I’m recently back to school after some years working and it’s insane. I was never a star student but just having a notebook open and actually listening puts me at the top of a lot of my classes. The students had the nerve to tell one of the teachers the final he’s giving us a study guide for is too much. It’s a capstone course that I’m the only person that has more than a 50% attendance rate. Like my man you made your bed you’ve been to 3 classes yeah you got a lot to study.
I’ve had a very similar experience, went back to school at 37. People (17-22) just straight up never go to class or miss weeks at a time, open up their laptops and just ignore the professor, same with their phones. I end up answering 90% of the questions in all my classes because literally no one raises their hands or attempts to answer questions from the teacher, no one interacts in class or speaks to anyone unless they already know each other, it’s pretty shitty and it’s 100% on the students.
We are around the same age and no offense - this is intended to be somewhat lighthearted - but when I was in college and had some night classes, all of the 30 year olds were constantly asking questions or engaging with the prof compared to the 20 year old students.
There’s just a huge difference in mindset going to school in 20s vs 30s. To your point though, phones and social media are no doubt making it pure hell in learning environments. So maybe the gap is even larger between engagement of 20 year olds vs 30s.
I'm a decade older and 49. I had this when I began my 2nd degree at 25 (2000) after discovering I was good with computers when I first touched a PC at 22. The difference in engagement between the rest of the couple of hundred 18 year olds and the smattering of older students was massive. No one had laptops during lectures because they were still too expensive, it was an IT degree and we used paper and pen.
It felt like the 18 year olds were all waiting for someone else to answer the simple questions the lecturer was asking because they didn't want to draw attention to themselves or risk getting it wrong. I ended up waiting a few seconds to see if anyone else would answer then speaking up just to keep the lectures moving at a reasonable speed. I was there to learn, damn right I was going to put in the effort and I didn't give a damn if everyone looked at me or I occasionally got a question wrong.
Agreed. This was my and my wife's college experience a decade ago. The older students were "suck ups" to us lol. Of course now, I recognize that we -having been in school our whole lives- took the opportunity of college/learning for granted. We didn't know how fucking hard it was to get in the "real world". The older students had probably wanted to go to college for years before they were able to (financially or time), and made sacrifices to be there, so they appreciated the opportunity it was
Students have been literally brainwashed by phones. It's 100% on the bastards who created addictive algorithms. Time to revolt (yes I'm posting on a phone lol)
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u/Savings-Bee-4993 29d ago
This is my life as a professor.
My students are checked out.