’t get paid overtime are logging in many more hours, or were. They were being paid for 40 hours a week, and working 46 hours a week.
This.
Only undergraduate programs at a handful of colleges with low acceptance rates are looking at this sort of thing, and that is because A, they’re dealing with cohorts of 200-5,000 new students at a time, and can do so, and B, especially the Ivies and their ilk are looking to “diversify investment” - they want to optimize that chances that they will have alumni who will be successful and bring fame, fortune, and influence to the college.
So you get a large chunk of people who are assured success in life - the kids of the wealthy, powerful and influential, and those kids who have already succeeded, either by winning awards or by doing very well in tough situations. Then you add on a bunch of kids who are “unique”, because there is a good chance that at least one of them will be “unique” in a way that will result in fame and/or fortune.
All employers are primarily looking for people who can do their job well. They don’t care that their engineer has a unique life story, or that their investment banker had an award-winning poem published, or that their analyst has a unique musical talent. These employers are hiring these people to do specific jobs, and only care about whether these employees can do those jobs and do them well. Moreover, they are not looking to “build a class”. They are hiring a small number of people to fit in a larger, existing, set of people. The most important “personality trait” that the employers are looking for is whether the new employees will get along with the larger group of existing employees. Being “unique” is not a particularly good trait in that context.
And not giving the impression you will be complaining that (to paraphrase the author) “every hour spent on an unnecessary [Powerpoint proof-reading] assignment or low-value [spreadsheet] is an hour that could have been spent on a meaningful extracurricular pursuit”!
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For Goldman Sachs investment bankers, the only acceptable extracurricular activity, in limited amounts, is sleep.
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I imagine this is tongue in cheek but I respectfully disagree with this statement. High school is about preparing yourself to able to learn affectively by understanding the skills needed to be successful in college. College is about utilizing those skills to expand your understanding and skills to become a successful member of society. You haven’t won anything when you arrive at college. You have mere given yourself an opportunity to best prepare yourself for a productive future (however you define that). I’ve mentioned many time that IMO college isn’t the destination, it’s the vehicle.
As for the workplace I wonder if those people who demand to work from home might be the ones most vulnerable to AI in the workplace. It seems to me that the less personal interaction one has the more likely that personal interaction will be deemed unnecessary. While people may want more time for personal activities typically one doesn’t get paid for doing those things. It creates a problem.
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As I’m reading the article and the thread, I’m hearing Michael Hobbes of the Maintenance Phase/You’re Wrong About podcasts in my head, yelling about the moral panics about “college kids these days” that resurface every few years based on a random article in a student newspaper. 
My student newspaper – at a Jesuit college in the 1990s – had some articles in it that I’m sure their authors were glad never hit the internet (I specifically recall one about the “joys of atheism” that was just an intro paragraph followed by two columns of blank space.)
As for this article, I don’t see much of a problem with it – if it’s true, as the student asserts, that classes are larded with homework just for the sake of being hard (as opposed to adding any meaningful training or learning), then I don’t see a problem with asking why.
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Or in career, although that is less true now than in the past, due to a greater percentage of decent job and career paths requiring post high school education (at the prospective employee’s expense, rather than on the job training) than before.