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Is It Graduation Yet? (1/18/06)
Tuesday, January 17, 2006 @ 5:09 PM
Green Day had the right idea. Except, I’d like to be woken up when my senior year ends.
And I don’t think I’m the only one. My roommate has the following in her AIM profile: “Senioritis - we’d fight for a cure, if we weren’t so lazy...”
And lazy we are. An odd mix of euphoria and panic about finally getting into “the real world” seems to have convinced us, as it convinces soon-to-be-college-graduates every semester, that our classes are not worth our best efforts.
Sure, there are a few graduating seniors who are trying to maintain 4.0 averages, and a few who are desperately trying to raise their GPA by a quarter of a percentage before they graduate, but for the most part, we’ve moved on to bigger things.
Like beating the final castle in Super Mario Brothers.
I mean looking for a job... (which I promise I’ll start doing any day now)... creating a resume... (I keep getting distracted by Mine Sweeper)... and figuring out where we’re going to live when our leases expire during finals week... (either New York or Chicago... but I can’t figure out which).
Besides, as my friend Eric always said, “In sixty years, we’ll all be dead anyway. No one will care what your chemistry grade was.”
And it only took Eric one extra semester to finish college!
In our defense, we seniors have worked hard to get to this point. We bought textbooks every semester and sometimes, we even read from them.
We showed up for class, even when we’d been out late drinking the night before. We even sat in class when we were still drunk from the night before. That’s dedication.
Some of our professors respond to senioritis by working harder to inspire and motivate us, despite our resistance. And those professors deserve our credit and thanks.
Others respond by postponing deadlines, offering extra credit, and canceling our lowest three quiz scores. These are our favorite professors, but they are also the most dangerous.
Because the fact is, as the bar keeps getting lowered, we keep finding a way to limbo under it.
Some of our professors are responding to our laziness by giving us the grades we’ve earned. These are the professors we don’t like. We curse them and we resent them, when we should be thanking them.
We should thank the people who stand firm in their belief that a little effort is not too much to ask. Their demands, as unreasonable as they may seem right now, are based on the demands we will face in life.
We should applaud those educators who are not willing to bow to the lowest common denominator. There are too few educators with standards, and the evidence is everywhere. On our campus, and in the world at large, there are far too many ignorant and incompetent people. And it takes courage to stand up to someone and tell them to work harder.
Earning a college degree should signify that one has the ability to self-motivate and has met an established set of reasonable challenges.
But as more and more students flood into universities, the lowest common denominator just gets lower and lower. And soon, a college diploma represents little more than a very expensive piece of paper.
I’d like to convince the class of 2006 to reconsider our collective outlook. I’d like to encourage my peers to get all the education they can out of their final courses. Every course is an opportunity to learn something.
If you think the classes you’re taking aren’t going to challenge you, consider adding another course. If this is your last semester, you might enjoy taking a challenging elective. (Personally, I reccommend philosophy or politics.) If you’ve got a full courseload already, ask yourself if there’s an organization you’d like to help out with or a project you’ve been putting off.
Sure, it’ll be hard to keep yourself motivated - especially when the weather gets nice. But you have to ask yourself - when will you have another chance like this?
Some of us are going to be in debt up to our eyeballs paying for that opportunity, and unfortunately, some of us are going to have very little to show for it.
I’d like to impress upon the graduating class the value of what we are discarding, but it would be too hypocritical. Truth is, I know myself well enough to know that I’ll continue to coast where I can, and work only as hard as I absolutely have to. And I know that if I fail in the real world, I’ll have no one but myself (and Super Mario Brothers) to blame.
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