Double, Triple, Quadruple...Exponential Vision

By Cameron Ross

Finding the audacity to criticize a modern day student is requires severe naiveté and pompous malice. The college experience is an epic complex of tasks and responsibilities unsurpassed by any previous generation of students.

In order to afford school supplies students must work unless they are fortunate to come from a family with adequate income. Even middle class families don’t usually make enough money to pay for college without taking out loans with morbid interest rates. It can take decades to finish paying a loan and if the student is the person paying once they’ve began a career they usually devote a good portion of their salary toward the debt.

Most schools have large class sizes and don’t benefit students because of the lack of attention from the instructors who know few of the students’ names. Classrooms consist of obsolete chalkboards and whiteboards along with defunct projectors that deans don’t bother to maintain.

The issue of textbook prices gives students malaise equivalent to mourning. The board members are practically persecuting the students, charging them such outstanding amounts for books so the school bookstore can profit over 20 per cent. When the students sell books back they get a fraction of the price they paid and if they are lucky they will have actually used the books instead of letting them sit in the trunks of their humble cars.

In the video A Vision of Students Today one student holds a sign that says he works 2 hours a day. There are tons of jobs for students but which one requires only 2 hours a day? Realistically a student works closer to 6 hours a day, quite possibly 8 like a fulltime job.

There is also a mention of facebook in the video but not myspace. Both are popular sites and waste hours upon hours of students’ time while they sit in desks made of metal and wood. Uncomfortable and confined is no way to sit for hours while listening to a lecture. Young adults near the peak of their youth spend most of their time in a classroom or serving the public at a job where they are treated horribly by people of older generations who do not understand the cultural change in students’ lifestyles.

Work, school and studying add up to several hours. Students also must eat and travel, which leads very little time for sleep. I was appalled to see a sign reading “I sleep 7 hours a night” because that would be delightful compared to the 5 or 6 hours I normally sleep.

The video touches on lots of significant issues facing those of us trying to get an education and most of the examples are very accurate. The music in the video and rapid shifts of zoom-in shots carries the mood of skepticism throughout the film. The quotes and graffiti are vintage philosophy of a young growing mind.

College is not a 4-year cakewalk with an immediate career like in fee good stories or the past. Finishing in 4 years is very commendable because it is difficult to get all the cases you want in an order that allows one to finish prerequisites in succinct fashion.

The most critical issue is finding a job after college because most people work jobs that do not pertain to the degree they earn. Earning a degree in a specific art is losing the classical ecstasy of working in the field you studied because like the video mentioned, your job likely doesn’t exist yet.

We, the students, did not create these problems but we suffer from them. They call us Generation Y because we haven’t founded our identity yet (Generation-Why?). If we had a road to the American Dream like previous generations we would have a chiseled image. Instead we have a rhetorical one that changes constantly and watching us is the same as staring into a kaleidoscope.