Society has the mindset that more education is better - I'm not arguing for or against, but I've been an observer and a participant in the complaints of higher education. The education system in itself is a whole other topic, but what I want to focus on are the attitudes of students. You'll often here comments like the following:
"I have six hours of homework tonight and an essay due at 11:59"
"Don't they realize we have other classes too?"
"I really don't care about this class so I'm taking an L for this assignment"
I suppose more than complaints it is apathy that annoys me, especially when the class is interesting. Not that every class is everyone's cup of tea, but lets be reasonable, if you at least have a professor that cares about the class and the workload isn't asking too much, why should you complain?
My favorite part about specific classes are the different assignments, especially when they go outside the norm of what you are used to.
Take a Biology class - have a lab, you may of course be studying bean beetles and how many microscopic golfball eggs they lay on mung beans (which I had to do for four weeks of a semester), but you are actively doing something that in some ways relates to the course.
Sociology - deviance project write up where you have to perform some activity outside the norm and record the reactions of people around you. Some common deviant acts include facing everyone in the elevator or sitting really close to someone you don't know.
Health psychology (now here's a fun one) - we had to do health behavior change reports, basically design our own fitness program and stick to it for three weeks, measuring something; for example, I wanted to study the effect of a fitness routine that included running and yoga on my levels of stress and mood.
Which brings me to the class that I am currently a part of, Medieval History. One of our assignments was a social history paper and if you are a writer then you'll especially enjoy this. We had to research a historical figure and learn about their lives then write a journal, letters, something that "they wrote" and use historically accurate events. If you don't think that is fun, then I'm wondering how you can think anything is fun. Literally diving into someone else's life and learning about the details, the food, the dress, the social environment, major events like castration or forbidden love, interesting combination.
I chose Heloise, she is famous for her love affair with her tutor, Abelard, and how her Uncle found out, castrated Abelard, then Heloise and Abelard went to separate convents to live out the rest of their days. They wrote to each other (handwritten letters, a dying species in today's technological time). I have seriously summarized a lot of what happened, but I wrote diary entries, using historical letters that Heloise and Abelard sent to each other as well as library resources that sent up clouds of dust when I opened them.
My point of all this is, enjoy school, enjoy it for all it's worth and take advantage of it. I spoke to my history professor and she was telling me to pick a topic that I was interested in for my thesis paper. That's the fun, she told me, every student has something that they want to know more about so what do you want to know? So, ask yourself: What are you passionate about? And are you pursuing it?
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