Post by quincyessex on Aug 8, 2011 13:39:39 GMT -5
Being a student who has always made good grades, played sports, been in AP and Honors classes and, most recently, gotten a job, I believe I have place to say that keeping up with all the work can get a bit hectic at times. I'd rather be caught up with everything I have to do for school before I have to go in for my shift at work than have to do everything at 10:30 or later at night when I get off. It's too stressful otherwise. When David Brooks spent time with students at Princeton he found students who seemed to be the total opposite of myself; these students did so much that they didn't even have time to just sit and talk amongst themselves without having to make 'appointments' to do so! I'm sorry, Mr. Brooks, but I don't believe that any of my fellow classmates want that kind of stress piled on top of them. Even though we don't want that kind of stress, we are still a very successful generation.
"They are disconcertingly comfortable with authority. That's the most common complaint the faculty has of Princeton students. They're eager to please, eager to jump through whatever hoops the faculty puts in front of them, eager to conform," says Aaron Friedberg, Princeton's international relations professor. Friedberg is right. Students are taught to always listen to the teacher and do their very best to not disagree or argue with the teachers (except the select few who do anyway). So in all reality, it's not our fault we want to be the kids who have so much to do with very little time and still out-do your expectations. Our teachers taught us to do that, and the admissions offices of colleges and universities expect us to do it.
Another thing I noticed of Brooks' research: he only looked at one school. It happened to be Princeton. Mistake number one, sir. You can't look at one school, an extremely wealthy and highly ranked school for that matter, and expect to see students who have different views on levels of success. Princeton is full of the students who have overachieved their entire way through school while balancing sports, books, and jobs. Being from the small town of Danville, Kentucky and growing up with students who make all A's in their AP and Honors classes that AREN'T going to schools like Princeton and Harvard just shows that Brooks is entirely wrong. We are all going to be successful in one way or the other because we can balance our education with our extracurricular activities. What we don't need, however, is a system that tells us we have to take a ton of AP classes in high school and get 5's on all the tests just to be accepted into the colleges we want to go to.
So next time you try to say that “...nowhere did I find any real unhappiness with this state of affairs; nowhere did I find anybody who seriously considered living any other way,” why don't you try looking at students in small colleges doing the same thing the Princeton students do, Mr. Brooks? Because the system has put us in this position as we try to keep it all together.
"They are disconcertingly comfortable with authority. That's the most common complaint the faculty has of Princeton students. They're eager to please, eager to jump through whatever hoops the faculty puts in front of them, eager to conform," says Aaron Friedberg, Princeton's international relations professor. Friedberg is right. Students are taught to always listen to the teacher and do their very best to not disagree or argue with the teachers (except the select few who do anyway). So in all reality, it's not our fault we want to be the kids who have so much to do with very little time and still out-do your expectations. Our teachers taught us to do that, and the admissions offices of colleges and universities expect us to do it.
Another thing I noticed of Brooks' research: he only looked at one school. It happened to be Princeton. Mistake number one, sir. You can't look at one school, an extremely wealthy and highly ranked school for that matter, and expect to see students who have different views on levels of success. Princeton is full of the students who have overachieved their entire way through school while balancing sports, books, and jobs. Being from the small town of Danville, Kentucky and growing up with students who make all A's in their AP and Honors classes that AREN'T going to schools like Princeton and Harvard just shows that Brooks is entirely wrong. We are all going to be successful in one way or the other because we can balance our education with our extracurricular activities. What we don't need, however, is a system that tells us we have to take a ton of AP classes in high school and get 5's on all the tests just to be accepted into the colleges we want to go to.
So next time you try to say that “...nowhere did I find any real unhappiness with this state of affairs; nowhere did I find anybody who seriously considered living any other way,” why don't you try looking at students in small colleges doing the same thing the Princeton students do, Mr. Brooks? Because the system has put us in this position as we try to keep it all together.