awww shucks. thanks.
One of the more interesting things Nathan does is show you how little fucking time students actually have. It comes as a bit of a shocker to her and, as is typical in ethnography, she can't help but really become the student, in spite of being a prof.
When I was in grad school, my mentor told me that the ratio of study to class time had always been 3:1. Three hours study time for every hour in class. That's 12 hrs/week per course. If you're taking 5 courses a semester, that's 60 hrs a week. Riiiiiiiiight. Maybe at one time, among the grings. But these days? Not fucking likely. This was a guy who assigned 200 pages of reading a week in the mid-90s and insisted on keeping to that courseload.
By contrast, today, at Nathan's uni, the Dean taught a time management course in which he advocated 2:1. 15 hrs in class, 30 hrs studying. That's already a 45 hr week.
Now, factor in what Nathan points out: how very different the university looks - traveling among classes - for a student. Profs, she notes, often have classes near their offices. When they don't, they often have use of a car and access to parking right outside the building where they teach off or across campus. They schedule their office hours around the courses they're teaching. Same with their research time. The service commitment is about the only thing that effs up your day: making time for meetings that might not be on your schedule. Her point is, seen from the prof's point of view, they don't think about the wackiness of scheduling for students.
You've got a 9 a.m. class t/th. you have to blow time between 11:20 and 1 pm when your next class starts. How many of us are any good at yanking out material that's possibly difficult and new to us and making good use of that time, especially when we don't have time to go back to a quiet dorm room? You get the picture.
Anyway, stop and think about their schedule!
45 hrs in class and studying. And I don't know about anyone else, but I def. spent 3-4 hours a week on my readings for each class I took. These kids spend 2 - and that's optmistic!
Meanwhile, they often work at a place like Northern Arizona. The Dean in the time mgmt class allotted 10 hrs to work. Factor in travel time to the job.
Run the numbers without even accounting for travel time to class/work and wasted between time if your scheduled is the suck:
15 in class 30 studying 03 campus activities, volunteer, church, etc. 56 sleep 10 personal grooming 14 eating 2 hrs per day 10 job --- 138 hr
30 hours of "free time" to socialize, party, chit chat with dorm mates, watch tv, listen to music, talk to family, write home, etc.
That isn't including the time traveling to and from class/job, and isn't counting the time that is inevitably wasted when your schedule isn't one class after another.
It also isn't including things like attending film showings, lectures by guests, class field trips, office hours and tutoring when you're in over your head.
so, fuck me, really. That's the equivalent of working 55 hrs a week. I don't know about anyone else, but these days I whine about that kind of work schedule.
College is for the young, man! I used to run that kid of schedule, with a long daily commute and a family and the crises associated with poverty. I don't fucking know how I did it!
So, even at the easier 2:1 ratio of study time to class time, which a lot of old school profs think is outrageous, that's a pretty hectic damn schedule. And on top of that, all the pressures that go with being a traditional college student - never mind the pressures one has as a non-trad: romance, fucking, social life, drugs, booze, peer pressure, pop culture, etc.
As Nathan points out, going under cover as a student was eye-opening because managing her schedule was a real challenge, especially after she'd been spoiled by the relatively easy life of a prof.
This is why, of course, students are all about what she calls the "art of college management": scheduling the gut courses to balance out hard courses in your major, taking courses at the right time of day, getting into courses so there is little downtime between classes, avoiding classes with a rep for being difficult.
Given the pressures to have an active social life, it's not surprising that students do whatever the hell they can to get out of their workload.
Nathan found herself doing just that. Studying for French with another student, she finds herself telling him that she's not going to memorize the definition of "past imperfect tense" because the prof said it wouldn't be on the test. Her study mate goaded her into doing so anyway, explaining that she should want to learn French, not just pass the exam.
she also found herself barely able to cope with a class over her head, and surprised her colleagues when they discovered she wasn't some fantastically brilliant student in every single one of her courses. :)
she also goes into a discussion of what we all know is common: the tendency to see most college learning as useless to the real world, a theme that dominates (though it isn't unchallenged by a subculture that values knowledge for the sake of knowledge). She points out, of course, that in this climate, it's hardly any wonder that students try to do as little work as possible: what they're learning doesn't seem to them to be useful in the real world.
And that message is reinforced for them by many universities. Apparently, there's a presentation that many universities use, "Unleashing your inner monster." it's slickly presented by the non-profit arm of a for-profit ad agency. Hmmmmmmm.
The message, presented by highly polished and engaging young people, ostensibly just out of college themselves, is one in which is a fucking dog-eat-dog world out there, the economy isn't so great, employers are hiring fewer and fewer people, competition is stiff. How do you set yourself apart? Students are given two example students and asked which one an employer would hire. The student who volunteers to build houses for the needy? Or the student who volunteers for same company but does so as an officer of the org and manages to increase volunteer contributions of time by 50%.
The students read material peppered with mentions of name brand items and are ushered out of the seminar with a bag full of goodies, and upbeat music meant to give them a sense that they are masters of the universe if they follow their plan. Essentially, they are told that everything they do must be with an eye toward getting a job. There's no time to dick around on doing things for the sake of doing them, learning for the sake of learning. Everything must be useful for a career. All presented with all the tricks of a slick ad agency.
Not surprisingly, given the university's willingness to shell out that message, their students are going to thumb their noses at attempts to build community, develop the life of the mind, etc. etc.
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)