By James Anderson
I am a 26-year-old journalism major currently attending college at PPCC. I am in my second semester, and I regret taking so long to go to college. I think of myself as rather serious about my college career Not only am I trying for my degree, but I am also trying to gain knowledge that will help me after I get my degree.
I remember what high school was like, more of a popularity contest than a place to learn. Class would be disturbed on a regular basis, and I will admit there were times when the cause of that disturbance was me. However, that was years ago, and I feel I have matured beyond adolescence.
Unfortunately, it seems a lot of my classmates here at PPCC haven’t matured yet. When I was in high school, there were two reasons for my doing poorly in a class and two “excuses” I gave rather than face the facts.
The first reason was because I didn’t study hard enough for the tests. The excuse I gave was that the teacher wasn’t instructing me well enough.
The second reason was because I didn’t do the homework. My excuse for this was that the teacher was assigning too much homework for me to get done.
See a pattern? It would seem that whenever my own shortcomings caused me not to perform up to snuff, I would just blame the teacher. Having matured, I had grown out of this phase and learned to take responsibility for my action.
In my Chemistry 101 class, however, a good portion of my classmates feel they shouldn’t take responsibility. For this class, attendance for the lectures is not mandatory, and the teacher provides online materials on Blackboard for anyone who wishes to use it. However, a few of the students are not performing well enough to pass this class. As for myself, I allowed my attendance to slip the first part of the semester, and I had been rather lazy about studying the material. My grade is an 81 percent in the class; this is due in part to the assistance of my instructor in helping me fill in the blanks on what I need to know.
If this were the entire story, I wouldn’t be too upset. Consequently, those students who are doing poorly in the class believe it is not their fault but the instructor’s. They routinely complain in class about the grades, bullying the teacher into grading on a curve. They waste class time so caught up on how they are going to force the teacher to improve their grades rather than spending this time having the instructor explain what they don’t understand.
In addition to this, most of the class will not show up on test day and make the teacher do even more work creating another version of the test so that they may take it in the testing center.
One student even had the gall to show up for class and told the teacher he needed to make arrangements to make up the test. He couldn’t stay for the test, he said, because if he took the test that day, he would fail.
It gets even better; this test was the first day back after Spring Break. That’s right; he knew about the test and had a full week off of school extra to study for it. Yet he was still unprepared. The final insult is that some of these students gave the instructor a bad review on her evaluation forms that we had to fill out for each class. Now her adviser is punishing her for the students’ inability to prepare correctly.
This isn’t the only case at PPCC of students not taking responsibility for their actions. My roommate, also a PPCC student, says his English 090 teacher, though strict, is fair and a great teacher. However, he constantly hears other students talk about how they are going to her boss and trying to get her fired because “she isn’t fair.” If these students would put half as much effort into their classes, then there would be no need to worry about grades.
This kind of behavior makes me ashamed to call myself a student. We are adults; we need to start acting like ones. You can’t tell a judge it was the officer’s fault that you got a speeding ticket because he was “too strict about the speed limit.” Your boss isn’t going to let a deadline slide just because it slipped your mind that the project was due today.
What job would let you miss work because the report you had to turn in for that big account was due today, but you just didn’t have it done?
In addition to all of this, as college students, we are not just here to get by and get the grade, we also need to gain the knowledge and skill to do our chosen professions. That means nursing students better know why they are giving me the injections the doctor told them to give me; they need to know how my body will react to the injection in case I ask them. To tell you the truth, I don’t think there are more that three nursing students in my Chemistry class I would allow anywhere near me with a needle.
Is it not our privilege to be learning from the instructors we have, and is it not our responsibility to listen and absorb as much of that information as we can. How about giving them a break when they seem a little scattered or strict? Lastly, take responsibility for your actions. Rather than looking for a scapegoat for your failure, just figure out what needs to be changed for next time and change it. Trust me, you can enjoy college a lot more if you do.
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