Deadbeat Students

There must be something in the water. Several times in the last couple of weeks, I have attended a class where the professor is upset because many of the students are not doing the work. Plus after coming home, I get to hear about Toni’s bad students (she is substitute teaching in an art position at the moment).

Yesterday, the psychology class started off with the professor saying that it had came to his attention that one of the students might be cheating. He is right; I suspect one of the students of copying some of the take-home test answers from someone else.

This same student is one of my classmates in my literature class. I am not sure if my psychology teacher is upset with her, but I know that my literature teacher is. She chose not to read Voltaire because it was boring--I hope that she gets around to finishing it before the next in-class writing assignment (yes, it is that bad).

Now, I can sympathize with her. I have talked to her about her current job--management at a fast food restaurant. So she is on call 24/7, and has little time to actually work on college homework. She reminds me of why I decided that I could not do both college and management at the same time. Nevertheless, she is one of the students pulling down the quality of my classes this semester.

(Honestly, I like her as a person. If it wasn’t for the fact that the professors were so upset, I might consider being her friend.)

“Deadbeat students” is how my literature professor describes them. I am not sure that I would use such language; I understand the statement, but I am not sure if it is fair to call them that. Then again, I think of them as “dead-weight students,” so I am not much better in my thinking.

But I am not really sure that all of them are doing so badly on purpose. One of the hazards of being a modern college student is the sheer expense of attending college. And here in Colorado, financial aid has become almost nonexistent. Scholarships and decent amounts of Federal Student Loan money is also not in play. So those of us who can find jobs are working full time; college has become a part time thing for many students.

Then there are people like me, who are in college because of the bad economy. The reason I am considering the possibility of voting for Hillary Clinton is that she has mentioned that something has to be done to help college students pay for their educations.

So while I am annoyed that some of my class mates are dragging the whole class(es) down (pop quizzes are being used in the literature class now to make sure that everyone is doing the reading), I am not completely sure that it is something that they are doing because they do not care to do the homework.

And that is my complaint of the week.