The familiar groans of the students begin while sitting in the lecture as "that one kid" raises his hand yet again to spout off some more of his intellectual thoughts to the professor. For some reason, this student seems different. Many know-it-all students raise their hands just to hear themselves talk, saying, "So...are you saying that Abraham Maslow came up with Maslow's Pyramid of Needs?" However, this student raises his hand and talks, not only knowledgeably about the discussion topic, but also with passion. Passion is what some students are missing in their studies.
As a student who sometimes wishes she had chosen a different path, I'm envious of those students who really love their majors. It's important for students to find that field that they want to delve into and really use. The problem is some students enter into college not exactly sure of where they want to go and are told that they have plenty of time with four years to really find out what they want to do. So they take their time, and before they know it, it's their sophomore year, and they are racing to pick something out. They end up settling on some major they have lukewarm feelings about.
Perhaps some students do pick a major that they're good at and perfectly able to do well, but they end up with teachers that are so hardcore into the subject matter that they frighten their students. These teachers labor only to breed workaholics like themselves and assume that if you don't want to work 15 hours a day you'll be a huge failure in life. It is these teachers that make their students hate the major they've chosen by their senior year. It's so exhausting to go to classes to hear someone toot their own horn about how fabulous they were in the working world. Then they make students feel bad if they aren't involved in four different organizations, as well as taking strenuous classes. College students simply tune those teachers out who constantly use negative reinforcement to try to get them involved.
Teachers stress to their students that they have to have a lot of experience from serving on organizations, doing internships, going to all of their classes and making good grades. These are all great things to do in college, but when the teacher ends the PowerPoint with, "Oh yeah...and be sure to have a life too," it makes me wonder. Students should get involved in organizations, but they shouldn't be getting involved in so many things they can't enjoy any of them anymore.
At the end of people's lives, they are not going to be thinking, "Gosh, I wish I had made more money," or, "I wish I had spent more time building my career." They're going to be wishing they had played more and spent more time with their families.
This is why it is so important for those freshmen and sophomores, who are thinking they have all the time in the world, to really search for that major they are going to love and have fun with. Students who have their own enthusiasm for their studies are going to want to do what they can to learn that field, whether teachers negatively drill it into their heads or not.
Write to Melissa at mmwhiten@bsu.edu
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