reading response #5

Jared Eckert

Reading response #5

"I work part-time in the evenings as an adjunct instructor of English. I teach two courses, Introduction to College Writing (English 101) and Introduction to College Literature (English 102), at a small private college and at a community college. The campuses are physically lovely—quiet havens of ornate stonework and columns, Gothic Revival archways, sweeping quads, and tidy Victorian scalloping. Students chat or examine their cell phones or study languidly under spreading trees. Balls click faintly against bats on the athletic fields. Inside the arts and humanities building, my students and I discuss Shakespeare, Dubliners, poetic rhythms, and Edward Said. We might seem, at first glance, to be enacting some sort of college idyll. We could be at Harvard. But this is not Harvard, and our classes are no idyll. Beneath the surface of this serene and scholarly mise-en-scène roil waters of frustration and bad feeling, for these colleges teem with students who are in over their heads."

"I work at colleges of last resort. For many of my students, college was not a goal they spent years preparing for, but a place they landed in. Those I teach don’t come up in the debates about adolescent overachievers and cutthroat college admissions. Mine are the students whose applications show indifferent grades and have blank spaces where the extracurricular activities would go. They chose their college based not on the U.S. News & World Report rankings but on MapQuest; in their ideal academic geometry, college is located at a convenient spot between work and home. I can relate, for it was exactly this line of thinking that dictated where I sent my teaching résumé."

There wasn’t any part of this essay I didn’t understand or that posed any sort of difficulty for me to read. The “chunk” above though really hit home for me. In high school my grades were far from consistent and for the most part were low. To be quite honest, I sometimes wonder how I even graduated. It’s not that I am not smart; because I believe I am deep thinker and I grasp concepts well. I actually love learning, I love being stimulated and being in a position were I must or in the best of cases, want to induce complex and abstract thought processes. My problem is if I am not engaged enough by and instructor or a subject my interest drops dramatically. God forbid if it is a subject I am not interested, I might as well not come to class. I also have a problem with procrastinating, unless it is with something I am interested in, then I’ll belt out all the work I can. In high school there were only two courses out of the four years I went there were I actually felt attentive and interested. Photography and astronomy; I had over 100% in those classes by course end. For my other classes I’d be lucky If I hit about above average, or in some cases above 60 %. When applying for college, all of it was last minute. I didn’t research any schools that would focus on what I wanted my major to be or how good the education was there. This is mostly because I didn’t have the grades to get any university. I have come to community college to raise my gpa and help myself prepare for the big university experience. Maybe even get a better sense of what I want to do with my life. I have many interests but I don’t see a lot out there that I could find myself doing for the rest of my life; and if I am not interested in it, I am doomed to fail miserably.

             College isn’t for everyone by no means at all. Some aren’t capable of completing it (as this essay explains) and some are capable but have found better or easier ways of obtaining what they truly want in life. I think America and even the world has given us the idea that if you don’t seek secondary education you will not succeed in life. I believe pursuing higher education is a fantastic idea and that most of us should do our very best to get it. But today, even with a college degree, it is extraordinary difficult to get a job. As the United States still suffers from this recession it is not unheard of for people with PHD’s to be on the side of the road with signs that read “Anything helps, God bless” or “Spear change please?” How are any of us suppose to compete with that? How the hell am I suppose to believe that going to college is going to land me in a better position than a doctor who has spent countless time and money to get an advanced education, now on the side of the street begging for nickels and dimes?

            This “chunk” above is the introduction to Professor X’s article. It gives a good indication about what the passage is going to be about. It paints a picture of the campuses he works at. Giving the vibe of what most colleges give of, the feel off young minds being taught and trained to conquer the real world; but tells us that not everything is what it appears and how sometimes these facilities have people who just are not capable of  being trained or taught such things.