I'm sitting in the library beating my brains out trying to memorize a million different little insignificant environmental geology terms, and it dawns on me-- why do I do this to myself. I'm an international affairs major, what good is geology to me?
I understand the idea of a comprehensive education. I want to be a well-rounded student and human being. However, in no way shape or form will my environmental geology mid-term tomorrow reflect how much I know about geology. It will be me regurgitating all of the terms I memorized only for the test, and it will all be for a letter on a piece of paper.
That brings me to a much larger issue. Why am I defined by a letter on a piece of paper? Am I a better person because I gave up working at the soup kitchen to memorize geology terms? I don't actually work at a soup kitchen, but if I did... My point is that grades do not reflect who we are as people. Professors should realize this and create curriculums that are engaging and make students want to learn. Interested and engaged students will always be the most productive.
Unfortunately motivating and engaging are difficult to come by. We emphasize memorization not creativity. We have created a generation of people proficient not in learning, but in vomiting the information the swallowed in a giant gulp the night before. No sooner is the test over than everything on it forgotten.
For now however I will return to my mundane memorization and daydream of the glorious future where my value as a person exists beyond the letter "A".
Ugh, I sympathize with you. I hate how important our GPA is. I mean sure there has to be some measure of our academic progress, but like you said, it requires a lot of the learning to be merely memorizing facts.
Why indeed do it to yourself? My school doesn't use the GPA system. We don't GET grades. No need to stick to a traditional college education. There's so many fantastic alternatives available.
What school do you go to?
Evergreen State College. But it's far from the only one.
Hippie!
Greener!
Haha, just kidding :-)
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What's the worst that could happen, apart from all of us being flattened or fried or whatever bombs do? [Rudy Steiner from The Book Thief]
Aww, you've heard of Evergreen!
I wasn't a hippy when I came here, but now... well, I dunno if I'm considered a hippy, but I smoke loads of pot, my room is an utter mess, my outfits tend to be a bit odd, I'm a vegetarian, I'm an anarchist, I have weird sleeping patterns, I recycle my cardboard, papers, plastic, bottles, and glass, and I rarely brush my extremely long hair.
I don't do shrooms though. I think to be a hippy you have to do shrooms or acid. And I don't really ACT stoned, which is also a needed element in proper hippy-ness.
lol. yeah. I live about 20 minutes from Olympia. :-)
I have a few friends at Evergreen and I can't help but call them hippies, ha.
Are you originally from the NW?
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What's the worst that could happen, apart from all of us being flattened or fried or whatever bombs do? [Rudy Steiner from The Book Thief]
That's pretty cool. *stalks*
No. Moved here in September, from Israel. :)
Wow! Israel? Really? :-)
lol yeah, I'm at PLU, and I live in Lakewood, so I'm pretty close. Small world!
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What's the worst that could happen, apart from all of us being flattened or fried or whatever bombs do? [Rudy Steiner from The Book Thief]
Yep! West Bank, no less. :p
Neat. It is indeed. O: