<p>I am a non-traditional older student here at Iowa State. I have a degree and decided to go back to get a second degree in Engineering</p>
<p>What I see on a daily basis is a bunch of weak, superficial, unaware, materialistic young people who seem totally unable to deal with reality. </p>
<p>I am amazed by the number of kids that have already given up on Engineering simply because it was "boring" or because "it was not what they expected" after half a semester!!!</p>
<p>One other thing I have noticed that is so prevalent with this young kids is this twisted idea that things will come easy or somehow they will be able to find a shortcut to success with little or no work.</p>
<p>One last thing, I get so annoyed when I am in class trying to pay attention to our Chemistry lecture and your son/daughter have their laptops wide open and they are playing games or going on Facebook while the professor is lecturing- I find that so disrespectful!</p>
<p>Anyways, these are some of the things I have observed about your sons and daughters around our campus here- of course there are some exceptions to what I have described here but they are very few.</p>
<p>I did not mean to offend anyone with this topic- I just want people to be more aware of what I see around campus.</p>
<p>I am not an expert on parenting nor I have any kids but what I can tell you is that a lot of these kids seem to be totally unable to deal with reality and I absolutely blame the parents.</p>
<p>"What I see on a daily basis is a bunch of weak, superficial, unaware, materialistic young people who seem totally unable to deal with reality. "</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry about it - it’s just a fad. Everything with kids today is “retro” . . . they are just acting like Baby Boomers. They’ll get over it and will soon be on to the next thing.</p>
<p>Our older daughter probably behaved badly in college at one point or another, but she is self supporting now. She some how makes it to work by 7am every day. When she is working on a deal with many other senior people, she is often the party planner to make sure everything happens at the right time and right people show up when they are suppose to. As glido said, I wouldn’t worry about it. Oh, wait a second, should I take some credit for our older daughter’s achievement?</p>
<p>It’s probably because your school accepts the vast majority of applicants, so the majority of your classmates are likely just the kids who just got an average score on the SAT, lack any sort of study habits, and are just going to college so they can party. I really doubt most of the sons and daughters of CC’s parents are actually like that.</p>
<p>Trust me, as a young student, I see it too, in some students-- but not all of them. I know of many students that people may think to be ‘weak’ or ‘materialistic’-- and they have fathers at home with cancer or study for hours at night to try to get it even though they are desperately behind. As somebody who works with struggling students, it’s quite impressive how far a student can be in denial as to how much they are ‘getting’ it.</p>
<p>However,
I would honestly rather these students give up and switch majors now than three semesters from now when they realize they are utterly ill-suited to Engineering. There are some incredibly bright students, and some incredibly hard-working students-- but the vast majority of students that purport themselves to be ‘engineering’ majors are students with terrible math backgrounds and no critical thinking skills-- and engineering requires a lot of the latter. If students are unable to think and critically analyze, it is unlikely (having worked with a couple of students over the course of a semester or two) that they will survive in engineering-- I am always worried when students strugging with Calc I and II (not because of the math skills, which I can fix, but with the lack to synthesize and draw connections) are ‘engineers’-- because for every one student that can figure it out, there are ten more who will fail, having wasted a lot of money while doing so. Maybe that’s not the ‘right’ opinion, but there are lots of students unaware of the kind of thinking involved in engineering, and I would rather see them making the choice to do soemthing they have an actual affinity for (as opposed to because ‘engineers make a lot of money’) instead of dropping out three semesters from now.</p>
<p>There are other parts of this post I could parse, but I’ll end with simply that you are drawing broad strokes of generalizations, and the same types of conclusions could be said of non-traditional students as well-- it’s not ‘just’ the young people.</p>
<p>Ok, I see you have a topic sentence. Where are your examples? Your little essay is far too general and doesn’t support your thesis. May we have some examples of “weak, superficial, unaware, materialistic…unable to deal with reality?” Three would be nice, but even one would be better than what you have provided. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>The research head of a major pharmaceutical company, an old friend of ours with MD, PHD, and accolades from so many, and discoveries that have impacted so many, far beyond what most of us will be able to do, was a"bum" during his UG days. I knew him well. Smart enough to get thorugh the courses, rejected from med school at first, then went from the PHD program. Took him a whole other path to get where he was and it was not a pretty one, but he’s there.</p>
<p>It did hit me as sad that there are so few engineering graduate students who are US, when I saw some stats. And a good friend of mine who graduated with an engineering degree, was grousing how he couldn’t believe the kids dropping the curriculum when he, such a knucklehead managed to eke through. </p>
<p>It is tough though, to watch youth wasted on the young.</p>
<p>“We are objective - terribly so - about others and subjective about ourselves, when the true task in life is to be objective about ourselves and subjective about others.”</p>
<p>Ahh, “disrespectful”. The go-to complaint of pseudo-adults when they don’t like what someone is doing, but have no standing or right to complain about it. The “disrespect” is an issue between them and the lecturer, not you. If it is distracting, then you have a valid issue.</p>
<p>To be fair…
Older students seem cranky from working full time and juggling college.
But mostly mad that the kids get good grades with little effort and studying.
Don’t hate them for have a quick mind with dad and mom paying the bills.</p>
<p>Most of the old students sit in front in a cluster and ignore what’s going on behind them.</p>
<p>First, this behavior is not limited to less/non-selective public universities which accept most/all applicants. I’ve seen plenty of undergrads behave similarly at a variety of institutions in the last several years…including Ivy colleges like Harvard and Columbia. </p>
<p>Secondly, while I agree the seemingly greater proportion of students zoning out to online games/social media is greater than it was when my same aged friends and I were undergrads with newspapers or installed computer games, it’s really a variant of rudely reading newspapers in front of the Prof during lecture time. </p>
<p>When a few students did that while I was serving as a substitute lecturer in a friend’s community college Western Civ class, I simply told those students they had two choices: put away the newspapers and pay attention/quietly nod off or they were invited to leave the class…especially considering their newspapers were obstructing the view/disturbing to classmates sitting behind them. Some opted to listen and the others opted to leave the class which prompted my marking them absent per community college policies. Did I mention some of those rude newspaper readers were non-traditional students themselves while the students complaining about their behavior only had a semester of college under their belt?</p>
<p>The rude ones only took up a handful of students in 2 one hour sections of 50-70 students each. Most were quite attentive and actually more respectful than traditionally aged 4-year college undergrads. </p>
<p>I am disturbed by the greater proportion of students who do disturb others by zoning out on social media/online games, texting during class, or other disturbing behaviors like talking like they’re waiting for a bus on a public street in university* and public libraries. </p>
<ul>
<li>IME, public and university libraries are much noisier within the last several years compared to my time in college and before. Moreover, students/patrons also seem to cop a greater 'tude when security/librarians tell them to quiet down or take the conversation/cellphone call outside. This is one reason why I avoid public libraries and university libraries with a heavy proportion of undergrads when I need a quiet space to work.</li>
</ul>
<p>]quote] I am amazed by the number of kids that have already given up on Engineering simply because it was “boring” or because “it was not what they expected” after half a semester!!![?quote]</p>
<p>Well, if they find it boring or not what they expect, why shouldn’t they give up on it and switch to something else they enjoy? What, is engineering some extra-special-major that’s important to stick with at any cost? Hardly. It’s just another major. Sorry.</p>