The Communique

Issue date: 4/29/04 Section: Opinion

Drew Lenze: Staff Writer

Sometimes my fellow Kirkwood students disappoint me. Here's a conversation I overheard recently:

"I'm so stressed. I just tried to sign up for classes but my schedule is all screwed up."

"Didn't you get the classes you wanted?"

"Yeah but for one class, I wanted a specific teacher but her class was full, so I had to sign up for a different teacher."

"At least you got the class."

"But my roommate says the teacher I got is really hard. He even checks attendance!"

"Bummer. You're right, that sucks."

Whenever I hear a conversation like this, I want to scream and confront the idiot. (Scott Adams, writer of the "Dilbert" comic strip, would call him an in-DUH-vidual.) Unfortunately I'm a wimp and never speak out, so I'll rant here, protected by my Communiqué editors.

(Okay, so I told two lies in that last sentence. Those who have class with me are rolling their eyes at that "never speak out" comment and my editors would conveniently fail to notice any attack on me, unless they joined it.)

Maybe I'm being a little hard on this "stressed" student. There are a few teachers who it's best to avoid, although I haven't had any here at Kirkwood. (I was going to say "maybe one" but I'm afraid all my professors would assume they're the one, and my grades would suffer.)

I also agree that checking attendance is bogus. If someone can learn without going to class, more power to him. At another college, I had an early morning class where the professor, a horrible lecturer, checked attendance. I used to sit front-and-center and sleep, waking-up only to check-off my name and others on the attendance sheet. The professor never figured out why students who dropped his class still came to every lecture.

My quibble with the student is avoiding a teacher because he's "hard." Usually these teachers are those who demand a lot of effort from their students. A magic thing happens when a student has to put forth effort in a class - he learns. To some, going to college to learn is an old-fashioned notion but not everything old-fashioned is bad.

I'll let you in on a secret the Kirkwood administration might not want you to know. Once you start your first job after graduation, your degree and GPA mean nothing. Once you're working your career is only going to depend on what you know and how much effort you give. If you don't believe me, check out the following conversation:

Continued...

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