I want to post an off topic question because I’ve been trouble by this question ever since I started college a while ago. I am bringing this up because a lot of my friends are struggling through this issue.
There are a lot of student in college who are there without knowing what they want to do, and what they are going to do after getting out of college. There are a lot of students who even before going to college, already have trouble figuring out what their future is. There are a lot of students who struggle in college without knowing what they are struggling for.
So, I want to post this question to you. Are we setting students of our generation on too high of a dream, promising anything and everything as long as they go to college and get a degree, without backing that promise up with something that helps students realize what path they should take, and what their dreams should be? Are we telling them to take these journeys, without giving them a clear idea of where that journey leads to?
In other words, are we promising too much, and when the students realized they have to have their own dreams and their own goals, and they fall extra hard because there’s no one to catch them and show them the way?
I am asking this question in a very general way, because a lot of FIRST students go to college knowing what they want. But I don’t see the same for a lot of other students (ie. students who haven’t participated in FIRST).
I welcome everyone to join this conversation, whether you are a mentor, high school student, or college student… Please, by all means, go beyond my questions and share with us any thought you have about this subject.
It’s probably been that way for at least 40 years…
Seems to me that you have to live life for a while, try out some different careers, to get a feel for what you really want. The problem is that it’s so much easier to learn while you’re young, but you probably won’t know for sure what you want to learn until you’re older.
Obvoiusly I don’t have a solution for the problem !
I think a lot of the confusion comes from the way students handle the college search, and decide where they are going to apply. I had the fortune of having visited 5 of the 7 schools I applied to before I started the process, so I feel I was at an advantage. However, I want to quote someone who said something very wise about her own search. It deeply impacted me even after I had finished the process - let’s just say that since there are people with this mindset, I think things are going to be OK:
I understand Ken’s question very well, as it’s something my wife has/is going through.
She was told that engineering was hard, and it was something she couldn’t do because it was too hard. So… she proved that wasn’t true. She went to University of Michigan, which is not some easy school, and got a degree in Materials Science. Metals and Ceramics (not so much in the polymers.)
She graduated with a high GPA, and didn’t really know what to do with that. Worked in a steel mill - hated it, and now works in advertising, which is totally unrelated to what she studied.
But she was always told if she went to college and got a good degree, she would be set for life. But she hated engineering, and had worked several entry level jobs just to make her way through advertising. Had she studied something like art history (something she would enjoy), she would have had an easier time.
Getting a degree isn’t a free ride, especially if it’s something you don’t enjoy.
Besides, college isn’t for everyone.
No idea how to fix this. Personally, I try not to push college on everyone - something I used to do. I have recognized that it’s not for everyone, figuring out what someone wants to do is more important.
I can’t really comment on the idea of what happens in college or after college to students who “fall extra hard” because I am still only in high school. But as a student who has up to this point had a life totally dedicated to “getting into college” and getting a good score on all the standardized tests, its kind of surreal feeling to actually be going to college in a few months.
For all of the possible pitfalls, I think the ability to fail is a good thing. Take that how you will, but without the possibility of failure, of a true challenge, having to make something for yourself … isn’t the outcome cheapened? I don’t really want “a clear idea of where that journey leads to” because that would kind of be like making a robot for FIRST with a full step-by-step instruction manual on how to make the perfect robot. We need the uncertainty that comes with the first small steps of personal independence, we need the chance to change our major, and we need the experience of not getting the first job we interview for. Because otherwise, we’ll just take everything we have for-granted.
Most likely my tune will change in 5 years, after I’m out of college and more “mature,” but right now so this discussion can have multiple viewpoints that is my view as a senior in high school
The problem I take most notice of in college is the lack of quality education through innovative and creative means. Education has become boring and not very fun at all. Students sleep in class, or skip class, because they can’t stand listening to a professor babble on through equations in a room with grey walls, fluorescent lights, and no windows. Professors are teaching how to calculate the way through designing the perfect screwdriver when half the students in the class haven’t even held one.
This is a hands on generation. We don’t like sitting in cramped little chairs with attached desks barely larger than a sheet of paper while being lectured at.
In many of my college classes, a 50% class average on a test would be considered normal. This is simply unnaceptable.
Education is failing. Nobody wants to stare at a board full of greek letters and complicated equations all day. Nobody wants to labor through a 1000 page math book solving hundreds of integrals. It isn’t working. We aren’t learning.
Education needs to become more applied and exciting. Right now, at least to me, it is quite boring.
I know how that goes. I’m a senior in high school, and one of my favorite classes this year is AP Phsyics. Yes, it’s a hard class, but the teacher makes it engaging with good, hands-on projects.
First we learn about air drag, center of mass and center of pressure, and then we design and build model rockets. We measure their coefficent of drag, the thrust curve of an engine and write excel programs to calculate the predicted height. Put an altimeter in the payload bay, launch and record. This is one of many projects we do. It’s fun and it gives context for all the equations, as well as ensuring that we know how to apply them.
That’s how school should be taught. Knowing the equations is one thing, but being able to give them context in the real world is entirely different. This is one of the reasons FIRST is so successful at inspiring students. If the education system was able to tap into that, the results could be incredible.
Half of the fun/point of college is that you don’t necessarily know where the journey will take you. Sometimes, you have to go out into the world not knowing what the outcome will be, get into some tight situations, and then learn how to come out on top. It’s like a bird learning to fly, at some point it has to step out of the nest and fall, hopefully flapping it’s wings correctly before it hits the ground.
Of course, I realize that college is expensive and the longer you take to figure out where you want to fit it, the more it will cost you. So, as long as you use only your freshman (and maybe some of sophomore) year to figure things out, you’ll be fine.
If it’s any consolation, when I graduated from HS, 5 people in the top 10 of the class went to college “undecided”.
I’m not going to post secondary for another year yet…but I’ve never had a clear plan where I wanted to go. It’s more like I’m going to post secondary to realize what I want to do. I have a general direction (computing science or Environmental science) but no real occupations in mind.
The sad thing is, everyone goes to college for a job…“if you dont go to post secondary you won’t have a job (well at least a decent one)”. So everyone is flocking to univercity and getting a degree in anything just so they can go out to find work.
I want to go to univercity for higher learning…for deeper understanding of the material. I find classes and subject matters taught in highschool to be woefullly dissapointing and shallow. Nothing is satisfactorily understood by the time the teaher goes “time for a chapter test”. I think this is the right reason to go to univercity…I may be wrong…but I won’t be entering it as a means by which to find a job…it will be a means to further my understanding in fields of interest.
I went through this with my son who is now finishing his second semester in ME. You don’t go to college to learn how to do a job - thats what technical institutes are for and most in this country suck. I told my son that you go to college to learn how to learn. In high school you’re more or less spoon fed the basic subjects. You’re told exactly what to read and you’re lectured in class. The tests are nothing more than a chance to regurgitate the info back. In college you should be practicing the skill of research. By the time you graduate you should be able to teach your self. This is important because the one constant in your future is change. If you can’t adapt and constantly re-educate you’re self you won’t thrive and prosper in whatever career you choose. You have 4 years of not having to deal with the real world. Find yourself, have a good time, explore your horizons, etc. and learn how to learn.
I started typing replies to your post twice. They got very long and I realized that they still wouldn’t do justice to the depth of the questions you just asked or fully portray my response. I was beginning to wonder why it was so hard to get the post going. Then I realized that it was the same difficulty that I have in writing long essays and term papers. It would probably take something of that length to explore the implications of what you have posed.
That said, I will just pose more questions that came up when I tried to answer yours.
In our society what factors define success for students?
Do we encourage quantitatively measuring success? Why or why not?
How else do we measure success?(what is our ‘ruler’)
In portraying the success of icons, do we abstract the aspects of their journey that we find undesirable? Is knowledge of the full story important?
The goal of college is to get an education in a field of study that interests you. In the end, you likely have to go out and get a job so it is useful if the education serves this purpose as well, but if the education itself is not interesting to you a change of venue is in order.
One possible change of venue can be a change of major if you find that an alternative major stokes a fire in you. If your major is not doing that for you it is likely that any follow-on employment in the same field may not stoke a fire either, so a change in venue is all the more important.
If the rigors of college are something that you find unattractive enough to complain about, you should really consider an alternative. There are many career oriented “schools of specialization” that require only one or two years and that provide an attractive employment venue afterwards. There is nothing wrong with these alternatives if they are a fit for you.
I spent a great deal of time building electronic circuits as a teenager 35 years ago (many of these circuits used tubes), and went to college with a passion to become an electrical engineer. In spite of nearly straight As, I was quite bored with the general engineering curriculum and switched to Physics at the end of my first year. I learned, in college, that what I really had a passion for was understanding how physical things worked and I have stuck with it through a Phd, and ever since.
Actively hunt for your passion in college. Hunt your passion until you find a major that is so interesting that even a bad professor is not all that hard to bear. Find a topic of study that drops your jaw when you learn cool things.
For me, it was learning things like Maxwell’s equations predicting the speed of light and why the sky is blue. For you, it is likely to be something different, but find your passion you can, and finding your passion is worth the effort that it takes. This is nothing new for today’s generation. It has always been this way. If you can look back at your college days 30 years later, and still be thrilled at how cool the topic of study was, in spite of how hard it was, and still want to learn more about it, you are doing the right thing in college.
Seek out your passion, when you find it, it will be worth it…
I disagree. With my education I can look at a mass spring system and see a second order linear differential equation with dampening coefficient zeta. When I look at a water tank draining, I see a second order non linear differential equation. You want to know what the greatest part is? Not that I see it, or that I know I can solve it, but that every time I see it, I KNOW it, and I KNOW what it will do. Knowledge is great, anyway we get it.
I thought high school was a waste, and I thought I didn’t learn anything important stuff in freshman year of college. I am 5 weeks from the end of my sophomore year, and I am really excited for the next two year because I see the potential for what I can learn and KNOW! And those first 5 years of my secondary schooling where necessary in order to learn at the new level.
I think that applying the knowledge can happen properly until you think you know what is going to happen, and realized why you were wrong.
I have a personal example of this.
My father is a biology teacher at Ball State University. When he teaches freshman bio, he makes them do the following.
He holds up a blue card, he says, “what color is this”
They respond, “blue”
He says, that is how you learn in high school, regurgitation of facts.
He holds up the card again and asks “why is it blue”
They mumble something about absorption of light.
He states, that is college.
And he continues on by asking “now what do i need to do to make the color red?”
It isn’t what you know, but how you know it and how you can apply the knowledge.
I am very tired, and I want to go to bed soon, so I think I will make a longer post regarding the subject of this thread at a later date. However, the fact that Genia brings up my post warrants a quick response in regards to it on my part.
I was talking to a good friend on line tonight, who told me that there were a few people who were offended by the post I made about my college search. They felt that I was “stereotyping”, making “generalizations”, and undermining the hard work that they put into making into the “elite” schools such as MIT, Caltech, etc.
I want to take this opportunity to clarify the intentions of that post, because it is relevant to this thread topic.
My intention in writing that post was not to insult anyone. My true intention was to point out that the Ivy League isn’t necessarily the best place for all “bright” students. Many times, students hold the misconception that the more “competitive” the school is, the better the education they will receive there.
The above statement does NOT mean that I believe the elite schools can’t offer any students a good education. There are many different types of learners, and I happen to be the kind who doesn’t do well at strenuous academic work, but excels at hands-on, non-competitive work. However, there are certainly students who excel in the atmospheres that the Ivy League schools provide. It’s all a matter of whether or not your work habits are compatible with the environment that is offered by the school.
In writing that post, I wanted to offer an alternative perspective to the students out there who are similar to me - those who don’t do well with “academics”, but love learning anyways. I wanted to explain to future college students that the highly competitive schools are not necessarily the BEST place for them to get an education. Just because a school is well known doesn’t mean that it will be conducive to your work habits. In my opinion, choosing a school for it’s “name” (not its characteristics), is just as bad of a choice as picking a school because “your friends are going there.” There is just no guarantee that it will be the best place for you. I realized that the highly competitive schools weren’t the right place for me, and I am encouraging all prospective college students to consider what the best environment truly is for them.
No matter what school a student gets into, the same amount of congratulations and respect should be given to anyone who recognizes and chooses the school most compatible with their learning style. I am just as proud of the friends of mine who got in to Dartmouth (because it was the best school for them) as the friends of mine who are opting to do to community college (because it was the best school for them), and you should too.
If you take issue with either of my posts, I am sure it is because I am not explaining it well enough. If something bothers you, please PM me, and I will do my best to clarify my statements.
Let us agree that the best college for us may not necessary the most competitive schools in the country, and let that be that. Jaine, I think you have a good point, one worth standing on, and you shouldn’t feel bad expressing what you really think. There must be others out there who believe the same thing (I happened to be one of them).
Getting back to the topic, let me articulate my position further.
While there are many definition for success, for example, getting through a difficult challenge, exploring the world, getting a higher degree, learning how to learn, and finding your passion, which I agree are great achievements for any college students, I think it is more important to look at the flip side of them.
College CAN be many things for many students, but it CAN also be the following things to some students I know:
College is something they want to get over as soon as possible and want nothing to do with afterward.
College is a collection of cutting classes and missing as much work as possible and scrape by with the minimal effort.
School and learning are something they hate, and homework and tests are something they hate worse.
College is something they struggle with, have no idea why they struggle with, and something they don’t know how to succeed in.
And here is the worst: College is something someone told them to go to.
I do not disagree there are many cases of success in colleges across the United States. I do, however, want to point out that it seems to me there is a raising feeling of not knowing what the point of college is among the students. I do not yet have any evidence to support this observation, other than observations I made from friends in my school. That’s is why I raised this question, becuase I do not know all the facts (I doubt anyone does).
Do you agree, or disagree with this? Is our generation more aware or less aware of the point of college? And is the lack of this awareness the reason why so many students are struggling through college?
That right there is about the best way to sum up our (what I believe to be) failing educational system.
I do agree, although unfortunately I do not have any answers or solutions.
School is not fun. FIRST is fun. But not every school has FIRST, and even fior the ones that have FIRST, not every class is FIRST. There are more things to learn in life than you learn in FIRST, but something about the structure of it makes you learn while not even realizing; and you have fun at the same time too.
Maybe that is the key: To truly learn something well, you should not realize you are in the process of learning until after you have learned it and surpise yourself in a magnificent display of your skills.
Heck, I don’t know. It is late. Sounded interesting for tonight though.
I am kind of thinking though in an extraordinary education, you don’t even realize you are learning. Does that make any sense to anyone?
When was it ever stated that College/High School/Life was supposed to be fun? “Fun” is such a subjective concept - I’m sure there are millions of people in the world that would have absolutely no interest in FIRST, its competitions, or its philosophy. In fact, I’m sure there are many people and cultures that would despise what FIRST is and what it stands for. They would say it is hypocritical at its very core - it is trying to get attention away from glamorized sports and entertainment, but uses sport and entertainment as its foundation for its culminating activity.
Mind, I’m not one of those people. But I hope you see my point.
College in and of itself is not students cutting class, it’s not boring professors giving boring lectures, it’s not a 24-hour drunkfest at some fraternity house, it’s not impossible final exams designed to flunk half the students.
Not to say these things don’t happen, but to me that’s like saying America is a country of toothless inbred obese people. Which may be a pervasive view of America from the perspective of other countries - the pendulum swings both ways. What stereotypes do you have of citizens of France? Mexico? Afghanistan? Japan? Kenya? Does that mean everybody in those nations are exemplified by a stereotype, true or untrue as it may be?
No, college is an opportunity. College is the chance to better oneself by spending time with the professor after class, to reason through the “boring” lecture on microbiology. Some things just aren’t fun - does that mean we don’t need these things?
College offers so many opportunities, challenges, rewarding experiences, both in and out of the classroom. It is unfortunate that the view of it is biased by the poor decisions of some of its students and faculty. Some students choose to skip class/sleep through lectures/waste time and brain cells through inappropriate behavior. If only they knew what they were missing.
I was just discussing with a colleague earlier that it’s too bad that we don’t realize the opportunities available to us until after they have passed. If I had college to do over again, it would certainly be different.
Don’t let your college experience be flavored by the poor choices by other people, no matter who they are. Life is what you make of it - what you get out of college is proportional to what you put into it.
“It has been my experience that people are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” - Abraham Lincoln.
You are absolutely correct - it is unfortunate that college is promoted as the destination. Many people make career and life decisions during or after their college experience, me being one of them. I went through four majors before I landed on the one I graduated with - and that’s not what I do now. But I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I hadn’t gone on the academic path I took, and I wouldn’t trade the experience for the world.
As I look back on college, I see that I learned a ton of academic information. I learned high-level mathematics, conceptual and applied physics, computer programming, psychology, philosophy, journalism, law, public speaking techniques, geology, chemistry, ad nauseum. But the things I learned that affected me most were the things I learned about myself - as a student, as a lover, as a Christian, as a human being, as an American, as a proud alumni. There is a definite maturation process that occurs in the college years, and in my experience, that, as much as the “fancy book-learnin”, shapes people and helps them in their careers.
I hate to break it to you, but college is not the pinnacle of the mountain. There is a lot of climbing to get there, and I hope you’ve got a good sherpa and oxygen tanks. But when you get to the top, you realize it’s a springboard to reach new heights.
Wow, where to begin. I’ll try to keep this short and to the point.
The academic side of college is really learning how to learn. Classes are supposed to be structured in a way that forces you to take that next step and work on your own to get further along than you are going in. Look at each of us as a toolbox. College is the store where you go and get the tools that fill the box. High school and some early college is learning some lower level tools that get built upon. By the end you should be fashioning your own tools. I’m the first to admit I don’t know everything about engineering, but I know how to learn what I need as the situations cmoe along.
More people are going to college now than in the past. The problem facing many of them is that they have been spoon feed and carried along the whole way. Some schools and majors continue this now through college defeating what I described above. The student populace at large has changed over time and colleges have adjusted for it.
College is what you put into it and by many is looked at as a measure of proof that you can work to a goal you don’t need to reach but want to. That is why it is a litmus test used by many employers.
that is my view as a senior in high school